001thank you it's like when I call this meeting of Laramie County schools in one Board of Trustees to order please stand and join us and who it is as they said pledge allegiance for us and thank you to Goins Elementary fourth grade class and teacher was Christopher Holloman we're going to a little bit later also um do you have any interesting seeds anything no Mr chair we have no adjustments to the agenda yep there you go Mr chairman I moved to adopt the agenda a second favorite motion second to adopt the agenda any discussion all those in favor say aye aye aye as opposed no motion passed all right so now we're going to go to a resolution Mr chairman I moved to approve a resolution of recognition of summer school principals teachers and staff
002whereas the success of our students is Paramount in Laramie County school district one and student Readiness is one of three Central themes in the district district strategic plan and where as many students needed an Extended Learning schedule and many students enjoy the benefits of optional summer learning programs and whereas summer is typically a time of rest and respite for many District staff but a diligent few choose to dedicate this time to the betterment of our students along their educational Journey now therefore be it resolved that the Laramie County School District One Board of Trustees recognizes and expresses its sincere gratitude to Summer School principles teachers and staff for their Devotion to the best interests of all Laramie County School District 1 students second Mr chairman okay we have a motion for a resolution any further
003discussion all those in favor say aye aye those opposed note all right motion passes our next thing is going to be the uh we'll have uh that's a great question about the Western Vista state thank you Mr Bowen members of the board yeah I would like to bring up Nick Finnegan he is a commercial lender with Western Vista Federal Credit Union and he has an award to present um to purple Owens Elementary for the Pledge of Allegiance video so we have somebody who Goins here today hi there my name is hi I'm Nick Finn again I'm with Western Division it's been our pleasure all year to present student of the week but this week of course we have no student of the week but we're looking forward to August where we'll uh September where we'll
004resume that that uh Habit I like it like doing it I have a gift today for Christopher Hall or um for the class for the presentation thank you very much Josh as far as the earlier resolution I'd also like to thank all of the students and parents because our summer school is not mandatory and so those kids show up voluntarily to come and get the help they need during the summer and also some of them show up here in Richmond so I thank the parents who are getting them there and the parents were actually showing up too so it's going to make sure that their next school year is going to be better all right thank you okay we have one more award and this word goes Dr Crespo she was nominated for the equity
005Warrior award this presented to Dr Mark Fresco and recognition of your Relentless dedication to equity for students families and community and it's given by voices for equity congratulations maybe there's probably a wreckage for many of the things she's done since you've been here but I think it was mainly for the kindness campaign that was last fall last spring yeah um just a recognition for the work that was done around the kindness campaign at the junior highs and high schools that led us to the sources of strength work in our community um which then led to hundreds of people being trained as volunteers so our community is super supportive of our students just really grateful for that opportunity from this organization okay next thing we have is items for visitors concerning agenda topics in our first
006person is Todd Reynolds and hold on just a minute it needs to get the timer ready so thank you for turning that around us even though I'm sure enough you know where it's supposed to be right I just been for 10 minutes is good I like that and again the rules our state's first last name keep your comments two to three minutes oh there's some chance to waste their concern keep your comments General nature not direct to the specific individual individuals super language or content for K-12 students and please provide additional information and try not to be repetitive so you're not going to be repetitive so you have your three minutes hi good evening my name is Todd Reynolds and the parent of two girls and districts and trustees I'm tired we've been doing this
007book dance for a long time way too long it's become an embarrassment for the town for you for our district and I get it our local anti-government extremist group is loud and they email and they speak and they whine they spread misinformation and they paid for your ads and they sponsored your events so you feel you have to do their bidding but let's remember how this all started hatred and exclusion I know you'll say it's about appropriateness but it's not no see when you say it's about appropriateness then you are from your position of power knowingly making false and malicious statements about District employees you are every time you say it's about appropriateness attacking or certified and trying and credentialed secondary Librarians for not doing their jobs you who are of course untrained and uncredentialed
008in library Sciences now I know some of you don't pay attention to your own ethical bylaws but that will be a violation of ethical conduct I just came back from my own professional development from my organization English teachers language arts and sorry English language arts teacher Educators by the way you could receive great professional development from your organization the National School Board Association voting to leave that group over a letter that you clearly could not and did not comprehend what exposure is political frauds and not serious board members but I aggress the keynote speaker gave the quote at the conference belonging is the highest form of inclusion the targets of all this malignant ire have been disproportionately books about lgbtq plus characters and characters of color you'll shake your heads at that but just check
009the list on our own local book hating Pages or the national book hitting sites you'll see it read those pages or better yeah read the books the entire books not just the cliff notes versions found on the book hating sites these books are being targeted because certain groups don't believe that those characters belong in our schools and so they don't believe those characters belong in our schools they also don't believe those students belong in our schools and we're back to the hatred exclusion that started this whole mess the status part though is that U7 represent 14 000 students and those 14 000 students hear you loud and clear when five of you say that not all students and characters belong in this District bullying is a problem here someone even call it a problem this
010school board might consider focusing on our lgbtq plus students and families are being targeted our families of color students of color are being targeted and you instead of helping sit there and stoke the Flames of hatred and exclusion instead of fighting for belonging and inclusion president council is giving you an out here take it there's an opt-in policy for the entire District Four choices to choose from that we can all choose just take it call it a win let's be done with this and then maybe just maybe do some professional development with the National School Board Association and learn that your job is to stand up for it every single student in this District not just the ones who can think like you belonging is the highest form of inclusion let's end this and start
011focusing on Creative District where all students and families belong thank you thank you okay our next person on the list is actually a student so I'm going to attend it by this person by the initials of z v so what you want to please or are you online if you're online raise your hand your chairman I do not see that name and your students here's officials are z and v I will come back to that one later all right next question I have is Reverend Robert Gerard thank you members of the school board for this opportunity to speak concerning the district's Library policy and the Reverend Bob Gerard my wife Holly and I have lived in Cheyenne for almost 23 years I served as the head of Staff pastor of the perfect Presbyterian Church from
0122000 to 2014. when I retired after 44 years of service I had a personal library of 4 000 books I'm in favor of keeping the current policy with respect to all parents rights everyone gets to make choices for only their own children also it is easier to use I think it also promotes freedom of reading education and the freedom to think wonder and discover we have well-educated Librarians who wisely guide our children to books that fit their grade age level and the questions they might have let's support them there's some background to why I have said this or think this way I have loved libraries and Librarians ever since I began using my Elementary School library back in the Pittsburgh area at the age of six after playground time Library class was my favorite thing
013to do and when the library door opened you looked at all the books I would say in my mind and then run to the selection of books I wanted usually on history or science I also love the wise Librarians who at every level of my 20 years of grade school through Seminary education gave me the freedom let me emphasize the word freedom freedom to choose the books I wanted to read they also guided me to the books that might deal with my questions which changed as I advanced in educational levels it was helpful for me that my parents backed this approach as the great former slave Frederick Douglass wrote once you learn to read you will be forever free with my wife I helped raise two children who became Avid readers we have two granddaughters
014whom we read we read to and have given many books one is studying to be a lawyer they have given us two great-grandsons for whom we bought books right after they were born in summary again I'm in favor of keeping the current author policy which respects all parents rights and students freedom to read and I hope you will vote to keep it thank you for missing and for your kind consideration thank you do we see that student yet and it could be CV if that's maybe a mistake there but it could be CV instead of ZB and if there's a student with the initial CV if you're online please raise your hand I don't see any hand Trace okay next person is Jen Solis good evening my name is Jen Solis the parent of three
015students in the district I continue to urge the board with the current Library opt out policy As Americans our freedoms rely on others abiding by the social contract of Civility and a belief that we are all created equal even when we don't like what others do with that freedom that social contract appears to be freeing some would forsake the rights of others in order to avoid ideas that make them uncomfortable I am concerned about the bad faith arguments and misinformation pervasive in efforts to censor and ban books first we often hear that if someone wants to purchase pornography they must prove they are old enough to do so or that exposure to pornography at a young age causes issues into adulthood therefore we should not provide pornography until children in schools this bad faith argument
016is designed to stoke fear and outrage Librarians curate books that are age-appropriate with contextual relevance for a diverse student population while one may dislike the contents of a book nothing in our libraries meets the definition of pornography in any way shape or form next we hear out of context reading from books somewhat banned without knowing the context we are led to believe that the entire book is offensive I am currently reading me Earl and the dying girl the story of an awkward and yes very crude teenage boy facing the death of a childhood friend this book has profane words throughout and from conversations with my 16 year old I know that he hears those words and much worse in his school in the last school year many students were faced with reading the death of
017a peer in our district perhaps a book about grief and loss using a vernacular young people actually use could have some value for them last we hear that the board has a mandate to change library book policy some even say a super majority of Voters elected candidates to change the policy while the appropriateness of books with mature themes is highly subjective math is not and numbers do not lie in each of the four races for the school board voters overwhelmingly selected candidates who publicly stated they would keep the opt-out policy as is the average margin favoring those candidates was more than 14 percent across the races and at the last meeting we learned that of the Thirteen thousand or so students in our district the families of only 41 asked to restrict access to books
018for their students a fraction of one percent why would the board recklessly waste taxpayer dollars in pursuit of a political agenda that only a fraction of our community supports especially when the basis of many of the arguments is built on misinformation and bad faith parents already have all the tools they need with the opt-out policy District staff has already made that policy better by including it as a part of our online registration process and I support any efforts to help parents make informed choices for their own students without infringing on the rights of others thank you thank you thank you and I saw a student come in so I'm going to check again see if the student either zv or CV is that is that person here yet okay next one's also a student so
019this would be JT student with initials JT are you here good evening my name is Josh Thompson I'm a senior at East High School and live a little closer with microne I don't think can you hear me now that's good we wanted to go out over the Airways no you're fine thanks for letting me know did I get a restart of my time thank you okay good evening my name is Josh Thompson I'm a senior at East High School and I love to read over my high school and middle school careers I have read at least a dozen challenged or outright banned books many as a part of my English curriculum How To Kill a Mockingbird night and The Hunger Games just to name a few um however I've read even more outside of school
020including Looking for Alaska the hate U give Mouse 1984 and one I highly recommend Fahrenheit 451. all of these books were incredibly powerful and moving and I love them all censoring these books does nothing but limit freedom of speech and expression creativity and valuable stories from all over the world and throughout history furthermore changing the current library system will do nothing but take away options and support systems for kids like me who use the library I see where these challenges come from I really do but for graphic and sexual content we need to understand that high school kids know what's out there we know what we can and cannot handle and I guarantee that we hear twice as much vulgar language at the lunch table than you can find in a book on any given
021day while I agree that there should be limits in place to protect elementary school kids once you get to high school trying to control what we read does nothing but deprive us of important stories that broaden our worldview intelligence and empathy this also extends to books about history and race listen we in America have some ugly history and so does the whole world we've had issues with bigotry and racism since the beginning and trying to limit the stories of minority authors just reads more ignorance now I get it it's hard to read about slavery lynching police brutality and slurs but these things did happen and still continue to we cannot improve our society without first learning about what these problems sorry what problems we have and have had in the past our kids need to
022read about these things in order to see why they're so terrible and that includes books about atrocities like the Holocaust as well we can't ignore the crimes and sins of Humanity's past because we need to prevent them in the future and I know books about these sensitive topics are challenging but they're indescribably important finally concerning books about lgbtq plus people I have many dear friends who belong to that community and who adore stories about that community regardless of your personal beliefs it's cool to deny students access the books about people like them in race ethnicity gender sexuality or beliefs if we start with censoring books where will we stop I as a student who loves to read and who would be affected by book challenges in our libraries strongly believe that we should not restrict
023access to any books in our schools as they hold valuable and Rich stories and lessons thank you foreign good evening everyone I'm Oakley Simons a current high school student here in Laramie County school district one and I have the honor of being student body president for East High School I come here today to speak on behalf of the body and hopes of doing what is best for our students and today I am speaking in opposition of the opt-in book policy for the sake of creating a smarter future first I would like to remind you all of our current book policy for Laramie County school district one which is an opt out system if a parent is concerned about certain books in the school's libraries we already have the system in place to allow them to
024virtually opt out their own children from these books making it so Guardians are parenting their own children's and not and others the Wyoming Tribune Eagle reported that as of February of this year 5958 Laramie County School District One parents had registered for their current policy however only 18 of them which is a .003 of them had actually opted their children out of books why are we changing the system for less than half of a percentage the argument here is that it is an underutilized system but if anything that shows the disinterest in the first place and the option for parents who are concerned to make it so they can be responsible for their own children and by all means I support parents being able to determine what is best for their child however I do
025not believe people should be allowed to restrict books for kids they do not know every child in our district has been entrusted by their Guardians to the public education system with the goals of trying to teach teach our kids how to think not what to think we are giving our children the opportunity to learn critical thinking and allowing them access to knowledge and hopes they will use this to ask questions to gain wisdom we are promoting curiosity and conversations isn't that the goal of schools to help open the minds of our youth so we may have a more knowledgeable future for our state so we can have leaders who know how to handle adversity and to help stay Wyoming proud we pride ourselves on our freedoms and defending our rights and I would like to
026remind everyone that our current system does this without us restricting the rights of others I urge you all to vote in opposition of this policy thank you thank you again again very fine presentation it was always also good to hear use the math correctly of being an or math teacher so always nice to hear that then all right next person is Wendy mobile and she's on Zoom Wendy if you are online please raise your hand Mr chairman I do not see that name and there is no hand raised online okay so our next person is going to be Albert bird foreign my name is Albert bird I've lived in Cheyenne my whole life except for five years I was enlisted in the U.S Marines during that time I had two diplomas to the Middle East
027so I've seen firsthand what authoritarian government looks like the results of an ultra conservative minority enforcing their views and allowing no room for Dissent the military provided me a great education on the enemies we fought in the past dictators authoritarians I've never read about the good guys Banning books and I don't think I will I'm sad to see that here in my home and I'm not willing to watch certain ideals the pound in this nation be ignored criminal Choice expression even the fact that we have this meaning in public industry and still form a government together is a beautiful thing I support the parents being involved in the reading their children do they should guide that education and should be making decisions for their children however the only people that should be making decisions for
028other folks children should be those who have training education do exactly that teachers and Librarians thank you for your time thank you Oliver and thank you for your service all right next question is Lorraine Wilcox brain if you're online please raise your hand legit Mr chairman there is no name uh Lorraine online and there is no hand raised okay we'll go on to the next person George powers good afternoon good evening I'm George powers and I repaired the last meeting to talk to you about the opt out policy and why I believe that is the best policy I'm not going to repeat that tonight what I'd like to do tonight is to talk to you about your responsibilities as trustees of a public school system our societies depend upon maintaining public spaces public spaces where
029ideas are respected and are allowed to be expressed one of those public spaces in our society of the public libraries another place where those public spaces exist are our public schools and the public and the libraries within those schools you are trustees in other words you have the responsibility to maintain those public spaces and when you maintain those public spaces through a policy such as the opt-out policy you are doing your job you're allowing parents to make decisions for their children but you are not putting parents in a position you're not putting other people in a position where they can make decisions for other people's children and that is important and I think you should maintain that and continue to maintain that through in your position as Trustees of this public space um if you
030go with a program that allows one person not even a parent to put a book on a list and to have that book then pulled off a shelf and put into a closet where only people who ask for it will see it you have just censored that public space and that is a violation of your oath as a trustee therefore I again would urge you please you have a system that works the opt-out system has worked for years and it works well it doesn't put your staff in the position of having to deny access to children it doesn't put your Librarians in a position where they have to lock things up behind doors please don't go down that road maintain a public space that is open to all children to all of our citizens to
031our entire Community thank you um thank you I'm going to go back to that first student which was either Z or CD are they available now online or here okay then we had Wendy Volk is she though online Wendy if you're online please raise your hand there's no hand raised and no name and then we had Lorraine Wilcox Mr chairman I do not see that is trouble go to our waiting list uh Kathy is you online I'm Mr chairman she is one woman okay here Wyoming wind is letting us know it's out there tonight and unfortunately I apologize that our air conditioning in here is not working modest day of the year so far and we're introducing is not working so hopefully by our next meeting we'll have that fixed at the ear are you
032able to speak yes okay go ahead thank you age appropriate that is the concern this literally has zero to do with race gender or anyone's sexual preference it has everything to do with whether books have educational value or not it has been pointed out by Administration from this District that the reason for low numbers of opting out was because it doesn't provide the needed information on what parents are opting out of along with very little space to do so maybe an opt-out was okay before but parents are now aware of what is actually being offered in our school libraries I urge you to continue to work like you have from this point forward on helping to protect our children from inappropriate books being provided by this district and pretending that all parents are fully aware
033of what content our children have access to thank you thank you um next is Mark Moody Mr chairman uh mayor's committee good evening uh Mark Moody uh just quickly again I'll reiterate the last speaker said super majority of Voters in Laramie County support an opt-in policy and superintendent Dagen Felder won his County 70 percent against 70 percent also supports an Optimum policy and wants to have statewide so obviously at that and also to vote no on d uh 0.1.10 policy no one person should have power determine you know what goes on with the board the board we the people elected to make those decisions that's all I had thank you and last Ben Hornick got your name correct all right thank you Mr chairman members of the board Ben hornock I'm a state representative for
034house district 42 here in Laramie County so what I want to do we a lot of times there's a moral argument that's presented to you guys when we discuss this subject I want to talk about the state statutes specifically the obscenity law that Wyoming has 6-4-301 so obscenity is defined as material with which the average person would find applying contemporary Community standards taking as a whole appeals to the puriant or sexual interests applying contemporary Community standards to pick or describe sexual content conduct and impately offensive way and taken as a whole lack serious literary artistic political or scientific value so we're not talking about the Bible we're not talking about Shakespeare we're not talking about the uh health book that talks about sex ed we're talking about obscene books and you've probably seen a list
035of those obscene books I've seen a list of books with content that could be defined as obscene under State statutes uh you also are aware that within the state statute there is also an exemption there's an exemption for teachers for school boards for librarians there is not an exemption for parents please keep that in mind because that is very important because you uh you have an exemption that parents don't if you tonight took one of those books that's on the list took that home to your children presented that to your children you'd be a criminal for doing so according to state statute but as a teacher as a school board you're not you're exempt please keep that in mind uh no other topic is it true that I can think of where there's an exemption
036for government employees that is not an exemption for parents of that child think about that so when it comes to this topic please keep in mind that it is important not to go as close to the line as possible but it is important to stay as far away from the line as you can okay it's not a good idea to use the fine print of a law to flex legal immunity when a parent if a parent did this they would be considered and put on the sex offender registry so buy statutes the way that it is is everyone we've heard the math on the opt-out policy how many people actually apply for that by Statute actually everybody automatically as a parent is already opted out um I've got more about the state statute but I've
037have to answer answer any questions if you have any thanks thank you all right that's all of that so we'll close that section and we're going to move on to the Board of communications and reports so our next upcoming events are July 26th and 27th at 11AM is to challenge rodeo at Cheyenne print days Frontier Days Rodeo Arena and I believe even the public can get in to watch that degree except let them know you're going in there and then you got to make sure you're on your honor to leave afterwards if you don't have a ticket um and that's a great event for all of our challenged kids in in our schools so you get a chance to go out there and interact with the Cowboys and the and the cowgirls out there July
03827th at 8 A.M there's the executive session um and that's going to be Personnel August 21st at 5 PM is a work session uh 6 PM regular board meeting August 22nd 11 A.M to 1pm all staff School picnics that's cover welcome back to all of our staff can I believe that's all here great story chip and on August 23rd it's my birthday but more importantly it's the first day of school so um so we will then move into superintendent um the individual board reports so anybody on the board want to report about it thank you uh Mr chairman uh I participated in the um quarterly wsba board meeting um on Saturday uh and there's a couple relevant uh things that happened at that meeting that the board should be aware of um per the conversation
039around nsva um coming up here the board had the wsbl a board had really robust conversation um to date it has been members of both Casbah which is the new Association and actually has more State members currently uh and and nsba after pretty lengthy discussion there was boats to continue to participate in both of those if the board decided to continue to participate in causba and to not participate in nsba moving forward um the United States they're not going to participate not participate in nsda it is going to continue to be a member of cause okay thank you um uh there was a variety of reasons on that um that had to do some of them of course things that have been shared by this board but a lot of them had very different opinions
040on a variety of things around the value of um to associations uh and so but that is where the vote landed uh just a couple of things to keep in mind um we had a work session with wsba not terribly long ago talked about how wsba brings forward its legislative agenda for the year um the staff did bring forward a draft WS or a legislative agenda it's very similar to last year's the board gave feedback on it and the board is or the staff is taking that back um with my understanding is the intent is then to roll it out to all board members across the state school board members during their Regional meetings our regional meeting is currently scheduled and then it will go out to everybody electronically as well um our regional meeting
041is August 29th in Laramie it's with Albany one there is only one District in Albany County just up by carbon one carbon two Laramie one and Larry two they'll also have at that time talk about potential resolutions that are coming out across the state um that kind of do more specific things um and so if you can make it please do so if not um that will all come out electronically and we can have a conversation about it as well um the summer law conference where they give legal updates about things that have happened both at the state and federal level that impact schools and school districts is August 3rd and 4th um they're also working on some additional online training options around very specific School issues like School finance and accountability and then they're
042also getting ready to release their annual Awards call for nominations they do the Golden Bell it's a nomination it must come from a board itself and it has it's for a person who significantly impacted Wyoming education over time not just a local district and then a champion of education and there are districts that apparently submit people for those every year and we did one last year but I just wanted to bring it up to start to think about that is that it yes thank you I think I'll start down at the end trustee Anderson did you have something no let's see Humphrey that's the Hinkle no interesting thank you Mr chair trustee Ashby I just have a quick question on your update thank you for that it's really appreciate the information when will um their
043the wsba then end its membership with the nsba I believe um dues were due the end of this month okay so so now all right thank you very much for that clarification let me just um have a real quick update on my um my participation on the Cheyenne schools Foundation board um just a plug for the um 5K that the schools Foundation board does every year is scheduled this year for September 16th um near Lions Park to start um we would love to have everyone in the community sign up the funds from that come and then help with special projects and grants for educators in the community to apply for and use to benefit the students of our district um so it would really um you know if you're if you like to rent or
044you like to walk come on out for that the registration fees for adults will be 35 students are 15 and children under the age of six are it must have written that down room I think it was five dollars for kids under the age of six um but you can register online now I believe um Dr Cresco you may know but we do payroll deduction for that as well um so for members of our you know of our district and that would be an optional way to to pay um for that and to get registered but anyway it's online on the Cheyenne schools Foundation website and um just would encourage all of you to sign up and come out for that great cause thank you is there somebody here who could speak about the ccrd
045meeting earlier today with Australian community recreation District I I can't if you would like um I I was actually looking a minute ago for my notes from that meeting and I think they're down under the desk um we didn't um it was a short agenda tonight um here we go we're gonna be voting on on that in just a little while so I thought it'd just be a good idea they had a meeting at five o'clock today and just the recreation members are all probably so it's an open meeting so you can probably can go to a two if you like yeah we um it was a short meeting um in today's meeting we voted to approve payment of some invoices for a couple of projects um we also voted to submit a recommendation tonight
046to the entire Board of Trustees um to approve the one mill Recreation tax that we as a district collect each or that money then comes to the recreation board and can be used throughout the year for recreation projects that benefit not just the school district but actually the entire community so our priority in selecting those Recreation projects are projects that have more than just an impact for one specific school but actually would be something that the entire Community would benefit from so we voted to submit that recommendation to the board tonight to approve that as part of our budget the one mil um Recreation tax for the for the retinal board um we also voted to adopt the budget our budget for the 2023-24 fiscal year um calling for appropriations of just over eight and
047a half million dollars that will go to recreational facilities and systems of public sorry public Recreation um I don't there were Brooke or trustee Humphrey and trustee Edgerton were also in that meeting was there that's just a real quick synopsis of what I've got but so we were given a list of over 20 products for the upcoming school year to review and look at and uh I thought that was awesome and also the way that those projects get graded I thought was really interesting also and so uh if it's if it's primarily just for the school's benefit it would get a lower grading than something that's highly school plus community and I just I'm excited to be on the board and to look at the 20 projects also safety is a big concern in that
048reading too so if we have a playground equipment that's you know not safe anymore we certainly would want to take to that consideration and as you see all around town we have wonderful playgrounds for not only our students during the day but after schools are out and during the summer and during breaks they're opened up to the public so hopefully people are using those um the one ccrd one meal wreck is is something that the board has the purview of a sweet swing or approving type of voter approval so that's like there's a lot of the stats so it's one mill that we can do that with all right so my reports are that uh in a couple weeks ago um do we have the final session of the navigating one the second section of
049the navigating 131 and it was talking about the board so I made a presentation about how the board works and uh that seemed to be very well received by that group but it was a pretty big group and it's always nice to see they have gone through they spent a year I think about once a month it means you know I've learned about different parts of our district and everybody that was there said it's been a very great experience to them so I I provided them a little bit of information about the board um a couple weeks ago I also took the opportunity to go out and visit South High School where secondary summer school is going on I was there for two hours in order to be able to see I mean it's a
050gigantic program we have for secondary school right now we also have an elementary program that goes on I haven't made it over there yet I'm not quite as interested in elementary and I'm a little more about SmartThings I went over there and there's great things going on there and not only do we have programs for students and maybe catch up we also have programs for their enrichment our students so we have kids that are there for both um I've also had the opportunity to listen to the east Titan community band they practice my neighborhood every day Monday through Fridays and I know some of my fellow neighbors do not appreciate that but they're there at about I would say about eight o'clock every morning but I enjoyed listening to the band and seeing the band
051and so I appreciate them serenading us in our neighborhood and they appear to be getting better as they go inside and I think sometimes every year to do a presentation to parents and it'll be this Friday right before front two days they do a little concert right there by the principal parking lot in the midwest I couldn't see that and then you can see all three of our high school bands in the parade printer day parades on October list um uh last Friday um the district allowed drums Along the Rockies to use the South High School stadium as a fundraiser for the South High School band so they the drums on the Rockies had they sold the tickets they got proceeds from that but the South High School band sold all of the concessions for
052there and that was a great presentation and last year we had pouring rain so it got canceled this year was actually a wonderful weather for it so and it was great to hear and I'm sure there's probably they didn't ask but I'm sure there's probably some of our local students here in that also anything else okay now we can move on to superintendent step Communications uh good evening chairman bowling trustees uh as you know we've been working on a strategic plan over the last uh going on three years started that process when I first arrived you've seen the posters all over the place we've been working diligently incredible committees hours and hours of work um and we do a quarterly and then a year ends and I'm very very excited to share our year-end video
053I want to do a huge shout out to our Communications Department and Tanya Gerhart are all of those that are in instruction all of our community members and parents and anybody who has been involved in this process it absolutely could not be done without each one of you the commitment that you have shown around our strategic plan to benefit our students for their future is absolutely breathtaking and with that I love to show our video around our year-end update for a strategic plan as you know we have outcomes and measures and a forward-facing dashboard so that people can check out all of our information on a regular basis I'm giving Kyle a second here to click through thank you Kyle so much um and here we go here's our year-end um response and I can't
054wait to share this as well on our website we're always trying to be very transparent and forward-facing around the incredible work that we're doing in our district coming to school makes me super excited to see my friends and have really awesome amazing teachers you know the importance of like school and teaching kids to be better in life I think that's really good well I do love all of you guys all of our teachers are here now that's our goal to elevate our district and to rise as a community all for the betterment and empowerment of our students and I as well as a few of those working to make our goals possible would like to take a few moments to share some of those incredible accomplishments with you let's start with student readiness our heart
055is with kids I mean if kids aren't engaged and kids are loving learning then how do we know if we're preparing them for the next level to get exactly what they need to knock those barriers down and get them ready to be able to participate more effectively in what the next grade level is going to ask of them they're also learning about themselves and hopefully can take some of those skills back with them in the fall we are constantly expanding our TV media Health occupations and computer science Pathways we are establishing Unified sports throughout the district an amazing program in which students with and without disabilities work together now let's look at Community engagement here at the Boys and Girls Club of Cheyenne we are very grateful to partner with Laramie County School District One
056to provide training for our staff we just want to make sure that we are on the same page as local teachers and Educators so we really work together on trainings and I'm just that we're supporting children we all have the same goal of keeping kids healthy and safe learning on the path towards great Futures so the more we can partner together on that the better lots of things excite me about what Laramie 1 is doing and specifically the work that we're doing between where we want and our triple certainly the expansion of dual and concurred involvement our enrollments our participation that do look current has increased substantially and I attribute that much of that to the the focus of the district has created in its strategic plan we want to expose students to Opportunities earlier
057and that makes dual and concurrent enrollment really the intersection with Larry district one and the schools ideal for us to start setting that stage I'm excited about you know deeper Converse stations around how we help students plan how we help families prepare and understand the process of you know moving into college and I think there's some great opportunities there to just broaden the impact that we have on on families we've invited community members on tours of the district and hosted six formal Community engagement events our second class of navigating Laramie one has graduated with attendees from around the community getting an in-depth look at the District Operations we've trained 14 Community agencies and sources of strength and parents have been strongly engaged in sources of strength training and the strategic planning process as a whole
058to highlight the success we created the Elevate annual magazine so that the community can see our hard work is paying off great job everyone the last strand of our strategic plan is ensuring our students and faculty are flourishing in a safe and healthy environment [Music] I'm most excited and seeing um the kids feel like their needs are being met and they're insides are being heard but our students once they kind of come out here they I really like seeing how the kids take ownership of the place and really to try to keep it up and take care of it really well and all the kids work together this place gave me a really good opportunity to try something new and it has benefited me a lot providing that sheltered environment in a new facility it's
059designed specifically for education in the 21st century is going to be key to our students continuing their growth and learning and I'm pretty excited about that it's not just a facility it's not just a new buildings but we look at a healthy environment we want our case to have the best possible learning environment so they can reach their fullest potential we've been ramping up the ability of our staff to facilitate a healthy learning environment with almost 2 000 hours of professional development sources of strength a major part of our healthy environment plan is empowering lcsd1 students to overcome difficult situations by leading their own strength-based campaigns so many wonderful things have come out of this strategic plan and we look forward to even more we have a stem-centered pilot program coming to Anderson Elementary dual
060language immersion Pilots at Hobbs and atholby Elementary's 10 title one and three tuition-based Pre-K programs being offered next year and we are bringing back Elementary Sports these are just a few of the many developments being put into motion around the district I love that everyone's effort is bearing fruit and I look forward to watching the success continue to add up as we Elevate lcsd1 for our students and their future thanks Kyle so a few of the exciting highlights um that I want to make sure we address as a community we um our PK program of 149 students that were enrolled um 147 146 of them are ready for kindergarten they've met the requirements around Readiness and it gives us an opportunity to focus on those few students that are not right there and ready for
061um kindergarten to start and we'll be doing some boost programs around them we've done a ton around data and proficiency so that our staff and students are doing great work and have the opportunity to know what that work looks like and as many of you may remember as you've come onto the board we've highlighted areas that you've had an interest in that would align directly to the Strategic plan and we've made sure that you're updated on all of those on a regular basis as well so that you're part of this incredible plan that was put forth both by the community internally externally a staff and I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to share that with you because the hours and hours of work that gone into making sure that our kids
062have every opportunity is right there in a five minute video so thank you very much for your time the second area um for our update today is uh Amy Pauley general counsel will provide a library policy update thank you all right oh there we go thank you Mr chair Dr Crespo trustees um hope to provide just a quick update on where we are with the library policy um we've gone over this several times um trying to keep the board and the public updated on um the steps that the district is taking to develop a new policy for potential support action in the future um you'll all recall that the directives to staff have been to examine or come up with a definition for sexually explicit to look at um clarifying making the opt out process
063easier exploring the idea of an opt-in process as well as looking at the procurement of uh library media materials and I apologize I I have left that third piece out from our last presentation um not because we weren't working on it because but I it slipped my mind because that's not what we were presenting on um so what we have done in the intervening time is we have taken um the direction from the board based on the presentation that we did last month and try to incorporate that language into the existing Library policy so if you approved your policies the library policy hadn't been updated since about 1995 and it was very short it was a two paragraph policy that basically said that the district would would provide library media Services um so we have
064added um about six and a half pages of language to address um the um definitions of sexually explicit material to outline in policy the options that parents would have at for selecting material Library materials that they feel best match the needs of their students and then finally we looked at our procurement policy added some language there as surrounding what that looks like how we will um some some parameters I guess you could say around the nominating books that make may meet the definition of sexually explicit and what we then do with that list um in that the four options that that we discussed last meeting um we also included within the new policy language um an opportunity for parents or Guardians to review materials that their child has access to um we discussed putting all
065library media materials onto the ELA website and then as well we have a requirement that that in addition to keeping that updated providing a separate list that identifies new library media materials as they're being procured um I forwarded you all the draft language um you'll recall through your policy um development process um it starts at the staff level we develop the process we then put it out to the policy advisory committee as well as the district leadership team and that's the step that we're at now and so we haven't published this publicly because we want to honor the idea that that group has a has a say and a voice in this process um so um you know they're getting it prior to um you know we put we would then bring that back to
066the board for a 45-day public comment period um and ask for that public input at that point in time and before final adoption so Mr chair it's really your pleasure I'm happy to walk through more specifics I'm happy to answer any questions that you have um whatever your pleasure sir so with the policy that you gave us the proposed one would you prefer that we just send comments to you since we don't want to we have the public get at this point um you know it's it's really again if we want to discuss it I think that that's fine um we did we just didn't provide that in advance of the meeting because again we wanted we haven't put it out we haven't followed that piece of the process yet that we're we're right at
067that step we intend to send it out tomorrow um so that we give give that group of individuals plenty of time to review that before um you know everybody well people start getting back uh July 31st and moving through August um we'll use that time together um their input and incorporate changes um but you know again it's really the board's advisor if you want to go through the policy if you want to provide your your comments I am happy to run through the language um so the first time that it could be put out four to five people probably would be the September meeting the only meet me on September [Music] um so it's it's really going to depend and I I hate to say it I put it out into the universe it's probably
068going to come back to me right um if everything is perfect and and there are very minor changes through that process with working with policy advisory and District leadership it can be done pretty quickly and those changes Incorporated um potentially before your August meeting if the changes are coming in and they're looking more extensive um things that we need to to take back to the the you know Department of Instruction the ELA and the Librarians to get their input on um you know if there's significant suggestions then it would likely be that September meeting and we'll hold you to the August thank you for being optimistic however so um anybody have any questions that they would like to ask at this point yeah let's go over here not in the city and we um there
069I guess I have one question to start I love others but um this just seems to be sort of a preliminary step and identifying what that looks like the policy advisory committee um my understanding now is that is sort of designated by what the issue is is that correct it's not the same policy advisory committee makeup that we had in place that was very large um for years right uh Mr chair trustee Smith that is true um the policy advisory committee there there are certain members that are um required for all policies and then we expand it out depending on what areas um the policy potentially affects so man asked for follow-up so as you are building that committee then I just would stress now that I mean we we have two very different viewpoints
070in the community and I would hope that that representation on that committee is is equal so the the both viewpoints have the the same opportunity at that smaller review level but a super important review level I would hope both sites would have the same number of Representatives on that I think that as as a board member that would be very important to me to know um Mr chair trustee Smith so in your policy you've listed um the superintendent three certified employees um of the cabinet designated by the superintendent two principles um five certified certificated excuse me Personnel one representative from each of the classified units five parent Representatives designated by The District's parent advisory committee so those are that's your um core makeup and then what we've kind of outlined in administrative regulation is that
071idea that um we've gathered more input based on a topic so this does test um touch a lot of different areas so we can certainly expand that to a broader group um I can't I don't know how we would necessarily ensure that that both sides are equally represented um because I I you know that Core group is designated by the individual units and by the parent advisory committee so we could we can certainly um if we're feeling if it looks like we're getting really one-sided we could go out for more we can also um seek input um from more parents um more staff um but that's that's kind of where we are I'm not sure exactly how to ensure that we would get sort of both sides of that I mean you kind of assume
072that that that would you know that group represents a representative cross-section of the community um and we would hope that we would get lots of input from from lots of different viewpoints but if we're not we can certainly explore um putting it out to um for more comment at this stage thank you more questions so I'll come back to me okay thank you Mr chair and thank you Miss Paulie for uh sharing this with us it was helpful for me to look at it in the eye or through the lens of how it'll look in Polish potential policy so that was great um last time we met the district rolled out different options this board the majority on the board really just wanted to address the issue of sexually explicit content and how do we
073provide parents choices to opt out of that or to opt into which regardless of or whichever their preference and um and as you know with the opt-out policy you have to know the title and you have to know that a book exists and you have to know the author and so it's very difficult to use that process that's why parents have come to us and said we can't use the system and set us on this this track um so looking at this one of the choices that the staff or our our District staff came up with was something called open Choice access and I've read through the paragraph a couple of times trying to figure out what that is um but I think I understand the concepts behind it now and but I do think
074that we should have um if if you do have an elementary student that gives wants to read um secondary books I do think that we should require have some sentence in there that requires parental notice or acknowledgment of what they might access a sexually explicit content right so I would recommend that be either a topic for discussion and policy committee or you add it now I don't know but that's a suggestion I have and I have a few more but looks like you have something to say no um thank you Mr chair trustee Clausen so you know we try to include that language that anytime because I think there was there was some confusion around if an elementary student could access through interlibrary loan um a book that's at the junior high or High School
075level um and the way that sort I I believe within administrative regulation is worded it's a little bit murky because it says that all the collection is considered one collection um and and we encourage like the inner Library loan process but in practice what was happening is if you wanted to request a book that was at a junior high and you were an elementary student the librarian would get specific parental permission so I think that you know we've included language that says it does does not so open access would not include blanket access to a higher Library level so if you're an elementary student selecting Open Access would not automatically Grant you access to anything at the junior high or High School level that would still require specific parental permission so if we need to
076tighten that language to make that clearer we I can certainly we'll take a look at that and make sure that that's you know that was that was what the intent of kind of that last sentence and um that open Choice does not include access to library materials housed at library library excuse me located in schools that serve a higher grade band level absent specific parental permission so that specific parental permission would be for um specific books not your kid wants to check out any secondary and you know you would have to go through that process so hopefully that that clarifies that we can we can work on clarifying that language for sure yes thank you Mr s times because I was trying to understand why are we even including this and I sort of remembered
077some stories of kids asking for Access but anyhow so I I think it would be good to clarify the intention there as you stated um the other thing and as I started my com or my comments out um we asked as a board or the majority on the board to address this issue of sexually explicit content because um a lot of parents didn't know that we had that content in our schools and um the opt-out doesn't work unless you have specific information about each book so um I really think it's important for you for us as a district to consider calling it what we intended it to be called in your drafts proposal in Red's or uh yeah policy policy you call it identified list choice and I really think we should call it something
078like no access to to sexually explicit content make it easy for appearance that's what our parents have called for that's what they've asked us for when we are running for election that's what our community voted for and I think we should just make it transparent and easy and if if you are a parent and if you're someone that's you know come to our board meetings and I appreciate all of you who wants your child or grandchild have access to that you will have that option so um but I do think we just need to make it clear for our community so that would be a recommendation I have um and Mr chair I have two more comments thank you thank you Mr chair um under the section of identification of sexually explicit materials last time
079last time we met it was rolled out that um and I understand why this is uh this is a staffing issue in part it's just how do we identify the books we already have in our collection as having sexually explicit content according to whatever definition we finally pass um so we are going to be reliant on parents and the community to submit nominations is the word you used to create a list that will then have our library professionals go through and compare it to the definition um but I got to thinking about this when I was reading through this draft policy that um once on the list I think the intent is that they'll always be identified as having been nominated and um we've never intended for books that have you know a bad word
080or an allusion to sexual content to be caught up in this this is about very graphic and and explicit sexual content as defined in our definition so if someone were to someone mentioned earlier Shakespeare in the Bible you know that those those are not that's not the kind of literature that was ever intended to be caught up in on a list so I would like to see us consider once the Librarians compare these books that are nominated to our definition maybe we as a district and I'm throwing it out there consider taking books off that don't end up meeting the definition rather than always being um listed as nominated so just an idea I'm throwing it out there to see what other folks on the board think about that um because it certainly wasn't ever
081the intention to catch up um you know a lot of these books that might have a reference to but don't have graphic details of sexual content and then I think I'd like to see the board I mean we are the elected officials and we're accountable to our public the board vote on that final decision you know if a book comes off or off or is recommended to come off that list or not so I think we should be held accountable for that so that would be my my suggestion in that section that we consider changing that of course a little bit that was uh I think the staff came up with that suggestion and I'm just suggesting as a board member and see what other folks think that if it doesn't meet that definition according
082to our staff then um the board they make a recommendation in the board have final say on if they agree with that recommendation is that okay thank you Miss golly and then the the fourth comment Mr chairman I would have in looking at the procurement of Library materials I think that um we intended and we've said several times that we'd love to see um that we do not want to procure any more books that will meet the definition of sexually explicit content moving forward and so um I think that is easily um easily written in that section by just saying instead of going into the second part of secondary just take that sentence out and just ending with Library materials selected for procurement whether free materials or purchase materials will not contain sexually sexually explicit
083content so that's that's how I would fix that um but I will give over the floor to my fellow board members for their comments thank you yeah I so I not necessarily I just disagree with trustee Clausen on the um we're gonna end up with a lot of really high quality books um that have those things that parents are going to want to access for their kids that aren't going to make it into the library um and so I I thought we were under the impression that it would go through the same process and it would be published for um comment and if people believe that it fits into that definition it can go on the list thought that up I didn't I didn't agree to necessarily the concept of they won't be bought at
084all Jesse Eagle are you done okay thank you Mr chairman um yeah several comments first of all the opt-out policy is not difficult to use it has been expressed to us as the board by many people within the library system of our schools that any parent who wants to discuss with a librarian any book any types of books that they don't want their kids to read and go to librarian and get a personalized list they don't have to have every single name they just have to have the ideas of what they want um and the and the library the Librarians will use all of their resources to create those lists so that those individual kids cannot access those books that the parents don't want them to access so it is a false statement to say
085that the opt-out policy that we currently have is difficult to use and that's why nobody's using it um also um if the board is going to vote on whether or not books should be on the list or not we're all going to have to read those books and I've asked multiple times um halves you know when somebody complains about a book have they read them and to date not one single board person has read the book that they're complaining about so if you want us to vote on whether or not it will be on the list or not we're going to have to all say we're going to read those books and I don't think that's going to happen um I agree completely with um crusty Ashby that um we should trust our Librarians to
086be able to create a list of books for secondary students again none of these secretary explicit books are in the elementary schools so these are only secondary that we're talking about and they use nationally recognized lists to uh create a diverse group of books and we should continue to have that list available to all of our students and if there are a small percentage which we have shown that there is a very small percentage of parents who think that those books are sexually explicit enough that they don't want their kids to read then they should be able to choose not to read those but they should be available for the General Public thank you Jesse Humphrey do you have any comments and I'm trustee first of all and trying to stick to this policy I
087would like to just toss out there that we do the list the court voices first on one policy and then a second policy for the procurement to speed things along they have two separates babes if you will and I don't know if others would be in favor of that and splitting this into games because I think that we could spend a whole lot of time talking about the procurement policy where we don't move ahead with what in my mind the number one goal is and that's to give parents the right to choose that's to be transparent with what's in our library according to the definition that we've put out there I've had several parents reach out to me before I was a board member and since being a board member saying I don't know what
088to put down on the form okay so the form is gone we've gone electronic I've had Parents reach out saying I have room for four books I have a hundred books I want to put on this form what do I do I've had a High School parent say if I went to My Librarian to have this conversation and they were not helpful they told me they didn't know what I should be opting out on which is why I'm in favor of a definition it will give the librarian a starting point to go by if a parent should come in and ask I don't think this policy puts a book in a closet I don't think it takes what's on the Shelf of the shop please correct me if I'm wrong thank you for the Lord
089great thank you chairman I do have a question despair by comment um for trustee Claussen if I may so I just want to understand what you were um I don't know the right word but so when you mentioned that there'd be so there's this list the identified list that parents are going to put a book on is your are you suggesting that once a book's on that list it's not always on that list will we go through and if a book doesn't actually meet the definition then that can be removed from the identified list is that kind of what you're suggesting yes it's it you know it was just an idea I wanted to throw out there it got me thinking when I read it in the the pulp the draft policy that um not
090all of us judge a book the same way right we all have different ideas on what is appropriated or sexual content or what have you thank you Dr Hinkle for calling me a liar earlier I appreciate that um and interrupting me just now but I will um I will say that it occurred to me that in thinking through this and trying to um provide the best policy we can it occurred to me now that um we may have parents that put we had a young man say to Kill Mockingbird he loved that book I loved that book I read it to my family last summer um but it does have a sub theme called of rape in it it doesn't have sexually explicit content in it um but someone might say oh my gosh it
091has rape in it so it's going on the list I nominated um I think it might be worthwhile for those instances for our Librarians to judge it next to the definition we come up with as a district and and then determine a recommendation for hey I don't think this supplies and then the board finally could make the final comment so we're accountable to our public um just an idea it doesn't have to look like that it was just a it was just a way I thought we could move forward so our list doesn't have 500 000 books on it because I think and I have no idea but I think that we're talking about a small amount of books that have this level of sexually explicit content in them and I do believe and I
092thought trustee Smith made this point really well last meeting that you don't have to read a book from cover to cover to go to the passage where there might be sexually explicit content and determine according to our definition if that beats the bill fits the bill again the books we have we're not taking them off the shelves or hiding them from access to anyone who wants to read them it's not about my opinion over your opinion it's not about that it's about giving parents the choice and the knowledge to decide if their child is ready for a book like that so it was just a thought and I wanted to throw it out there for the board to consider when kind of going off that I when I first read this um I I like
093the four options so I thank you for finding something that kind of meets in the Middle where every parent has to opt-in or opt out it's neither or um so thank you for doing the hard work to figure that out um I also was a little iffy on the identified list so I'm like if we're gonna have like Chrissy Clausen said all these parents just submitting book after book after book after book who draws the line and so I think I guess my question is that identified lists that we're gonna have how often is that going to be sifted through is the book gonna be um like somewhat looked at like so say someone says oh hey this page this book has um sexually explicit content on page nine and ten is that book is
094someone gonna go look at that book page nine and ten and see if that's the case before it goes on or is it because it is automatically mentioned oh it goes on the list kind of like The Kill Mockingbird comment does that make sense um Mr chair uh president so how um we had to Envision the process working was that parents could nominate books and what we um you know kind of our operating assumption is that there may be several books um that are nominated early on in this process so um that list because we you know staff it takes even if it's it's a matter of confirming whether or not there's sexually explicit material that meets this definition and doesn't is a part of curriculum and isn't like you know an AP or IB
095um required reading um because we've kind of accepted those out of that list um that takes some amount of time what that how much time I I don't know um but we assume that there's some amount of time that that's going to take and so in order to provide parents an option that they can act on um quickly instead of waiting for uh the district to be able to get through a large list um we said all right we'll take this list of books that have been nominated as potentially containing sexually explicit and you can opt your child your student out of of that nomination list um and maybe it's not even that you know it has to meet the definition of that somebody thinks that it makes that definition that they would want to
096opt their child out of and then we have the identified list which is we have the District staff has looked at it they have identified that this does go beyond a mere um illusion or a word or phrase and meets that definition of sexually explicit and then at that point that would be added to the list of identified sexually explicit books um so that's kind of how the process when we talked about it internally what we envision um so that again it takes a while and I don't have a timeline because I we haven't pulled a book to say all right like how long would it take us what's our checklist how are we going to go through this process to make sure that we're doing this um you know equitably and fairly in in
097all cases so I don't know what that timeline looks like but what the concern that we heard was that um you know if we don't want to wait a long period of time to give parents the option and so if we use that nomination process that will allows them to say that anybody thinks that a book is sexually explicit I don't want my child to read it um uh earlier trustee Edgerton had brought up the point that um there may be books that are are identified or nominated through that process that um you know somebody's abusing the system and nominating books that clearly don't meet the definition um parents will still have that ability and and my response earlier this afternoon trustee ederson wasn't complete because I think that you could still do that within
098what the four existing ones that we have because we do have um the option and of an identified list choice so if a parent can look at all right these are the books that have been nominated I know that I don't mind if my child reads To Kill a Mockingbird so I'm not going to add that one to the list I'm not sure about these ones but rather than you know spend time looking through and finding that out I'm comfortable leaving those on a list that I'm not okay with my student reading does that make sense yeah it does okay yep thank you for the clarification because thank you chairman Bond I've got my thoughts a little bit more together now and I um had a few um I think responses to what some of
099my colleagues have said but a few other thoughts that I um wanted to share the first thing I want to address um is the number of parents who have chosen the opt-out online I am one of those parents who did not and the reason I did not is because it was too difficult I have now just one high schooler last year two high schoolers but in the spring as I went to complete the form for my freshman level daughter um I wanted to opt her out of materials that would be sexually explicit so I clicked on the form and it came up and I started filling it out and I got to the point where I had to actually identify all of the titles I did not want her to read there was no way
100to just put in sexually explicit content or stuff that has graphic descriptions of sexual acts I couldn't use terminology like that I had to actually list books or authors um and I gave up because the list is 2 too long to put in that tiny little space so I gave up so I am not on the 18 or the 43 or whatever the number is up to now of parents who would like to opt their children out but I'm guessing as a board member I probably have maybe even a more vested interest in in being one of those numbers and I'm I'm not there and I'm not there only because it was very difficult so I appreciate that we're moving to a different process um but I just want to debunk a little bit that
101only 18 parents care that's not true there are those of us that care that just could not complete that form because it's not it's not set up to be a usable form for parents that have concerns that maybe don't have time to list 50 books or whatever the number is um anyway so I'll start with that I um with with the four Choice choices that um have been developed I think that's a great start um as I read through that list though our identified list Choice um appears that it would be the third option listed I'd really love to see that moved up to number one or number two the number one choice that we have here is the open Choice access where a parent could just say you know what I don't care what
102they read just put it all out there they can check out anything they want that's fine but then the number two choice is parent limited choice where I'm specifically having to list out all those things that I did not take the time to do on the opt-out form that's really cumbersome and I don't think a lot of parents are going to choose that unless they just don't you know they have one author they hate then maybe they'll choose that but the identified list choice where it would include books who that have been identified as meeting that sexually explicit definition but perhaps if a parent would like also books that have been tagged for review I believe that that will be a more appealing option to the parents like me who do not want their children
103accessing those kind of materials in our school libraries so I'd love to see that identified list Choice be number one or number two and not bogged down under the choice I mean I've just like I said I have a pretty vested interest in you know I mean I I should be one of the 18 or the 19 or the 44 that have opted out and I'm not but I um you know because I would love to see us move to a point where we have um this definition of sexually explicit and a way for parents to easily opt out of those um I I probably would gloss over a parent limited Choice by the time I got to identified less choice I'd click it but I would be spinning so I think we need to
104make this as easy as possible I'd move that to number one or number two I do agree with trustee Claussen that perhaps something could be more specific with what we're calling that instead of identified list maybe books identified as sexually explicit or being reviewed is that um the other thing I um the procurement um I I'm grateful you added this in that was one of the things we noted was missing when we looked at this the last time um I do agree with trustee Edgerton perhaps um we need to spend a little bit more time with that um so maybe that becomes a different policy discussion um and then my last um right um is with the books that we are procuring if we are not using our definition of sexually explicit as a filter
105when we're procuring those because I do agree trusty Ashby I think you were the one that said you know some some kids and some families may want their children to have access to those books so if we're still procuring them um it could take a while for those books to sit on the Shelf before somebody Flags them if parents are not aware of what we're approaching so we've had discussions before about actually publishing lists um as books as the book lists are being done by the Librarians that that list is available online on the main website with the big header like some of the other things so that I as a parent of a 15 year old could say oh let's see what they're going to buy this year and I could click on that
106and then I could be very proactive in saying hey let me add to my my list of books so I would um I don't see that in here but I would really urge the district to do that as a courtesy for parents who are concerned about what their children are exposed to um thank you Mr chair trustee Smith I appreciate your comments um I will point out and it's it's a little bit very down of the um bottom with the opportunity for parent Guardian review um we have a sentence in there so that so that parents are aware of new material that will be available in their students Library the district will regularly publish a separate list of newly procured Library materials um it's a little bit uh not as specific as timing wise because
107um through this project we've learned um different Librarians order their books on different timelines um and so if we say you know specifically like once a year or once a quarter some might not be ordering them on the same so you might not get the same type of update so we've left that a little bit intentionally big to kind of flesh out a little bit more in that administrative regulation um but again we do we do recognize that um you know if it's just buried in a list of here's our list of all the books that are in our facility or in our libraries um it might be it's more difficult to sort through that if we don't flag it and so we do intend to publish um regularly um leaving that a little bit
108open in policy so that it can be firmed up in administrative regulation for how often and when um when when you're purchasing um you know the East High School library here's the list of new books that are purchased and um how we notify parents about that um we've also been discussing um is that a remind message is that another um you know communication from the district specifically related to that so that parents are aware and aren't having to go check um the website every couple weeks to see if books have been on there so we should maybe Define regularly then because that could be once every five years I mean it's a three day and I trust that we would not take advantage of that but um I'd love to see that be very specific
109and hear how we're going to do that what else I would just like to kind of take take time to first of all say that I appreciate the having the four options um this is the intent of the policies who could have those as one two three four or could we put in the policy just as bullets and then later on WE necessarily could decide which ones go where um Mr share absolutely um you know that it's it's numbered at this point because it was in the definition section and when I was using word that's how how it came up and and in my mind it was sort of the here's one extreme of the access so you have open access and then one extreme of the access where you have no access and then
110the two middle choices um so it was just you know it was it it wasn't uh meant to to rank Choice those it was just here's the scale of options and here's where they would fall but we can certainly take out the numbering completely um order that however so that there's not any um confusion on that part I think probably the two that would be used at least I believe you said the one where no access at all and then the one you have the identified list um so the other two are going to be probably the most ones that are chosen and I think I would like to see the one that's newest which is the one having the list option we have a list as the First Choice and then the second choice
111be the other one I want those two is first and I don't think we want them ranked at all with any number at all we just put them across with a radio button with definition underneath it or something would probably be the the best way I don't want to tell somebody how to write a program to do that I'm not into that so I'll leave that to the programmers that are going to be doing this but this kind of an idea that no ranking to them no numbers on them just bullets and the identification for what each list is and I like the fact that everybody's now going to have to choose I mean before um if if you didn't want something you had to go and then do this now everybody when they register
112is going to have to choose but I think that's the more that's more fair to everybody in the way we're doing this second thing I want to do is I heard a lot of people talk about the fact they want to separate the procurement from the first part of this is that the consensus of the board now that that's why we should go forward for anybody objects to that you want to object to that procurement of books as part of the library process Library policy so it should be part of the library balance well it's going to be in the library policy it'll just be a slightly different section and we want to try to move forward but I mean I've heard from the public and several people that they're frustrated one how quickly this
113thing moved why don't we get this done well if we can get this part moving and work some more on procurement I think that's going to move the process forward a little more quickly so I would like to see it then it's going to be there we're going to get it there it'll be in the same policy it may be a little section right below it so it as far as I'm concerned is just as important in fact we could even once we get it done put it at the top since you know it doesn't really matter to me where it is but it'll be in there it'll be in the library policy it's just as important as the other part and maybe in some people find even more important but we got so many
114volumes already that uh that's actually going to be probably the more important part is what we already have but the fact that they're going to be on the website um hopefully in a timely manner um is what I think everybody wants so yeah I think probably at least 300 six people I think that we should do it separately so let's let's so is there anything else you need to know as far as direction from us says to go forward with this um no Mr chair thank you uh board members I appreciate your comments we'll try to um address those to the extent that we can and get that out into the policy advisory committee um and and start getting their input as well into into the policy thank you for your work um Mr chair
115if I if I may just briefly as I am thinking about policy I do want you the board to be aware that we um we do have other policies that will likely be coming um uh we have had a request um on the HR side um and looking at some language in that policy that will be um coming soon in the fall as well I want you to all to be aware that there are changes coming to uh Title IX federally um the U.S Department of Education has put out um new rules on their end um those are through the public comment process and they're working um their inclusion of their public comments into that um the deadline had been made for them to get those new rules out if they've moved that to October
116um but that's those will be coming they will require some tweaks to our Title IX process um some some a little bit more significant than others but um we'll hopefully have have better direction from the U.S department of Ed in October but I would anticipate that those will be needed those will need to be moved pretty quickly in order for us to keep in compliance with Title IX so those are things that are upcoming um and uh as well there are a couple um uh students attendance and discipline uh areas that that we're looking at um uh some in response to legislative changes some some in response to processes that we've been um evaluating throughout this past school year so um there are more to come hopefully here not as extensive and and time consuming
117as this one though they they may be but um those are on the horizon and we intend to um start moving forward um now that we've kind of got a good direction I think um got a starting point to put this Library policy through the policy advisory and get that that going we'll we'll come back um in the fall with those policy changes as well and I appreciate you bringing those things people have said there's more focusing so much so this we're not doing other things we are doing on your business here as important so um somebody had requested a break earlier but I hate to keep the ROTC people and the other people that hear us guess waiting so let's go ahead and finish some reports hopefully they'll go quickly and then we'll take
118a break that's great Mr chairman I would like to invite Mr Fraley Dr Ravine and Mr Brinkman up for a quick update on our elementary Sports they just really wanted an emergency developers oh we were switching I would like to invite you Mr Fraley um with uh our new principal Carrie Gentry and our amazing JROTC um family over there waiting patiently standing thank you very much come on over uh so we can provide an update on our exciting South High School army JROTC program I want to take a minute as you're getting started to just say thank you to the South uh Triad community that met with us met with me they did an incredible job to students and staff did an incred and parents did an incredible job sharing their thoughts on where they'd
119like to see the South Triad move and I just want to take the time publicly to honor the fact that they put an incredible amount of work in thank you chairman bowling Board of Trustees Dr Crespo thank you so much for having me come present some of the hard work that we've been doing around ROTC and trying to get a program at South I'm Miss Gentry the new principal um and I'm excited to share with you some of our journey as we have been moving forward through this process so first what I'd like to share with you is um this Mission isn't just a South High Mission it's mostly our parents Mission they came to us um somewhere in March really requesting um ROTC to be implemented to South High School and they presented that
120information to the administration and to students and then to Dr Crespo Crespo and some of the things that they focused on was student Readiness and Community engagement part of that was to increase our post-secondary Readiness and enhancement to enhance our curricular activities ROTC comes with a bucket of extracurricular activities as well as a great leadership program that they teach inside of the school to our students and so we were really excited to take that mission on and increase our leadership at South High School additionally what they do is they embed themselves into a school and into a community by just sharing all the leadership qualities that they have with their Community whether it's parades or football games or any kind of sport events they're always there helping out and we really appreciate that program and
121want to adopt that into South High School the other thing that we're really um excited about is um honoring our Pathways and increasing our military Readiness at South High School we've got a straight a really strong um Pathway to College and Career Readiness and now we want to really enhance our military readiness the other thing that we're really excited about is our Partnerships that we formed along the way through this process we're really excited to have Central High School here today as our Mentor they've really helped us with Lieutenant Colonel Johnson and sergeant major Roger Harder They have been a great Advocate to this program they've helped us fill out applications they've really um helped with interviewing and Hiring Our members now as our staff and so we really wanted to just say thank you
122so much because that has really helped our program Thrive and grow currently for this school year additionally through this process we wanted to thank our parents because of this process we usually had about five to Fifteen parents and now we have about 50 to more attending our parent advisory including students now so this program has really helped Thrive our community here at South High School one of the goals for um Laramie County School District in general is to increase I guess the Partnerships that we have with the military to increase over I don't know 300 students um in this program across our district and so that's at all three different high schools and we're really excited at South High School to be part of that partnership and help you guys increase your your mission as
123far increasing military Readiness the other thing that we're really um passionate about is building our citizenship at South High School part of ROTC is that leadership program but also the citizenship piece and we feel that ROTC is the perfect um Avenue to do that so as far as that goes our goals are to build that program from the ground up build Partnerships that are already there and then really grow the program as fast as we possibly can one of the other great things about ROTC and just activities in general is it's common knowledge that students who are engaged in high school and activities extracurriculars Sports their graduation rate increases and as you know at South High School we're always trying to increase our graduation rates and we feel this is just one extra step in
124that process by getting our kids um involved and then also our community seeing our kids involved in a more frequent basis through ROTC we think that that could help benefit our program if you're looking at the chart above you can see that incrementally each year your graduation rate increases as students are engaged in activities or Athletics and ROTC comes with so many different programs I'm going to ask these individuals at the end of this presentation to kind of share some of those extracurriculars that they do because I cannot even explain half of them but there there's a ton of them so I was talking with the students today in the parking lot and they had a wealth of information to share and they're top-notch Cadets so I I have a full so full uh respect
125for all these individuals that are standing in your room today I'm going to send this over to Mr Fraley he's really been part of the budgeting committee he's helped us um with filling out applications and he knows more about the budget and the financing as far as that goes for the district thank you Carrie our budgeting and funding when I first looked at this in comparison to other schools I looked at uh programs across our district such as International Baccalaureate advanced placement courses and career and tech ed courses at each of our schools and something was missing and that was an opportunity for students at South High and so we made a commitment to allocate monies from General and Airsoft funds to get approved and and hopefully the department Department of Defense to provide funding
126in either between one to two years we're hoping um in in talking with um the Department of Defense and U.S army Communications to help supplement that through salaries South High in in historical [Music] applications has been on the list to be approved um for quite some time and uh so we wanted to move forward uh through an approach called an ndcc approach and uh that's through our national Department of uh defense um and we have one of two courses that we could take um an approval of a South High Army Junior ROTC program to sustain salaries and decrease decreased costs through one that they fund or one through an ndcc program that we fund partially so we're looking at funds right now to assist to sustain this um in hopes uh for many years to
127come and once we grow this program we know that and the opportunities that that students will have through this that it'll be quite a celebration for these students while we grow this program good hi Paul I forgot I had two slides so our um our breakdown of costs to the school as well as our district are on this slide as you can see um I've included not only startup costs but also sustainment costs for the years to come the bulk of those are in uh salaries for our teaching staff much like we expend through IB AP and C CTE coursework this is uh relevant to that in that we provide opportunities for students in those courses as well as we do for ROTC um we do not have to begin with a Marksmanship um a
128piece of that which these gentlemen can speak to later if you do have questions with that but it is always the Highlight to pursue that endeavor uh uniforms we are able to supply Cadet and students on a reoccurring cost annually much like we do with banned uniforms for uh for marching band and we can take a look at uh offsetting some of that costs startup this year through Esser funding as well as general funds as as well as the school funds and so as you can see a breakdown of school funds is about 27 000 or District funds uh majority for stopping for next year are around 200 000 for salaries and insurance thank you excuse me so the last thing that we would like to mention is we currently have 40 students enrolled in
129the program um and that's before registration has even begun as far as getting the kickoff going we're also going to be promoting and sending packets home to parents so that they are more informed that we are getting the program and then on registration night and day we're going to have um our ROTC instructors be present as well so that they can give more information to parents and families and students as they're entering through the registration process so I would really like to take the time to invite um my ROTC instructors up here from Central and now we also have our own ROTC instructor so we're excited about that and then they have brought along some students so if you have any questions or concerns or they would like to share a little bit about their
130program mostly um a little bit about the curriculum or extracurricular activities and I wanted to invite them up if possible this is our new um ROTC instructor Mr Icebar or chief warrant officer Icebar I've got to get better with the commands but thank you good evening I'm Chief Warrant Officer three eyesbart uh retired from the Army 26 years be starting my 12th year as a junior ROTC instructor this year uh very well versed in the program do all the coaching teaching uh procuring of uniforms as well we also just hired our NCO it's our major Willis he's here as well and so one thing that we wanted to share or give you a chance is if you had any questions about classroom instruction activities extracurriculars parent involvement now is the time because we have our
131their present but first I'd like you to if you're here to please stand up in the um in the audience we would love to give you a round of applause but any of you like to speak real quick hi I'm Cadet uh Man Star major Matthew Wallace I am uh second command or income second command of the Battalion and uh I'll tell you some guys about or have questions for about JROTC um I this is I'm going into my fourth year of JROTC and uh I would say that I keep going because you know make a bond with these other Cadets you know some of them are like some of my best friends you know I've ever had we all want to join the military afterwards and all that stuff and you know I I
132find that really awesome and uh I really appreciate it's our major harder and Colonel Johnson they've pushed me they inspired me they've made me a better person so yeah what are some things you've done extracurricularly with the ROTC and has that been harder because you had to go to East uh I would say color guard and Raiders and drill team I have actually done all three and uh Color Guard we like to uh do for footballs and basketballs and a bunch of other stuff but we resent the flag and so we have to March out and present the flag and do the national anthem and then we March out I think that's really awesome um I would say the Raiders is our athletic team or we all go out for a workout and compete with
133other schools like running push-ups sit-ups pull-ups all that stuff and yeah your team is where you're marching and uh doing other stuff with schools competing with that as well so yeah so is that more difficult to save those because you were you had to go to East or yeah I'm sorry you're a central student do we have anybody here that was from South that was participating in the East program thank you is there anybody else the students want to speak they're like nope and that's fine thanks for being here today oh here okay hi um I am the second Lieutenant Cadet Kane rdauss I am the captain of the Raiders team and I am I'm loving it I love Jared to see so much yeah the environment is so comforting it's like if I have
134something going on in school that I'm really not enjoying at all I can come to Jared to see and I can meet tons of people that just give me the best inspiration um freshman year I wasn't really the smartest or that talkative right now uh I would start with my words constantly and never speak but it's our major in Colonel got that all out of me they gave me the confidence I need to be successful in life uh um my life right now is amazing I love staying confident and it's the best thing in the world I love jersey with everything in my heart I love the Raiders team I love honor guard I love color guard and drill is the best Joe you learn to listen very well you learn the basics of everything
135during your school year uh freshman year uh I didn't know what a left face and right face were and I felt weird about it I don't think you guys know what that is either like but it's it brings a lot of Hope of knowing other things like if I were to say get a job and everything Jared to see helps with that freshman year they taught me how to take an interview like everything are you speak you look him directly eyes don't stutter it's all you have to do don't say um a million times because then they'll kind of doubt you for a little bit but but I love jrc with everything are you got any questions for me yes thank you so much for being here can you tell me how many Cadets are
136on your men's your women's and your combined drone teams oh my gosh in the law variety um we're all we're all mixed together it's it's a good combination it's not like just all mail or just all female in every category I have females and Raiders that I see so much driving them I love it I drill team our commanders are the woman the woman are the one commanding me I don't I'm not the commander for drill team I'm getting oh they give me all the instructions um we all are equal that's how we take it there's no there's nothing bad in it we're all equal so when you go to drill Meeks do you not have separate nope we are not separate never will be thank you I want to say thank you to the
137central staff and to their students for coming and sharing some of their ROTC program because it only um helps us look towards the future because we know that we're going to be able to build something just as great so we're excited about that um thank you chairman Bolin and Board of Trustees and Dr Crespo for this opportunity do you have any other questions before we leave yes we have one more question more of a comment two more I'm sorry more of a comment sorry thank you chairman uh more of a comment than um than a question I just want to thank you oh my gosh I'm so excited as a former as a veteran of the U.S Navy I think um the Jr JROTC program is fabulous and I um happen to have personal experience
138my son-in-law is now active duty Air Force about to train on the A-10 in Tucson um and was part of JROTC um in Cheyenne here at Central for many years and it was a fabulous experience it helped him get through college um he I've seen him grow from the time he was 17 when he started dating my daughter and it's an incredible program and I am so proud that we have a second one at South that's going to even train more people so it's an amazing opportunity I hope as many people take that opportunity as possible because it really is an incredible learning and growing opportunity thank you trustee Hinkle um I have some questions but I'd like to start I'm to the to the students and to the the staff um thank you for
139your service kids thank you for your I'm sorry young adults thank you for your desire to learn about serving and hopefully you will continue down that path After High School and and and step into a role to serve our country I am um the proud daughter I was a military brat my dad was a retired Air Force officer my brother's a retired Air Force officer um I have a son who did nothing with military other than loving it who's now at the Naval Academy I have a second son who went through the JROTC program at East um who just started at West Point this summer so they both will be serving as officers after their time at the Academy so I the military and the JROTC programs are very very near and dear to my
140heart um and I love what we're instilling and training in our young people um so all that to say I do have some questions I actually have a few concerns and I just want to flesh this out because I I know that I'm I'm not the only one with some of these questions and concerns um so I was hoping if we could just have a conversation about it because I I start by saying I love everything about the JROTC programs and what what they're doing um as I mentioned my son was in the East program um he did take a year off but he completed three years there um and and really grew and loved it um the South program obviously was integrated with the East and all under one JROTC program um and I
141I think it's critical that we move to having a program at South however um I've done some digging and learned some about numbers and I'm really actually quite concerned about the future of JROTC at both east and south if we split those programs because we don't have the numbers to sustain either one um with the Air Force ROTC programs we're required to have a hundred students enrolled in that program they will do and I don't know if it's called an audit they will do an assessment in October of each year of every chapter we actually have one of the longest standing JROTC programs at East for the Air Force I think um is it since 1971 or 1973 um over 50 years in in a very you know highly recognized chapter Nationwide um by starting
142a chapter a separate chapter itself and removing those 30 to 40 kids we don't have a hundred kids at East to maintain that program so by October 1st I believe it may be October 10th um of every year those programs are evaluated if a program does not have a hundred Cadets participating it will be put on probation and then toward the end of the school year that's reassessed and if that school and that chapter during that time has not brought their numbers up to 100 they stand to lose their program it's just in that one year's time if they don't get their numbers to a hundred that program goes away so for it East if we're at 70 or 80 kids if they don't hit that 100 Mark by the end of the coming school
143year our chapter that we've had for over 50 years is gone with the ndcc it is actually a private organization I know they work in concert with the U.S army but it is a private organization that's funded by the school districts the curriculum I believe is provided by the um by the Army but um I mean you have a little Grace in those first three years so by the end of the third year though if the South program does not have a hundred students enrolled they also will lose that chapter and for us to actually get a true ROTC program through the U.S army my understanding is that an existing program an existing JROTC program with the US Army somewhere in the United States has to dissolve before they'll actually award another one that I
144could be wrong on that that one piece but I am this was you know this was I I love it for students I please know I love it for our students I wish every child could experience what my son experienced through ROTC in high school what's your what's your your son-in-law um I mean it's it's just fabulous but within three years if we don't have numbers at both of those schools that at least 100 Kids participating both programs go away we will not have ROTC at East or at South and I I think that's a huge risk and I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I mean it's it's great to offer it but there is potentially an enormous cost by doing that right now and I um my other I you know just quick question um
145we have kids who have been Cadets well is that what they're called and the Air Force ROTC we have Cadets who have possibly been attending the program at East for the last two to three years who maybe have some very solid relationships there and I'm wondering if they wanted to stay with the East program through graduation because that's where their Foundation has been that's where they're I mean they really build incredible bonds with with their peers will they be allowed to to stay at East to finish up just because that's that's been where they're at anyway so some concerns in that specific question but thank you so much trustee Smith for your concerns and your questions so to address the first one I know that that was something that was considered when we were proposing
146this program and what has new in this last year is that now um all ROTC programs can start advocating and um recruiting at the middle school level as well and I know that I've been speaking with um the East program and that's what their plans is to do in the future is to start drawing from some of their carry program and actually building within their own Triad and I think South as once we get started that's one of our goals as well with our new instructors and so we're able to help at least build that program within the different School Triads um additionally when we were moving forward to answer your second question what we did was we spoke with every single one of the cadets that we currently had we asked them if they
147would like to keep going to East or they would like to go to South and try the new program um most almost all said yes and then Additionally the they said yes mostly because they don't lose their rank in those programs it's years served no matter which branch that you are whether it's army or Marines or you know Air Force and so once they knew that information they really did want to stay at their home school and build that program there because I think they're going to take some pride and ownership in having it at South right now um for example we're losing a lot of numbers I I understand that you're concerned about numbers but at South High School numbers we're losing ROTC at a fast rate because they are sometimes going to East
148our freshman numbers are very much um robust when they're enrolling into the program we'll have 30 to 40 students who are very interested in the program but as a freshman you can only imagine that that's really scary to go start a high school and then get on a bus and then go to a new high school and build all these new relationships and so we start trickling down anywhere from ten to five students actually stay in the program mostly because of all those transition processes and so we're finding that a lot of the students are really interested in staying in the program itself through those conversations and concerns of parents trustee chairman trustee Smith there was another and I I do think that we have our staff that would be more than happy to come
149up and share some information we're very lucky um that although in other cases the branches perhaps have some healthy rivalry uh in the district that isn't the case we first heard from the um South families and had requested um a process initially so that the East staff would be able to attend to the ROTC program at South leaving it as an Air Force program so that the students would be traveling less and the numbers would remain um static so that the impact wouldn't we wouldn't have to explore all of these options at that time um that was not something that was of interest to the program and because they all have a great um relationship Across The District central was able to say yep we absolutely can help and provide support in that action so
150just for information the original conversation was related specifically to east's program and having them the instructors instead of the kids travel and that was not something that fit the need at the moment and our partners in the Army ROTC JROTC stepped up and said that they'd be willing to expand that program and we had already done the preliminary work by multiple years applying for programming so that we could have individual programs at each building and then feel free because I know you have a ton of information if it's uh the will of the chair to invite them up yes please I'm sorry major Warner good evening um I've been with Central I'm going on my fifth year and I can tell you um and I know Colonel Johnson from East is over here my Colonel
151he's got 10 years we have a 10 of the school probably about 11. and we're at 1300. and it's just you're always recruiting and you're always retaining and so I mean I don't know how many people have the East I think East got like 1400 kids so we we start off every year between 1 35 and 145 of kids in the program and we end the year with at least 110 to so it's very feasible ma'am I mean we're coming from a program we are the oldest in the nation and we have to work hard to keep our kids and we gotta work hard to recruit and my kids will tell you that I should say our kids sorry sir I say that all the time our kids would tell you that they're always recruiting
152they're bringing if they like it their friends will like it and so they're always trying to be part of something bigger than themselves and that's what we teach them and they sell that and they portray it and so we have kids that hang out in our area that aren't even in ROTC they're like Roadies they're there all the time so I I think personally I think it's feasible you just got to put a little work into it I mean it's not going to happen overnight man and the air I'm somebody if I'm wrong sir you got three years right once you go on probation you still got three years yeah okay well um that's how it is for the Army side and they have three years to get their hundred which we've already talked with
153both the starting major and the chief and they feel very comfortable making those numbers I mean I think the interest at South is pretty high just from my time over there you know with with the staff there around any questions from the senior Army instructory Central excuse me it is true 100 is the magic number that's a initial enrollment but you can go down as low as 50. but I'll tell you you have your programs burning out if you go down to 50. but there are some Marine rotc's that only keep a few good men and women and they they purposely Drive their numbers down and only let certain men so it's a it's a philosophy that uh an instructor comes in and instructor team comes in and and puts their armor on it we
154saw that we were losing uh the largest gap that we're losing was in our junior class we tracked I did the senior ROTC program as an active duty officer at Iowa State you must track your numbers very close and I track them very close every year in um by your group and I was losing Juniors so I proposed to the district that rotc's has such a flexible program could we take some people out of the health Health courses and let me teach a health course because our curriculum over four years is the same as the health mandatory health class so now my juniors don't have to take a health class with them they can stay in ROTC instead of having to take another course so there's creative ways that we could do and I did
155go to Mr George and say which I can do social studies I can do uh geography I can do Health the curriculum is such that you can teach your core classes and then teach additional classes on top of that and so I went to Mr George and asked him I said where would you like me to take the weight off your teachers and he said in the house so I put that together I gave it to Dr Newton Dr Newton reviewed it along with the health department indeed and they granted a granted a health course here and and Miss Gentry is working on the same thing type of concept with or ROTC so when you can start with 100 and go down to 50 but I I can't work with 50. I have that 50
156freshmen 50 freshmen that's that's a pro that's the magic number starting with 50 freshmen and then you have your attrition going down any questions okay hello my name is Lieutenant Colonel Johnson I run the program at East I wasn't planning on talking tonight but since we were talking about the program I I thought I'd come up there's some differences in the program I mean this is an Air Force Town run the Air Force unit for the Air Force October 10th is the Super Bowl you have to have 100 kids okay and then I they check again on February 10th but they really don't care you can drop down and as long as your numbers are hitting there and usually from South I would get 35 uh around 35 uh students to start and sometimes more
157and then uh the key is is that October 10th day because it used to be three years for the Air Force and I think it's still this feeling but now in may they come back what's your plan and by the following October 10th if you're not up to 100 you're shut down that following May so there's no playing around with the numbers they are what they are so the numbers that we have you know with with South we were looking at 35 45 kids coming in right now today at East we're sitting at 71. now we're talking about recruiting understand that but I wanted I want the record to show nobody asked me what the impact was going to be okay nobody told me this was happening until I found out from a student in
158April time frame and then I talked to Mr Thompson you know again the mention was why don't you guys come over here and teach I heard Dr Crespo say that in the regulations from the Air Force we were doing it back in the early 2000s we were going over to South we got inspected they came over they showed you can't have a satellite unit they have to come to you your unit has to have classes where the principal in charge of your unit resides that's East High School so we thought that was taken care of it wasn't you know and and Mr Thompson I had multiple discussions on that so it wasn't that we were not friendly to go over there and to teach the classes we were by law not allowed to do so
159so now we're all going to be scrambling and I do have concerns I think they have three years to get it going but based on the numbers they've provided East over the years you know a lot of let's let's increase it by 20 or 30 percent it's going to be a long haul for them I'm sitting at 71 kids right now you're talking 50 years of history and I can go recruit as as good as as anybody I've already talked to the scary principal but I'm scrambling because I didn't know this was happening until April you know if we could have had a Year's notice absolutely I'd have some pamphlets we'd go over spin some rifles we get to carry kids coming you know and if I got enough time we'll get it I have
160a great relationship with the central guys but the way this flushed out not good business that's all I gotta say I'd like to say thank you for hosting the South so everybody wouldn't have had a program for the last few years so and there must have been like at least 35 years where you did it without the stuff did so and probably a little bit bigger school at that point but um I'm confident that we probably get there I hope because I think each School the nerves have their own son any other questions anybody has their comments okay is that all your presentation thank you chairman bowling all right thank you for all of you coming in and for your serving and I hope it's good here for everybody ROTC I am going to take
161a break at this point we're going to take about a 10 minute break so everybody can go out they've been up here for about a while already so we'll come back in about 10 minutes senators foreign thank you well yes the whole program hey that's the process right yeah but yeah I can do it yes that's that's he was a boy or something and it's possible in my college and I don't know a secret one because um experience is um that's cute um disease thank you I'm like we're going to be back in session now and uh I think we have some more reports uh so I just want to say trustees and um audience thank you so much for your patience because I know that we're on a long long long long board meeting
162at this point and we're all in the first section so I do just want to say thank you and then invite Mr Fraley Dr Ravine um and Mr Brinkman on up to discuss um and if you don't have to talk you can just be moral support um our exciting uh Elementary athletic redesign chairman Boland trustees Dr Crespo thank you we're the boring section today so you can see I kind of ran everybody out already you never know I I don't know question we'll see how it goes I'm gonna ask questions later and exhibit a back here Mr Fraley will take care of all questions on that side if I can't answer it um but thank you we're excited we're ready to launch um Elementary Sports 2.0 with kind of a different focus and definitely elevating
163our lcsd1 students in their future and as we look forward to moving into the athletic realm to support our kids as they continue to grow through our other activity programs we've heard tonight a lot about the support and kids being inactive and how they stay in their graduation stuff goes up and moves forward so kind of how this process worked or excuse me going back to the Strategic plan there's three areas that we focused on as a committee the first was when the student Readiness the implementation of a detailed Vision high quality and engaging instruction so the big difference already from where we had Elementary Sports 1.0 and 2.0 is we have a curriculum design and so coaches will be provided and I'll show you some examples of what that looks like and so all
164of our coaches is all of our students will have equal opportunity the same type of instruction the second one is community engagement and Dr rabine is our expert in partnering with our community members and they've been working she's been working greatly with the boys and girls club to try to get some things going through their pulling theirs as the PE coordinator in the Meadowlark principal I'm working with the Beast program to help support our students at Meadowlark and moving forward with that we're working on some other businesses across the district um to help us out with some support and then our healthy environment trying to come up with an intellectual physical mental and social emotional growth of each student and over the last two years we've done a program called healthy folks that we ran
165after school and a number of 11 of our elementary schools this program this curriculum of Elementary Sports 2.0 will be incorporating some of those skills and activities that we've done in that so we're kind of meshing those together and then again as the coordinator I'm also on the state board for PE and health so we also have that support from the University of Wyoming and other agencies across the stage so it is we developed a committee we asked for some volunteers you'll see up here there's a whole variety of individuals from the admin building to different principals to different people from outside agencies coming and talking and kind of started looking at square one where we started and I think my timeline comes up here so that when we looked at it the you know
166I'll get the timeline here in a second Mr Fraley deleted my PowerPoint before I came so we had to make some last minute adjustments um but our purpose of this was to engage students in after school and development Sports specific skills sportsmanship and character building established Innovative student-centered Community Partnerships again those those three strategic plans and then promote the healthy environments so again those three just kind of in a different word and a phrase that the committee came up with so we did we started it the winter months looking at how we could Define that purpose we just talked about the committee was talked we went through some things we also started Unified sports training we've heard a lot of that with unified PE and Unified sports there are two separate entities but they kind
167of have the same purpose and we're currently working on both of those so I'll explain how that Unified sports is going to the elementary level in the spring we started working with some Partnerships with some different stakeholders we brought we started with the boys and girls club because they're interested in being in the South Triad then the bees we've talked to a few like YMCA and the city and those are ongoing conversations and then this summer we were able to get a couple of PE folks and myself and miss rabine and Mr Fraley start working on developing a curriculum that all coaches will go through and then we started passing out the communications all stakeholders kind of letting come out presenting to use I believe in May Mr Fraley came and said this is kind
168of where we're going and then in the fall we're going to go with it we're going to kick off Elementary Sports 2.0 with consistency and inclusion for all to start we're going to start small and work up so we kind of took the same activities that we had before with the change in that curriculum model so we will be offering a flag football unit a basketball unit a volleyball unit and then the track unit is gonna the track it's gonna look the same but we're also going to add in some more components on those lessons in that curriculum than when it's been in the past uh flag football scheduled in September October basketball in the winter months in volleyball in the winter months and then track is in the spring we will continue with fifth
169and sixth grade and then fourth grade will continue to participate with our track meet so we're gradually rolling those in the plan is to add more Sports as we continue to develop in the program and offering different things like soccer pickleball tennis some of those different activities that's on our agenda move forward you'll also notice that there is a coupling event scheduled for each one of those Sports we moved away from having activities where we're playing competitions at school against School throughout the week and having different levels of an A B or C team so we'll explain what that's going to look like here in just a second we're missing anything nope all right so in these in this curriculum we came up with 12 sportsmanship topics so each one of those units is going
170to have a set of lesson plans where they're going to focus on one of these 12 sportsmanship what we'll talk about and show you something about we'll be winning with Grace again using some of that part from the healthy pokes pointing that and having conversations around those 12 sportsmanship topics give you a minute to read so we look at the elementary Sports curriculum the graphic on the left hand side it's going to be tough to read we're going to zoom in here in just a second but it has different areas it has a practice for a warm-up and a sportsmanship it has two different activities three different activities one being a stationary drill one being a strategic drill and one being a partner and then with a closure what I'd like to do is to
171zoom in on the sportsmanship part without winning with Grace so that question would be what does it look like to win with Grace why is it important when you activate it but then it also it's a closure talks about what skills we learned for the day how can we name the three examples of what it looks like to win with Grace and when was the last time you won something and how did you react so if we have a fifth and a sixth grader go through to participate in all four Sports they would have eight times throughout their two years of being exposed to winning with Grace and having conversations which each would be a little bit different because they'll be playing with different um students different diversity older kids younger kids so that part
172kind of moves through that if you're a fourth grader and you have that in there you're gonna add another year in there so we're cycling through because some smiling stores what I call it in the PE world to re-tap on some of those key Concepts foreign so hopefully this works and so part of developing the curriculum is it's going to sit out on our curriculum page and so the elementary page has PE and health and if they were to click on the PE Health side we'll see if this works should come up with a screen that looks something like that on the right hand side fingers crossed that this works Mr Finley didn't delete it hey look at that down here in the bottom it has the elementary sports that says coming soon so as
173we developed the lessons those will also be out there for parents to see kind of what they're learning also some instructional as we go through this year our plan is to add instructional videos so that parents can help their students to advance on the skills also different resources that we offer both in the Northern Colorado area and within Cheyenne which kids can participate at different levels so if you're a beginner volleyball player you're going to go see Miss Brinkman because Mr Brinkman doesn't know deeply about playing volleyball but I do have assertive endorsement to Chief coach volleyball up until December when I don't renew it but just FYI um and then we'll kind of go through and we'll also add in the Unified sports so everyone will be able to see see those activities so
174here's where the fun part kind of comes in is we've got two different culminating events we're going to have an All-Star challenge which is good so if we're looking at basketball they're going to participate four different individual activities free throw shooting um a two-point shot which is similar to the Three-Point Contest a dribbling contest it's straight down the trail and then at obstacle course and then we'll at the same time so fifth grade would be doing that sixth grade is going to be playing smaller 3v3 games with modified rules hopefully we can help get some of our high school folks I'm depressed some of those games and help with those so I kind of go on the same time the other time frame we flip and then fifth grade is playing games and um the
175All-Star challenges are with the other grade so they're going to do the exact same thing we're going to recognize our kiddos for being in the top 10 so we'll recognize right then and there hey you know you've got the mark for being the top 10 is 25 free throws in a minute and so right then we'll recognize those kids so they go it's not and everybody gets a participation ribbon but we've set that kind of a 10 10 and one of our ways of tracking if this is working um is to see if that Mark continues to grow up don't grow up go up and those skills come in part so then we add the Unified sports in there we want to live and play unified as we move forward so the students will be
176participating in the gameplay depending on their level of need they could have a partner that's going to be so Mr Fraley and I are playing basketball I'm sure they might receive the ball hand it to me have me dribble a couple of times then we move forward so we're working as a partner in the All-Star challenges we will modify based on the equipment that the student needs so if a student like I have a visually impaired student that will be attending Meadowlark next year we would use a ball that makes sound that he can hear so the ball come so he can grab it and then shoot so we'll make those modifications and we're working with adaptive PE OTP to make sure those resources are available for the students they already have them we just
177have to make sure they're available for those competitions in those three sites and then as we continue to move forward we'll keep introducing those and as the students move up levels they'll already have been participating some of those skills and we'll know how to modify some of those Sports and Athletics as they move up kind of the quote that stands out to us is experience tells you what to do and confidence allows you to do it so as we move back to Elementary Sports we're looking at the experience is going to give them the confidence to try a new challenges try tough things just like our ROTC programs we're talking about being able to move in and do some things within the schools and participate at higher levels and that's all I got anything you
178guys want to add fantastic questions for exhibit a questions from the board thank you Mr chair Mr chair I'm curious about this um it's a little different than what I was expecting um I sure appreciate all the work though that's gone into it and I appreciate the interest in um in engaging our students in elementary Sports um I know it's a parent of kids who were involved in elementary Sports it was really important to them to have a sense of community in their school and to compete and I thought really really fantastic to have parents come into the schools and sit by each other and get to know each other and root for their team it sounds like you've envisioned a different concept than that um and so I'm wondering where the parents fit into
179all of this um to build community in their schools and I'm also wondering um about the team Concepts because you know these kids will go into Junior High in high school and hopefully we've provided them um some of that ability as well to um you know Mr Fraley I know you're very familiar with basketball and how to play on a team and what your role is and all of that is pretty important to start to develop at that young age so um I guess I just open it up to whatever you'd like to say about that because it just I love the idea of your teaching sportsmanship we all could use the dose of that right so I appreciate that very much and I love the idea of the culminating events but that sounds like
180it's a one-time thing per season um and I'm not sure how that how that becomes a community oriented sort of building thing so anyway if you'd like to elaborate I'd sure appreciate it thank you chairman Bolden trustee Claussen uh thank you for this opportunity to share with you uh our purpose in our uh when our committee met we took a look at a lot of different Alternatives I kind of wanted the Taylor Swift version of Elementary Sports a big show right uh 10 12 Sports well um they quickly reeled me in and said let's start small and grow let's see where we can Envision this and have a sustainable program throughout many years and so that's where we started we we looked at um pairing it down to manageable time frames to get to increase
181participation to develop skills within our elementary students because what we heard from parents was that my student left with about the same skill level that they began that Sport and until they are in a club or or some something different than Elementary Sports in the schools then they we saw them develop those skills and so we wanted to provide some equity and opportunity for everybody and including our students with special needs and and getting them involved in a different way and so this is more inclusive for everybody to get involved parents we love volunteers we're going to need a um a lot of parents to help out 25 to ones student to adult ratio and getting actively involved we would love more parents to become actively involved to help teach their students and their their
182blooming athletes on those skills as you saw with some of the curriculum that we've developed those skills are going to be home in in sports specific ways he mentioned basketball but volleyball is a very challenging complex sport where we need more people to really work with our boys and girls to develop bumping and setting and serving to get it over the net and we just didn't have the repetitions in the past to do that nor get it in the basket nor score a touchdown and so we wanted to really develop Elementary Sports and that true gift of learning for students and participation and fun and engagement because we saw the national statistics when they hit seventh grade 70 percent of the students tend to start dropping out by 13 it's even worse and so we
183wanted to start building their skills so they were more developed and could compete at that level in junior high no matter where they went and so looking forward to this opportunity and growing it to something that is bigger and better than before and eventually that's Taylor Swift's scale so we'll see um just as a follow-up untrusted clawson's question and your response Mr praley um so you're envisioning just I just want to make sure I understand but so there would be maybe one or two staff members from the school who would be spearheading a particular Sport and then parent volunteers will come in to be their aides and help with with all the skills and making correct is that what you're saying like you're envisioning one or two staff and then volunteers chairman bowling trustee Smith
184it could work like that we could have what we want to do is we want to staff it uh 25 to 1. so we want to pay coaches um uh 25 students to one pay coach and then to lower those numbers to get more feedback for those students undribling with their head up or or setting or bumping or or throwing a football we want to decrease some of those ratios to make sure that the students are getting the feedback they need to be successful and so um it's it's skill development there will be games being played uh scrimmage types of games during practice that's part of the practice plan and so we will need feedback along the way but we we do look for a ratio of 25 to 1 um apart from the volunteers
185and of course bring parent Volunteers in or student volunteers maybe our boys from football or girls from basketball or volleyball from the high school level to come down and support as volunteers as well and so we look look always to get those smaller groups and get more feedback for those students thank you and then I just have one follow-up Mr Bob um the cell seems very manageable at a typical Elementary School I'm thinking of Mr Brinkman though at Meadowlark with 12 sections of fifth grade is that right and 12 of 6 and how you handle all those children in a practice German Bowman trustee Smith I have no idea I'm coming from a school of of 400 if you know I do have a plan um partnering with the Beast we're gonna we're going to
186bust Anderson and Buffalo Ridge and use coaches down there and use those three gems and we're going to keep Saddle Ridge and doe line up at Meadowlark and be doing those interactivities up there and doing those skill development up there with alongside the bees and years in that program and then as Mr Fraley said we'll be doing some inner scrimmaging amongst those grades because we have the dates on there there's 18 lessons or 16 lessons so there's four days left in there for principles to have those small scrimmages and build those teams and have the parents come in and help with those as well so my plan um at Meadowlark is to use the facilities and try to keep our students because I was on the other end with being a Saddle Ridge that it
187was kind of tough to keep some of those students reigned in because they wouldn't get there till 4 15 or 4 o'clock depending on transportation and how much story Boulevard was backed up so they were losing out they're only having 30 minutes so we're trying to honor that time I might have to Pivot I might have to put my PE shoes on and Coach a little bit I'm not going to do volleyball I'll ask Amanda to do it um but that's kind of my plan and my intention right now is to make it sustainable that we can house in a meadowlark and that was one of the conversations that we had um in the committee meeting and so I kind of spoke up as the new principal and said let's give it a shot let's
188see what we can do who can I work with as far as Partnerships to house those students so that they still feel that community and then part of the reason for the division is that the Beast facility is Right close between Anderson and Buffalo Ridge that those students could literally walk home after practice and that's not a burden on those parents who don't have to have transportation that answer your questioner Smith that helped yes thank you other questions Dr Ravine Mr Brightman Mr Bailey I just want to say thank you so much for what you're doing thank you for spearheading this thank you for including sportsmanship thank you for getting our kids active after school I so appreciate that from all of you can you tell me how the process got started and how many
189meetings have you had and what does this what does this look like when you say that you met Boys and Girls Club can Dr Ravine can you just explain that a little bit for me please thank you Mr chairman Dr Crespo trustee Edgerton thank you for the question when I heard my name first I was so excited I thought I was going to get to talk and then I thought I wasn't and now I do so thanks um I'll I can speak specifically to the Boys and Girls Club um they have been a great great um Community Support to the district as a whole and and uh Johnson Junior High had a lot of great things going with them and that's kind of how I got connected with their name and I was like you
190know what we need something we need something we need something so it really just started for us as you know here's what I'm thinking and they came in and said here's what we can offer and we started planning simultaneously then the committee that was on the slides was also you know we were doing parallel work of the same mindset going in the same direction all for the for the best benefit of kids in the district and so you know for us you know you can kind of count the formal meetings but I'm gonna say daily you know we're having conversations I'm thinking of this I'm thinking of this um so we're super excited I did want to jump in on the on the parent connection one of the things with boys and girls club um
191that we had planned for the South tribe was a kickoff night which would get all the parents in all the kids in that would give us a chance to say this is what we're about you know this is how when we'll play and what we'll do and and have you know food and giveaways and and really get everybody excited as a big community in our in each of the schools um also many celebrations some of those character pieces kids can set goals around those and to celebrate the achievement of those goals get parents involved in that and just really having it be really positive and developmental for all the kids so that's kind of a couple of things that that have been happening with that leg of it yeah so we chairman bowling trustees we've
192been working on healthy folks now for two years for the University of Wyoming so it's kind of where that started their Grant Runs Out ran out into this or actually runs out in September so we're wrapping up with some of those pieces so some of that conversation has been going so that we've also been working alongside University of Wyoming does some other opportunities to help our students to be physically active in our elementary plcs we've talked about it when our monthly meeting a reporter we have those half days what what it would look like before I brought it to Mr Fraley and said can we entertain this idea when we met in the fall there was a lot of let's go back to the old way let's go back to this let's do this but
193then it was the price tag kept getting higher and higher so we started looking at how do we make this feasible how we make this Equitable for all students to participate in all activities that's kind of where we landed right now for the base we're really trying to build that base strong to move forward and then once we kind of had that those purposes and focusing on the three areas of the strap plan then we pulled in a couple of PE folks that did the healthy pokes and throughout the summer we've been meeting every other week or every week to talk about what kind of things what kind of sportsmanship topic so after I get on the summer school I'm meeting with PE folks for another couple hours trying to figure out what do we
194want to develop the creek when we want to do it and I just saw before I walked in their timeline was to have all the things done today all four sports are done and completed with all the lesson plans they had just submitted them to the folder so I'm excited to review that this week and look and see if we've got to make any adjustments and I'll meet with Adam Cordell from bags and Mark Miller from dildine later before school starts to see if there's any last minute items that we need to adjust and then we'll be meeting with sped to make sure we have that equipment stuff there so there is some still that in the process but there's been a lot of big group small group big group small group um Mr Fraley
195sending out updates us people riding all over it with red ink and saying these are the kind of things that we don't go um and then go back to trustee Claussen like that sportsmanship and building those games and stuff and then we're hoping that culminating event helps those parents to work together do that but also build that Community within that school and having those parents on those scrimmage days sit in there and kind of meet that that piece of it thank you okay more of a comment I I was not an athletic little girl and so being I became athletic but took some coaching and so to me the aspect where um in five and six in track for the fourth grade that where you're focusing on the athlete is huge for me because there
196are so many kids who don't naturally have that talent and so to have the one-on-one time and more practice and instead of just focusing on the competing aspect which is really important and you have that in the accumulating events and not just giving out participation which I love um but I just really applaud you guys for focusing on developing the athlete so that when they go to Junior High in high school they have those sportsmanship's abilities they have the skill abilities they can work as a team and you're cultivating that at the grade level in their school so that the focus isn't right off the bat rivalry or isn't um oh we have to win to be the best I so I just am really appreciative that you're you're cultivating an atmosphere for our district
197of good sportsmanship in healthy competition and giving kids who don't normally have a chance a chance so thank you anybody else on the board I just thought I'd say thank you for putting all the work you put into this sounds like it's a tremendous amount of work and I like the fact that we're gonna concentrate on sportsmanship and skills at that level rather than and put some competition in there in case you have to have a little to keep their interest but I think it's great that we're going to get those skill developments I've watched my some of my nephews play some of the elementary basketball games and it's it's chaos up there basically and I think if we can get some skill developed there I watched my daughter play volleyball from about fourth grade
198on and again they need the skill development so and if I had ever been in sports which I didn't do a whole lot of I would have been about a guidance also so thank you for what you're doing so uh chairman Boland I just want to take a minute and say this is a prime example of like here's this idea go figure it out and this is what they've come up with and it really is so incredible this committee work has been wonderful I've had all of our partners at the Boys and Girls Club Beast come out and say thank you so much like it's really community building and I just want to say thank you um when this idea first came up I was like oh that's great let's go um and you really
199have brought back to fruition so just want to say really really appreciate it and the whole committee's work and with that I want to say thank you because we are on to our last and I promise it'll be short um Teresa Ross is here is our professional learning coordinator to talk about professional learning in the district and uh where we're going and another huge huge celebration around the work that we're providing um learning we know that teachers and staff end up staying in districts that they feel supported and where they're learning um and Teresa and her team of friends because she's a team of one have uh come together to really do an incredible job thank you thank you good evening chairman Bolin Board of Trustees Dr Crespo my name is Teresa Ross I'm the
200professional learning coordinator for the district thank you for giving me some time this evening to talk about some of our Milestones this past year for professional learning as well as where we're headed um so we've aligned some of our Milestones to our strategic plan so to look pretty familiar some of the things we've done this year around student Readiness have really been around supporting departments and teams with professional learning opportunities and goals really delving into where are they coming from where are they at and where do they need to go professionally to learn some of the things that we've done to meet those goals I've worked really closely with our technology integration Specialists and our Apple specialist as well at the beginning of the year especially I would meet with them on a regular basis
201at least monthly and talk about how we can really build up that coaching that they're doing in schools but some of their goals are and how I can help support them with that in addition part of that work has been getting the technology integration Specialists and our instructional coaches together to kind of form some common language do some learning around how we coach adults and Educators so that that way we can meet more of those goals I've also worked closely with different people in in our special services department whether that's helping support some of the learning that our paraprofessionals are doing or our special education staff and special service providers and then also working closely within our coordinator groups for ELA math STEM Science Social Studies and Fine Arts to make sure that they are
202also meeting their objectives in terms of where their teachers are at getting feedback from them talking about where they're headed and being able to help support them meet some of those goals as well in their in their content area teams for Community engagement these are just three examples we do have more than that but the three examples that we wanted to highlight were the SEL and behavior management training that we've provided to Boys and Girls Club as well as some driver training from Transportation as well and then of course as Dr Crespo mentioned earlier sources of strength has done more than 12 Community trainings within within our Cheyenne community in addition to that I regularly communicate to the Boys and Girls Club here are offerings if you're interested in any of those let me connect
203you to the person that's providing that and then they can send staff to that as well healthy environment working on supporting principals in schools with high quality professional development and really trying to get connections within that so not only being aligned to the Strategic plan but also their individual School Improvement plans and also understanding that a lot of their big goals for professional development align with other schools as well so pulling schools together when there are commonalities so that that way we can have Educators from different schools being able to collaborate together and share experiences and ideas on what it is that they're learning developing the lcsd number one PD framework so understanding we get new Educators in regardless of employee group what are some things that they need right away how are we going
204to support our experienced Educators and how are we going to continue support to support our high level Educators as well um I assist with the implementation of courses for both certified and classified staff from the Department of Instruction and um this year I've worked with Jen brownhill in Human Resources we've started a monthly new classified orientation so we know that we have classified employees that are hired all 12 months the school year and instead of waiting for orientation after they've been in their job or role for several months now they get to come to an orientation the month that they are hired and get to hear and learn some of those things that are going to help them right away in their jobs and then of course helping our sources of strength team for indistricts
205trainings and that they do with adult advisors as well as students in our district some other Milestones that we've worked on our 240 forms are forms that any employee can fill out in the district and request to attend a conference or a virtual learning course that's offered outside of our district just making sure that those are aligned to the Strategic plan as well as their school Improvement plan wherever they're at in their buildings we've streamlined the collection of PTSD credits for licensure renewals and we're trying to get more of those to be submitted on online so that it helps with efficiency as well as accuracy we are now submitting those to pts beach by Sierra they open it up twice a year once at the end of fall and once at the end of spring
206it's we're submitting our ptsb credit for life insurance renewal twice per year and we've also developed a PB newsletter as well as an Internet site and you can see just a snippet of the Internet site there that has some upcoming events and important information that anyone any employee if they're looking for resources or upcoming events can we go to and see kind of what's Happening this is the first year that we've been really intentional about collecting data based on the professional learning that we're we're asking people to engage in so not only how it's aligned to the Strategic plan but also the number of hours how and how we're meeting those needs for our different employee groups um as well as collecting feedback from those professional learning opportunities so I know that these are kind
207of hard to read because it's a little small but total hours by a strategic plan we have 55 geared towards student readiness 24 geared towards healthy environments one percent geared towards just Community engagement and then 20 percent of our professional learning that we've offered that really encompasses all three of those pretty easily and then total hours by an employee group we had over 1500 for certified staff um 340 hours for classified staff 309 hours for administrators and 96 hours for substitutes and I know in the scheme of things I was like Wow we've done more than that so I added up the number and we have more than 2100 hours of professional learning that we've offered just from August through June 7th for last school year which is approximately 272 days of professional learning that
208we've offered to those different employee groups this year some of the things that we're really looking forward to and that we're really excited about for this year um August we have focused on our administrators because they come back July 1st and what are some of their needs um not just Standalone but where are they coming from and again where are we headed so we are providing some professional learning around instructional leadership um creating a warm and welcoming environment in our schools and that has come directly from our strategic plan initiative work that's happened this past school year as well as some special education law and idea in addition to that for the first time ever we're offering a teaching and learning conference designed specifically for our employee groups here in Kentucky one that's open to
209administrators certified and classified staff and they're around the topics of instruction positive behavior supports mtss and plc's and these are topics that again span things that we've already done and also where we're headed um new teacher orientation which will be three days in August classified professional learning so that encompasses TSS our facilities transportation and nutrition services employees and then we have our district professional development day on August 17th where we will have a keynote speaker followed by content specific Duty that our coordinators will assist with we're offering a full day of Cara professional workshops and then we have are making sure that throughout the course of all of that our professional development is aligned to our strategic plan and school to prevent plans across the district and then for the school year um we are
210going to continue working on sporting our strategic plan initiatives Tanya has done a fantastic job of every time that she meets with those different groups if professional development or professional learning is mentioned as part of those next steps she Loops me in on that and we work together to talk about how we can Implement that supporting the teacher apprenticeship program which is huge because the teacher apprenticeship program really encompasses every employee group in our district and so making sure that we are meeting the needs of a whole variety of different people coming into that apprenticeship program through lcsd1 continue making connections across our district for high quality professional learning opportunities and again that might mean connecting small groups of people or whole schools within District resources as well as out of District resources depending on
211what their need is or school to school we will continue to track and data and evaluate great feedback to help inform our next steps we are in the process of developing a district-wide professional development calendar that anyone can get on and they can contact me or a couple other individuals to get things added so we're not scheduling things over one another and then one of our big focuses this year is to continue to focus on all employee groups making sure that across the district those people who need to grow professionally in certain area have those opportunities and we will continue to Foster local Partnerships as well as National Partnerships to support the professional learning in lcsd1 thank you any questions I just got one comment that I attend all the negotiating sessions and for a
212lot of the units that are certified the classified I mean they were asking for that monthly orientation and so I'm glad that you were listening and you give that to them so because they were almost every one of these was that was a topic of the session and some kind of negotiation so and a couple of other things that you put in there Ross came in negotiation so thank you for listening in thank you and getting things done that the employees want so thank you thank you Mr chairman I know that tonight has been a long conversation but I could burst with just the excitement of all the amazing things that we're doing in the district related to the Strategic plan and that is not possible without the amazing people in this District many of
213who you saw come up and present tonight because of the passion and connection that we have in um in our school districts and I just want to say thank you again and with that superintendent's update is done okay so next you're going to be doing is moving to the consent agenda and I think even before I ask whether anything wants to be taken out I'm going to ask that we have a little more information given on two things first of all the resolution to conduct business so I don't know Jed or somebody can give us a little bit information about how we're changing that first of all maybe a little history how it happens and then how we're changing that after some feedback thank you Mr chairman um Dr Crespo members of the board um
214so a little bit of background in history on the resolution to conduct business um last year I brought forward that resolution based on best practice for some other school districts in the state of Wyoming um really what this seeks to do is um really it's too bold uh the first is as you can imagine a district our size we process six to seven thousand purchase orders a year um seven to eight thousand different checks we expense 40 to 50 million dollars a year through Purchase Card transactions accounts payable um the the logistics of only processing AP once a month is just not feasible for a district our size um so the resolution seeks to provide some transparency and alignment with our district practices and so um you'll notice that part of the language addresses the
215district's ability to process checks and AP payments uh similarly um there are a specific language addressing contracts accepting bids and quotes that was intended to provide some flexibility for staff to conduct business for orders and purchases below the statutory bidding thresholds again this resolution wasn't intended and nor is it able to supersede any statutory requirements uh this was really an effort to kind of address those those purchasing areas that don't require that level of bidding and approval through the board and so as Mr chairman as you noted earlier we've revised that language to be a little bit more clear so that there is some framework over the budgetary approvals that um you as a board will consider later tonight as well and some additional language specific to those bidding thresholds um in those areas that
216are pertinent to that piece so Mr chairman if um if there are any questions I'm happy to address them but that's a quick a quick summary of that resolution for you thank you chairman Boland I just have a super quick one can you please tell me Judd what is that threshold one more time that that bidding threshold um Mr chairman trustee Edgerton um uh that's that's generally fifty thousand dollars um it's uh dictated by um State Statute when that comes to the board for approval thank you ingredients I just want to add whether external changes are so at the end of that first paragraph it's going to say within the budgeted amounts approved by the board and on at the end of the three of those things it's going to say um not exceeding bidding
217thresholds prescribed by law so we thought putting those things in there would strengthen a little bit and thank you for considering yes all right the other one that I wanted to talk about was the additional money for the track at Central I think someone speak to that sorority come on up good evening Mr chairman what can I help you do you want me to just give a little explanation a little background of what we're doing here sure okay uh first of all for the benefit of public I'm Jeff Doherty I'm the planning and construction administrator what we're doing here the board has approved a project to replace the track at uh at risky field last year we replaced the fields out there and this year our plan was to replace the track we didn't do
218them together last year because there was a lot of damage on Lane one which is the inside Lane nearest to the infield in Lane one there's something we call an echo drain and it's uh it's just a concrete drain we anticipated that sticking about 16 inches underneath Lane one it actually goes about 36 inches which is almost the entirety of Lane one so and it also helps explain why Lane one is settling because there's that much concrete Weighing on that side of the track so that was well beyond the contractor's bid scope of work in that and so we've had to adjust this uh in order to compensate the contractor for removing twice as much concrete as we had initially anticipated second you'll see in The Proposal before you tonight A change that has to
219do with the jump hit Mr chairman at the other high schools in the district you have two lanes going each direction for the long jump triple jump hit and during track meets they will run long jump and triple down simultaneously during the eve during the course of the the meags central has a smaller track that's a that's a more confined space because you've got Dry Creek right next door to it and uh We've we've reclaimed some ground when we did the original risk he filled 15 or so years ago but we just had a constrained space so Central's always had just a really run on the long jump triple jump so you can only run one of those events at a time if you've been to a track meet you know there are a lot
220of kiddos who participate in those Sports and so it really slows down the track and it interferes with that school's ability to recruit States events because the other schools have those and allow for a better faster flow the other thing I will tell you is we've actually moved the long jump triple jump Pit East about 20 25 feeds and the reason we did that is twofold one because there's a power pole situated immediately adjacent to the long jump triple jump pit and we didn't want kiddos at full speed potentially striking that that post the second thing is we've adjusted it slightly to the South because the one lane of the long jump triple jump is too close to Lane eight which is on the outside circumference of the track and we worry about kiddos competing
221on the track events conflicting with kiddos running the long jump triple jump events and so for that reason Mr chair we have proposed the changes before you tonight does that answer your questions I have my questions anybody else have any questions okay thank you thank you Mr chairman great Robin all right so now we will help entertain a motion all right Mr chairman I move to approve all motions listed as consent agenda okay there's any my second okay does any board member wish to remove any of these items not seeing any um all those in favor approving the consent agenda say aye aye those opposed no motion tests it's through a lot of our agendas an extra new business Mr chairman I moved to Grant permission to purchase Apple devices accessories software and maintenance from
222Apple for an amount not to exceed 11 million dollars second all right we have a motion a second to approve up to 11 million dollars for Apple devices anybody has some questions can someone on staff please tell me why are we going with iPads why are you why is it just the iPad products why aren't we using Chromebooks or having a mix sure Mr chairman uh trustee Edgerton we uh we began looking at uh what we've been seeking to have one-to-one program for really probably the last 10 to 15 years um we had tried and failed multiple attempts with PCS we're a Microsoft District we use Microsoft for our logins for Windows obviously office um so we're looking at PCS initially Chromebooks had never really entered the picture for several reasons um the biggest being
223a move from Microsoft after well at least two decades we've been sort of in the end Microsoft would be a multi-million dollar multi-year huge project to move all of our documents retrain all of our staff Implement all the security tools we have through Microsoft again through Google or a third party so we sort of ruled them out even on that basis alone but there's other things too to consider with Chromebooks um generally a lower up front cost but they are also much less reliable they fail more frequently they don't have apps to make like videos for they they do but not very well our teachers desired tools to make videos creative tools things like that um and really they just didn't meet the mark uh another thing that Apple provided us and there was a
224big change in about 2019 where they uh began working with Microsoft products not only Microsoft apps on the iPads but also logins so our kids could use their login their email account all those things that's when we actually began to have a pilot um and our teachers loved them they worked well on the network we can manage them easily security was very tight on them which is difficult even on a Chromebook honestly and so and then what really kicked things into gear was the pandemic so we had that pilot going through 1920 school year and when the District closed down we had to basically make a decision on what device to get in the kids hands again not knowing we're all in that position not knowing what 20 20 21 would look like so we
225needed to have something we could manage remotely we knew it would work with our systems all those things and it was basically between PCS and iPads and they're actually much more cost effective we can trade a man so we they end up actually probably costing similar to what a a decent Chromebook would cost us and provide a much more durable experience with the creative tools and things like that so there's a lot of reasons backing those up over Chromebooks microphone I don't I'm not sure can you hear me now if you can just answer this are we getting iPads for our students like like whatever the current generation of iPad is uh iPad this is a Surface but and then are we getting computers for teachers or can you just explain because 11 million dollars
226is a really big number for me to wrap my head around yeah uh Mr chairman trustee Edgerton yes um we are getting devices one for every student which is what we've had the last well three years it'll be four years when we replace them at the end of next school year um and then one for every certified employee basically that's how we worked it out to have um for all of the teachers then we have a little bit of flexibility for Perros and then we include the school administrators so those are the ones that that get one iPad and they all get the same device it's all the student iPad is the same one the teacher gets um and staff also have a laptop they've had for years we are looking to do a staff
227refresh historically we're really in a great situation where we were able to do the one-to-one program which is a huge leap forward we're actually kind of a laggard there um now we're in a good position to be able to do a staff refresh which has just been it's been up to the schools to provide devices and so you have some schools that would prioritize spending on those others would not so we'd have schools that have old devices or not enough devices and we'd always be trying to augment and fill in so uh we're getting to the place where not only can we plan out and budget for a student refresh but a staff refresh as well and Jed can talk to more of the funding pieces but um it wouldn't be likely would not be
228staff devices all uh Max or anything like that we're opening the door to Max but we're not going to tear them out of the PCS out of everyone's hands thank you for that answer and then my last question is where where is this 11 million dollars coming from how are we funding that I'll turn that over to Jed Mr chairman uh trustee Edgerton um as as Mr McKinney mentioned um when we received the first um one-to-one devices we did that through emergency relief money uh from the governor's office from the covid-19 pandemic started um we knew then that we had to start taking steps to build a sustainable program um and we did that kind of by structuring if you will the three so the first um the first thing we did is we developed
229a depreciation Reserve account um and consulted with the board on the development and and the utilization of that Reserve fund and we've been able to um direct resources to the um that five-year replacement cycle that Mr McKinney mentioned a moment ago um knowing that a full Reef fresh can cost us eight nine ten million dollars we've had to take steps um to meet that need it's not fully funded at this point um as a matter of fact Mr McKinney mentioned um the trade-in value of iPad devices um there's an optimal time um to create in those devices to receive the best trade in value if you will on a program like that um we've opted to take another year this year would have been that optimal time um we need the another Year's worth of
230resource allocation to be able to meet that need um so we have the depreciation Reserve fund um that'll partially fund those those um device purchases we also have the end of the sr3 funds if we have unobligated funds at the completion of this upcoming year we'll be able to leverage those funds for another replacement cycle uh maybe even a lady eating some of the pressure on our depreciation Reserve fund um and um certainly uh lastly we have um the trade-in value that Mr McKinney mentioned as well that can be a significant offset I will tell you that we haven't completely closed the ID the doors of um utilizing leasing on those devices going forward um we've consulted with a number of vendors just on what that would look like no interest leasing for those devices
231and that we would have a sustained amount every year as opposed to these balloon purchases that we have to do every four to five years so um in summary on three sources of funding uh the depreciation Reserve federal funds and then um trade-in values as well as the possibility of leasing if we get to that point thank you for your answer yeah I I just want to make sure I understand I actually had texted for Jed and said 11 million dollars is that a typo because that's a lot of money and um so that will purchase approximately 16 000 new iPads I mean is that about what we're thinking is it is it purchasing other things too or is that uh yeah Mr chair trustee Smith it will be for approximately 16 000 iPad sorry
232Roman is down a bit it will be down a bit we're also likely not going to do the same number of connected devices that we did the first round um we may be able to if some funds come through to help activate hotspots but that gets extremely expensive which I think I brought up here before um so it will be for all of those devices to give us Headroom for a staff device refresh so we we don't uh we don't know what the quantity of Max versus PCS will be just yet so we have had room in our Dell contract so it'd be either Dells or uh Max um so it'll allow us to purchase those and we have we just have honestly have a lot of unknowns um with the upcoming iPad so our
233current iPad the cases um they go together the last several Generations have worked um Apple's gonna come out with a new iPad they do every fall so what that new iPad looks like we don't know so we may need new more new cases or all new cases we may need charging adapters uh which is kind of a good thing and a bad thing it's good to move with our new one because it's going to be very future proof we know it's coming at some point but it'll be a one-time expense so I mean in an optimal situation it'll be it's not going to be 11 million it'll be less minus the trade-in and so on uh for just for the iPad refresh um but if we're if we're in the situation where they have a
234new device there's all these things that come into play it's going to be slightly more expensive and again the trade-in value is less now than um less than a year than it will be if we would have done it now so that includes essentially an entire staff refresh we have to get the funds allocated for the upcoming budget here so we're just saying we could we could optionally go to a staff refresh for all all staff devices uh and then certainly the student refresh okay but let me ask a follow-up so but that you're factoring in with that then to some sort of refund I mean all of the existing devices go back to Apple is that what we'll be doing uh Mr chairman uh trustee Smith there are several vendors well there's a few
235honestly that do trade-in programs so they offer a trade-in some of them offer Community BuyBacks or you can sell them back to the community of these sort of things um so we uh will look to use one of those vendors we'll pay all of the iPads and apple works with them um and then they will have a credit for the Apple purchase so all of the iPads would go back and are graded and um and then they'll resell them they'll go on to another Market um and that is a huge benefit to the iPads honestly in this this uh the cost discussion is the uh the value of the trade-in it's substantially more than uh certainly Chromebooks but ardells and all those things we always seek to get some money back and the iPads really
236retain their value um and and soda Max but we will going forward try to structure this so we're not every four years because I mean if it's 11 million approximately this year it's going to be quite a bit more four years from now so this won't be coming every four year item on our budget um Mr chairman um trustee Smith um there's a lot of um what-ifs in in order to answer that question um the first is if we continue to do these um these Cycles where we're purchasing every four to five years um we continue to kind of look at our resources available to us as a general rule um you're going to see a need for a student device to be replaced every four to five years um the the leasing option that
237I mentioned earlier provides some smoothing if you will to the budgetary needs on that um where instead of purchasing 9 10 11 million dollars every 45 years you're spending maybe two million dollars um every every year in order to maintain that program there are some key factors for us as we're exploring that is not paying interest fees of course what that looks like as far as damages all the things that you would go into play with uh determining that's the direction we go um but for the for the immediate need um it's it is highly likely that you'll see a need for those devices to be replaced I think um it's it's imperative that we maintain that one-to-one device and certainly I'm not an instructional practitioner um I I think um when you when you
238talk about um the Educational Tools that students need um we're well past the idea that a three to one ratio for students and staff is going to supplies um and this is the way that we've been able to fill that Gap without having those resources allocated to us through our funding model thank you yes Janet I'm sorry I just have one more question so even if you have the money in this fund that you're developing we'd still have to approve it in four or five years right I mean even if the money is there um Mr chairman uh trustee Hinkle absolutely this is a not to exceed um so we would we would have to come back to the board to finalize those purchases without seven questions I have one additional question and you said
239that some of the staff are the buildings may choose to go with Max instead of tell Dells um does our software run up next yeah uh Mr chairman yes this has been a long road um uh it that almost everything does there's a few roles of our folks that um are not suited for it yet um are our video camera software doesn't work well on a Mac for example but for the most part yes uh with everything moving to a web-based world most tools are in a browser and then like I mentioned the office products are all in there um and so yeah they really hit the mark and our teachers have been clamoring for many have been clamoring for years um and I think we want to emulate uh where we can you know
240the private sector is offering choice in a lot of cases for devices anymore and we'd like to do that as well so um just in the last uh towards the end of the last school year we opened up the door to uh purchasing of Max in a supported way we had done it sort of we won't support it but you could buy them way which really didn't work well um and so we've had a lot of folks sign up and um I think as they get to rolling out the cost is actually less than our staff Dell laptops plus they have a better trading value so again it's good for us we can manage them much easier um there's a lot of upsides honestly to the max for for everybody um so yeah there's a
241there's a strong demand um really strong from some folks local folks I mean thank you any further questions all right we've had a motion in a second to improve the up to 11 million dollars to purchase Apple devices all those in favor say aye aye those opposed no motion passes now maybe the next one won't take but so long well maybe that's that's gonna say you're awfully optimistic Premiere addresses all right Mr chairman I moved to approve the membership of the Wyoming School Board Association wsba for Laramie County School District number one second okay we've got a motion a second to approve paying our membership One support Association and improve the discussion all those in favor say aye aye I suppose no um and thank you to who does the uh SP for representing us
242up there and bringing back the uh the news that she did today so all right next one Mr chairman I moved to approve the denial of the government claim filed by Linda Weaver and the amount of five thousand dollars second hey this motion the second to uh governmental planes any further discussion all those in favor say aye aye as opposed no application passes I know that sounds like we're not doing a very nice thing that we actually have to do that's part of the procedure all right what Mr chairman I move to Grant permission to contract with Scotch voice Incorporated for irrigation contractor services for an amount not to exceed nine hundred thousand dollars second okay the motion a second to improve um scotch boy for your gift service any further discussion all those in
243favor say aye aye those opposed note Mr chairman I moved to Grant permission to contract for custodial equipment from Global equipment company HD Supply head Studios Safety Supply waxy Sanitary Supply and Western paper distributors for an amount not to exceed 150 000 second all right let's see we got the um typo there and went from a one half million down to 50 000 so I've got little people taken care of any further discussion all those in favor of approving the contract for custodial equipment so yeah all right motion passes Mr chairman I moved to Grant permission to purchase furniture for the new Coyote Ridge Elementary School from the following vendors Wyoming Office Products burco Lakeshore Learning source office and technology and K-12 for an amount not to exceed 580 357.56 second okay we have motion
244a second to approve purchasing new um furniture for Coyote Ridge at the schools have you put them in there since the new school you have to do this but I'm interested how we got it down to 56 Cent schedule is that your work doing there all those in favor say aye all right those opposed social tests Mr chairman I moved to Grant permission to contract for junior high instructional redesign services with John Hopkins University School of Education for an amount not to exceed 150 000 second okay any further discussion on the side all right all those in favor of improving the permission to go with Don South University for um Educational Services and redesign service I'm sorry say hi hi those opposed no Mr chairman I moved to Grant permission to contract for staff development
245services with solution tree for an amount not to exceed 58 500 second okay any further discussion on the sun yes [Music] when they're doing their professional development training is that on days when maybe there's a half day and they're off in the afternoon or a school in session and we're going to need three schools with Subs can someone just tell me what does that look like do we still have our special development coordinators Mr chairman uh trustee Edgerton we have a variety of professional development that happens the one the specific groups that we're talking about right now for the launch in August we make sure part of the calendar that um Miss Ross was talking about was making sure that we're not grouping too many schools together so that we're not struggling for substitutes in
246the district but we do have half day sessions free pre-service sessions so before the school year starts and then throughout the year we try to bring smaller groups together um without trying to eliminate the large impact and the instructional team has done a really incredible job this year of trying to build that PD calendar so that we're not stepping all over and Teresa has wrangled all of the organizations within the district to make sure that we're not doing that thank you any further discussion hey all those in favor of approving the solution tree contract 58 500. say hi all right let's suppose no two thousands Mr chairman a move to Grant permission to contract for wood floor refinishing services from Ponder company primary and Wyoming wood floor secondary for an amount not to exceed five
247hundred thousand dollars second okay any further discussion on the side okay I was um just curious if Mr maybe Mr Knapp had explained but is this for gym floors we don't have too many hardwood floors throughout the district doing maybe on stages or yeah Mr chairman uh trusted Smith that is for our gym floor so we do we refinish all of the competition floors every year in the fall which would be all the high school gyms and story gym and then we finished the auxiliary gyms every other year and then this also covers um should we have to replace or refinish one during the year if something happens to it like a water leak or something that we can't control so that's what that's for and we do all of our secondary schools have wood
248floors so this would be used in the fall to refinish all those floors before basketballer um generally in the summer is when we do most of them um we're probably looking at um possibly one over Christmas this year which is is kind of unusual just out of a rotation okay thank you yeah all those in favor of the contract for two different places to you the um wood floor replacement up to five hundred thousand dollars say hi hi let's suppose no questions the chairman I moved to approve the administrator contracts on the attached list for the 2023-2024 school year and to place them on the appropriate step of the administrative salary schedule second all right discussion on the side yes thank you Mr chair um I was looking at this and been kind of weighing
249it all week honestly um because I understand that we want to improve our districts especially at how we're doing our district special ed um I didn't say the rock special education in our district and I appreciate the importance of that um but I don't feel like the board has had a lot of um opportunity to review a grander plan for how we're going to move forward and I don't feel like there has been opportunity for different stakeholders to weigh in on that plan um and I think that is really important that's how we do things in our district and so um I'm hesitant to support four positions on this list that our administrators under special ed at administrator levels without fully understanding how they fit in the broader picture so I just wanted to raise
250that and um I can make a motion to remove them if if you'd like Mr chair and we can take it up separately oh that would be up to you okay I'll make a motion to remove the special education administrators from the list from d 3.10 so you talked about before at the bottom of the list yeah yes I'm sorry Mr chair I don't have the list in front of me so there's one for the board certified Behavior there's three of those yeah there's one for the assistant director of students that is correct Mr chair they're all new positions that we're being asked to approve tonight I'll second that okay we have a motion a second to remove the last four people on the list here any further discussion on that much so I have
251a question um I actually feel like we've had quite a bit of conversation around Specialists and the need to make some changes based on the Audits and um had the special ed director come and walk through on a couple of occasions so I guess I I am not uncomfortable with the need for those positions um and are they owned I didn't think all of them were new the last four are Mr chairman um to answer the questions just a little bit of clarification so um as I responded in an email earlier this week just clarifying uh the three positions that our Behavior Specialists those positions are not administrative positions the way that our unit Works um those individuals will not be overseeing any staff so they're not considered admin in the traditional way those individuals
252fall within that unit so they have to be approved that way currently in our system um some many of you may remember that we did actually approve this assistant director previously uh that individual was approved um a few meetings ago and determined that she did not want to take the job so we had to repost the position and go over the whole process again that this individual that you're looking at right now is not the new position the assistant director that we're talking about around special education um you may remember we did we had an update to the board around the wde audit over the the last decade the number of areas that we had not met prior to my arrival and the state had basically said that under Federal expectation we needed to meet
253those part of that process was wde granting us permission to align assistant directors to the level that other districts have of our actually smaller remember we're the largest District in the state understanding that the position was there to re-assess and realign all of the expectations around the federal requirements for IEPs professional learning training handbooks and all of those systems um and part of that process was granted so that we would be fully reimbursed during that time for the position special education is fully State reimbursed and we had an approval letter from wde letting us know that it was something that they had an expectation around us providing to meet the areas that we provided during the work session and the learning session and the public meeting around the allocate locations and the systems we did
254have the PowerPoint that shared the areas that we were working on that were related specifically to the special education handbook which hit a number of those 10 deficiencies that we had in the corrective action plan in addition the board had the learning session specifically with our director around what those expectations were and how we would meet them which also included the assistant director piece um and the reason I'm giving kind of all of that information is because it's that this position has already been approved and filled and this person coming in right now is a refill for that position and approval any further discussions yes and it just um as Dr Crespo a question and the the board certified behavior analyst those are all new positions so the bcbas over the last couple of years
255have had to be contract serviced out because there are not be enough vcbas in the region so as an example um well in the bcbas don't want to travel that far because our district is expansive um so we were able to bring in previously consulting services and over the last couple of years the universities in the area have focused on training bcbas so that there are more available um so we are able to fill those positions of bcbas where we weren't before we had to use consulting services with the realignment of the structure of the special education um corrective actions we have to provide bcbas throughout the system as one of those modules one of those corrective actions so this would be the less expensive way to do this having our own rather than Contracting
256Services I mean we love our we love let me just say we love our contractors and we use them for a lot of things because we don't have pts and OTS and all kinds but yes it's it's always better for an internal staff member Mr chair this thank you and I I want to clarify I'm not against us working on you know improving our special ed as I started to say I just think that one learning session a very brief slideshow doesn't get into how special ed will incorporate into mtss and in other areas that I'm particularly interested in and and so I just had a lot of questions and I always um just for clarity I my knee-jerk reaction is always to be skeptical of adding administrators especially when all of our buildings have
257lost or will be losing their um their their current business and they I really feel like we could use resources at the building level really important to me and um and that's why I I brought this motion thank you any further discussion on the motion right now which is to remove the form thank you chair Bowen um yeah I think number one the uh as stated the assistant director of student services is not a new position it has been already approved by this board previously um and we are under um statutory requirement to improve our uh the special education department and so if these are not approved now then we will not be able to get these positions approved prior to school get starting and so I think it's imperative that we approve these positions
258that are desperately needed and are being reimbursed um in large part by the WD I mean further discussion just a quick follow-up on trustee Nichols or the bcba positions reimbursable too they fall within the special education funding so yes okay thank you so the the bcbas can I mean is their plan to obviously their behavioral analysis so they're probably going to be more in the building now that we don't have the business right absolutely so we will have some business in the system as well but that's not the same funding that they have been in the past because the s or dollars that's a great question the bcba component is that all of our all of our work based on the feedback from wde was that we have to get more Hands-On in the buildings
259so that we provide support and systems for parents and students and staff so to answer your question absolutely the bcbas would be although housed together as a team would be assigned to buildings to provide those levels of support when we have to measure outcomes for student Behavior thank you thank you are the bcbas only going to work with special education yes their their expertise so it's important to clarify their role is to work with students that are in special education the bcba in general you'll sometimes hear that they also work in more comprehensive mtss programs because of the entire umbrella in our circumstances our bcbas because they're funded through special education are directly responsible for students that are within the special education framework thank you any further discussion all right so what we're voting on
260right now is whether we're going to remove those four positions with the three three bcba positions and the assistant director of student services from the original motion so all those in favor of removing those four positions say hi hi so I see a hands that was an adventure so we have three so let's just vote on a separate thing right I mean we're still right okay but three is not enough to make that go forward so that motion has failed so now we're back on the original Mission motion all right so all those in favor of the original motion which retiring moves iron administrators say aye aye those opposed no no all right now we're on to next time Mr chairman move to approve a contract with Town and Country Plumbing Incorporated for boiler modifications
261at East High School an amount not to exceed 000 34 plus a 10 contingence five seconds okay we have motion second to improve a contract with 10 company if we were fixing the boiler I ordered modifications high school and I want to understand is this is an effort to save some money right so always a good thing to say to somebody yeah you're kind of hooking them in a new way or something I didn't quite understanding if you have questions certainly operations can respond there they're back there everybody all those in favor say hi all right let's suppose no the best Mr chairman and moved to approve a contract with LG drilling sorry LG drilling LLC and an amount not to exceed for the base bit amount of 78 460 plus a 10 project contingency
262my second okay now this is to give a well for Gilchrist is that right and do we not have a second law there or just to do a new second level chairman bowling members of the Board of Trustees Jeff Doherty planning and construction administrator chairman Bolin to your question there is one well out there as the boards aware we're doing water system upgrades for the entire school out there during the course of that are our partners at the states uh advised that we're needing to have a redundant water source so we had two choices we could put in a holding tank or we could put in a second well the holding tank would require a great deal of maintenance on the part of Mr Knapp's staff over the years and so in looking at the
263lifespan cost of that Improvement it was significant and so the state is requiring us um put in a second well out there so we are drilling a second well hooking it into the primary water system just in case uh the first well ever goes down probably a good thing and I know it probably wasn't required when you go through this was built I know it was required when Prairie Wind was built so we do have a backup system up there so yes these are new rules thank you for this question yes Mr Doherty um I do mostly in my work thinking about Wells on private you know Residential Properties but what is the I mean they don't cost nearly this much money so what what is the is this one just much bigger or is
264it the pump on it what is what's the difference it's DL of the above it's the depth that we're going it's a per square foot and I don't have that lineal price with me but I can get it for you but it is a six or eight inch well casing it's a it's a big casing on this well so give n plus the depth that we're having to go to hit the water do you know I can get that for you I don't have it out of my head I'm sorry thank you it's the same aquifer for the original well in this one or is it is yes Mr chair so I know we had to have two different operators out there in Prairie winds okay any other questions or schedule yes I promise I'll
265be super quick what's the time frame on this can it be started and completed before school starts trustee Bolin um or shareable and trustee Edgerton yes that's our intention is to have this done before school starts if even if it weren't done it wouldn't interfere with the operations of school but we believe we have a sufficient amount of time to get it done any other discussion okay we have a motion a second to approve the contract without B drilling or an amount of seventy eight thousand four six dollars all those in favor say aye aye as opposed no elections Mr chairman I moved to approve a contract with borderline fencing Incorporated for fencing at Buffalo Ridge Elementary School East Ridge facility Goins Elementary School Jessup Elementary School and Prairie Wind Elementary School an amount not
266to exceed 140 plus a 10 contingency to be included in the project budget second we have motion second through that I just wanted um this is going to be to I know this is probably the end of this project to make sure that you draw secure playgrounds is that correct or maybe not the end but getting close to the end yeah Mr chairman um this is part of our continuing process we've been fencing playgrounds in and this particular one is we're almost to the end um and we are going back and adding some fencing in places that we didn't get at first and if you know c-stridge is on there and that's because of the school we've moved over there as well so fencing contracts say hi hi let's suppose no questions Mr chairman I
267moved to approve a contract with Tobin and Associates PC for architectural services for root Replacements it bags Rossman and Sunrise Elementary School send an amount not to exceed 174 thousand dollars a question I know that we talked about this previously but I'm still having some issues wrapping my head around why do we need an architect for a room are we we aren't changing a slope is that correct Mr chairman trustee Edgerton yes and on these particular roofs I we had this discussion the other day there are several reasons we have a design done on them but these these ones in particular a little history on those in about 2000 and maybe seven to ten right in that that era a little bit in about a five-year period we put sonophil roofs on several schools and
268those are a white plastic roof if you've seen the really bright white roofs that are around and they're they're PVC roof and what happened was at the time um we didn't know this but we found out that the hail here and we have quite a bit of hail damages them that's how Saddle Ridge was um flooded both times it hit um they get hot and we pulled off inhales um they get brittle and then the hail hits and pokes holes in them and then the hail filled the roof drains so that it flooded through the holes in the roof and what we found out on these schools they didn't get hit directly we think it's probably from about the same time as the last Saddle Ridge hail storm but um roof roof marks and holes
269uh repairs started showing up in them and as we looked at it they looked they determined that it was from hail so it it had like scarred cracks in them and we were patching them as we went and they've just grown and grown to where they're failing now so these will be changed to any PDM route and they'll have to be designed we'll have to take out the underlayment and the slope and redesign them for any PDM roof so that's what these are for thank you very disgusting all those in favor of improving the contract recruitment Associates for architectural services group placements at various sites don't say hi hi motion essence Mr chairman I move to approve a contract with the design studio Incorporated for architectural services for kitchen renovations at Henderson and Hobbs Elementary
270Schools an amount not to exceed 114 411 second schedule of approving contact with design studio architect services for kitchen renovations at various sites say aye aye opposal problems no a few passes Mr chairman I moved to approve a contract with Tobin and Associates PC for architectural services for the Johnson Junior High Library renovation and an amount not to exceed 115 500 second can you tell me Roland Dr Crespo are we redoing Johnson Junior High because the library portion because it's a half-life is it past house is it to keep up with the rent of information we did at McCormick last year Mr Jordan respond to that question better than I can thank you superintendent uh terrible and trustee Edgerton this particular School the state likes buildings to last about 50 years both McCormick and Johnson
271are at McCormick is at 48 years this school is at 40 years respectively so a half-life would have arguably occurred in 25 years but as the the board may know from um from previous presentations It's Our intention to try to renovate both Junior highs so last year we did a discrete renovation of the McCormick library and updated that this year we're proposing to do a discrete renovation of the Johnson Library the goal is is that should the state fund a renovation of either one of these schools these particular spaces don't need to be touched in a future renovation so if you'd like I can touch on what we intend to do with the renovation sure so what we do in this renovation and what we did in McCormick is it's a complete remodel of space
272this this libraries have changed a lot in the last 40 to 48 years and so now what we're doing is reconfiguring those spaces to be more adaptive in in learning we have pull out spaces we have conference room spaces we have workspaces we put in different FF e we're putting in an individual HVAC system on this space that will be discreet and separate from that that runs the rest of the facility in there obviously new paint carpets we're putting in some more glass in in there as well to try to create a more quiet space inside that library and that's everything we're doing inside there are we putting in charging stations or Wi-Fi hotspots so that'll be a part of the design and we absolutely I would I would suspect yes that we are but
273that this is this is to recruit a designer but I think Mr McKinney may have that in his specs so I suspect you would see those in there thank you thank you and then we are doing a couple of different things we already remodeled the gymnasiums of both these schools and so we're doing a few pieces just in case we don't ever get that money is that correct yes we're trying to be responsible yes okay all those in favor of improving contact with Tobin Associates marketing services for touching Federal Library renovation say hi hi I suppose no motion tests Mr chairman I moved to approve professional service contracts with three firms by architectural means PC the design studio Incorporated and Togan and Associates PC in an amount not to exceed one hundred thousand dollars each
274for a three year term with an option to renew their actor for an additional three-year term subject to board approval to perform Services of facility project planner architect consultant second okay and the question now at the end again thank you chairman Boland Dr Crespo so isn't this a service that we should be doing in-house do we not Mr Jordan thank you thank you to have these questions answered to us but she wants to do it for the public so fair enough thank you chairman Boland trustee Edgerton uh to your point this has been a service that the staff has rendered internally in the past I will also assure the board that there have been discrete occasions where we've gotten outside the district who obtained some of the services enumerated within the contract there are 11
275services that were requesting approval and that they'd be a part of this contract but uh historically our staff did provide these services but uh unfortunately we're on this land Fortune we're now now at a point where we need to contract those out and why are you at a point that you need to contract them out um we are very short staffed at the moment trustee we're down from 2019 we had about 12 staff members we're now down to six staff members primarily the the problem is is that our compensation package is out of alignment with the market and so we're having trouble as uh we've had some retirements we've had some positions that we didn't fill and and I'm not telling the board we need 12 people I'm not saying that we try to modulate
276Up and Down based on the workflow that we've got and we're at a lower level of workflow but we do need two or three additional people and right now our salaries are not interesting I've had I've had one position open since early May zero applicants have have applied for that position so we're now in a position where in order to move the work of the business forward of the district forward we have to contract with the private sector in order to help us provide these services thank you um so I just want to make sure I understand so this is a three-year time that we could spend up to a hundred thousand dollars each with each of those three architectural firms so we may not spend that but that hundred thousand covers with each of
277them in three years of services Mr chair trustee Smith it's a hundred thousand for the contract so the idea is that we have three Consultants on staff in case one of them if they prepare a bid say an RFP then they can't bid on the RFP themselves so we've hired three so that we can use at least one say on this Library renovation that we just talked about if Sally means wanted to bid on that Library program she couldn't prepare the RFP we'd have to have Tobin or tdsi prepare that so it's a hundred thousand dollars to help us prepare those rfps um they'll also be helping us with planning some of our planning efforts some of our forecasting enrollment um other things contract Administration they'll be doing more than just writing rfps for the
278staff thank you any further discussion or questions all right all those in favor of improving um the three contracts with by architectural memes Design Studio code Associates not 1600 000 over three years say aye all right let's suppose no version that's very budget um Mr chairman I moved to wait I don't think I'm doing anything yet on it I moved to approve the budget amendment for FY 2023 in the general fund we will transfer when one million nine hundred thousand dollars from the general fund to fund transfers in the special Revenue fund where we'll transfer one million dollars to instructional support and 150 000 to fund transfers from instruction and for Student Activities where we will increase instruction by six hundred thirty thousand dollars a second okay we're just going to tell this one just
279a quick clarification on this is we're not voting to the whole budget right now or this is last year but this is my insurance budget right is that correct yes I thought it was okay you're just a plenty of things that need to do at the end of every year so all those in favor of approving the budget amendments say hi hi That was supposed to know all right now we get to recess our regular meeting and we're ready to convene on budget hearing and Jed has just been waiting all evening to Wallace with his uh presentation Mr chairman I do think we should cheer might wake your mom back and we did have the budget on the website this morning for the public to look at and I'm sorry I couldn't get out earlier
280but they're we just had a meeting on Friday and there were a couple chains that need to be made up that meeting done and we don't want you to be having to work on the weekend he already does very much not every weekend uh well Mr chairman um Dr Crespo members of the board um if it's 10 o'clock on a Monday night in July we're probably talking about the budget so um with that uh um quick introduction I would like to to point out that um as you referenced earlier we have a very comprehensive Financial framework um included with the meeting materials um with that there's a couple of uh imperatives as we approach the budget that we present to the board for consideration tonight uh the first is that we provide you with the
281most detailed and accurate information we have um there are always going to be a few caveats at a company that um I would tell you that in order to give you a clean budget for consideration you have to have a an accurate beginning balance in order to have an accurate beginning balance we have to have an accurate ending balance from last year in order for us to provide you with a comprehensive budget like this uh in the time span of two weeks uh it involves a lot of dedicated professionals including the the purchasing team working on into year procurement you have transportation Warehouse nutrition services all doing their into your inventory you have your Finance team that's working to not only build the budget for you but also making sure that we have all the
282end of year adjusting entries in our system or ruling accounting systems into the new year and then you have a bunch of uh individuals who are dedicated professionals on the payroll side that are working to accrue all the 10-month contracts that are payable into the New Year all of these things impact budgetary basis as we bring forward to your presentation uh and and certainly acknowledgment to those staff for sacrificing their weekends and their holidays uh virtually every July to make sure that this is a success um so with that said I'm going to focus on the main changes or the areas that have have been impacted since we discussed the preliminary budget or the draft budget uh in may now I mentioned that this is the most accurate information we have to this point uh
283certainly the end of fiscal year 23 is non-audited at this point so that it is subject to change we will continue to make adjusting entries um in preparation for our year-end audit that will be presented to you later in November and now one unique change um that I would like to talk about a little bit um are not only the changes from the legislative sessions that we talked about in March and may um but are also the various mechanisms that are used to calculate um our block grant model funding now this is an important piece there's a number of metrics and inputs that determine our level of funding this is the first time since I've been in school finance that we've had to build a budget over a very preliminary tentative funding model we do
284not at this point um by we the 48 school districts do not have a finalized model for the current year operation and operation so we're we're utilizing the best information we could gather from the Department of Education to present with you a budget and it certainly as those figures change uh we'll make sure that that information is updated and I'll point out a few of those areas as we move through the presentation um Mr chairman to to start off to talk about kind of the high level summary um what you'll see here um is a total budget a little more than a third of a billion dollars or more specifically 343 million dollars now um as we know the the main operating account for the district is going to be our general fund uh you'll
285see here that represents about 68 and a half percent of that total amount or 235 million dollars and we'll talk a little bit in more specificity about the general fund um knowing that it's our main operating account um but similarly we have a lot of what we call supplemental funds through special Revenue um capital projects uh major maintenance is is a part of our special Revenue but the state requirements um have us present that independently of the special Revenue fund which I'll get into here in a moment as well at Enterprise funds representing our food service and our tuition Pre-K programs our special building fund which is synonymous with those depreciation reserves that you we talk about in the past and in our trust funds so um in the interest of time I'm not going
286to get into an overly detailed summary of the budget but certainly is the trustees have any questions feel free to interrupt me and I'm happy to elaborate um so starting um with uh some of those changes I mentioned earlier um we have nearly final ADM numbers from uh the past year and I noted that the model wasn't completely finished um we do have limited updates to those State funding model calculations um and I mentioned also the the importance of those year-end figures now um it's important to talk about uh where we ended last fiscal year um you'll see here we finished the year with uh just shy of 215 million dollars um in expenditures of of which about five and a half million of those expenditures were carryover obligations from fiscal year 21-22 and that's
287an important piece of the fluidity of where those encumbrances fall and I'll try to make sure I point out a few of those nuances as we we progress through the slide deck now um the the final um well not final but the the current unassigned general fund balance or what we sometimes refer as the fund reserve for fiscal year ending excuse me there's a little bit of a typo of 6 30 2023 is anticipated to be about 42.8 million dollars now um it's a also important to point out uh a few of the the very specific caveats that accompany um any fund balance classification to the extent we can we should provide to present kind of a cash basis now keeping in mind that this 42.8 million dollars uh does not necessarily reflect uh the
288cash and Investments that the district has as of 6 30 uh 2023. um we have uh funds that are um obligated to our special revenue account to help us cash flow those federal grants that I've talked about so of that 42.8 million dollars four and a half million is being used and is not available because it's helping cash flow those special Revenue funds we have close to a million dollars in inventories whether that's fuel Warehouse all those pieces are assets on our balance sheet and are part of our our title final fund balance um so with that in mind um I want to talk a little bit about student counts um representing the the biggest impact to our funding for the upcoming year and it's it's easy to kind of get lost in um kind
289of the nuances between student enrollment and what we call average daily membership or ADM um but what you'll see here are the enrollment Counts from 2018-19 to 2022-23 now um we have um projected some enrollments for the upcoming year uh based primarily on our pre-enrollments as we completed uh the 22-23 school year um so these are certainly subject to change um but we're looking at the possibility of a very modest increase in the enrollments as we come into this fall now those numbers can be impacted by a number of different variables um certainly the state charter school is one that we talked about in may we anticipated um uh losing about 250 students based on preliminary data from the state approved charter school it's our understanding at this point that they will not be opening
290this fall um and so that money and those enrollment counts are updated to be reflected as school district one of uh Appropriations as I as I step through this um but it's important to point out that when it comes to the enrollment count we're actually funded on the average daily membership and you'll notice that we did have the decrease in enrollment of about 360 kids from 2021 to 22 23. the final year-end ADM accounts you'll see in this box are what is going to determine um our funding for the upcoming year so since we are on a declining enrollment for this past year um what will happen is our funding model will take the three-year rolling average of those years and resources for 13 444 students so a little bit shy of the projected enrollment
291for the upcoming year um and this is typical with a model that is is really based on prior your actuals um it's just kind of how the the funding adjustments work um now as far as um additional Revenue um based on those inputs to our funding models or funding model um there's a couple that I had discussed as a result of legislative changes uh first and foremost being the external cost adjustments and I know we went into a considerable amount of detail after the session as well as during the May budget budget presentation uh we're very grateful um to have that ECA applied uh you might remember that I mentioned that the ECA as a whole is going to generate about eight million dollars for the district um that's about 3.2 million dollars on the
292Personnel side and about five million dollars uh on non-personnel costs that's things for supplies and materials uh utilities uh Etc um you'll notice that um there are other mechanisms that will impact our overall funding as well I talked about the student enrollment counts uh education and experience of our staff is a factor um that until we have that final funding model we won't be able to project health insurance impacts our resources uh this upcoming year there will be no adjustments to the plus side or the negative side a school facilities data is used to determine the level of routine maintenance that we receive as a school district that is um just coming in now for review so we hope to have information on updating those figures here shortly as well uh finally reimbursable components and
293things like student demographics are going to impact the level of resources that we get for at-risk services and other areas of the um the funding mechanism as well now um I mentioned before that 360 decrease in student count um that's somewhat offsetting that eight million dollars that I mentioned earlier um we're anticipating an increase of 6.1 million dollars as kind of the net change after you account for the decrease in enrollment um the increase in the external cost adjustment and some of those other variables at least that we have the information on now now you'll recall um when we presented the the May budget um that was about two and a half million dollars uh less accounting for the state Charter School adjustment um which I'll get into here in a little bit when we
294talk about some of the Personnel Resources now kind of moving to the other side of the Ledger um speaking to some of the increased costs um it's no surprise and and we've talked about this quite a bit over the last few years um that we're being impacted by a number of different cost pressures and that's influencing our budgetary basis for your consideration tonight now I'm kind of stepping through some of these increased costs um negotiations have been complete as you know um the total compensation uh increase uh for the district will be about 5.4 million dollars um depending on the unit that will range uh anywhere from Two and a Half to four percent increase for staff uh and of course there's the associated payroll costs that go with that increases to retirement um our
295our payroll taxes to the federal government Etc now um we very intentionally build a um what you might call a skinny budget when it comes to Personnel we finished um the past fiscal year within 0.86 percent of our projected payroll budget um so very thin margins um and uh uh we're very close to those levels and we continue to refine those estimates um going forward now um we're also looking at some not only increases in Department costs but uh we had talked about the fact that we had an adjusted School level budgets in uh four years so we were able to adjust uh School level budgets to account for some of those inflationary factors but also having some adjustments down uh in areas where we had defining enrollment now more specific to some of the
296departmental impacts we have profiled about nine an addition 970 thousand dollars in curriculum adoptions for the upcoming year um now what we've done here is try to to mitigate some of the impacts of deferring some of these adoptions and consumables over time these could include English English language arts math social studies and some additional curriculum that will come to the board for music and CTE um we also have of course Coyote Ridge that will be opening soon um some of those setup costs are not fully funded whether it's from the state construction side through major maintenance or other funding sources uh that'll be a cost to the district about four hundred thousand dollars we always know that when we open a school there's going to be an incremental cost um we have to find the
297resources until our funding mechanism catches up with that so in the departmental budget profile that you'll see in the budget book you'll see an additional four hundred thousand dollars and that's to address those initial startup costs and then you'll see the following year that four hundred thousand dollars will come off and we've invested a considerable amount of time in making sure that when we're reviewing these departmental Appropriations that we're taking into account Generations uh rather than kind of the set and forget it mentality um additionally special education This was um in in reference to uh one of the the board motions that the board reviewed earlier tonight um we're continuing to see increasing costs in residential and day treatment placements um to the tune of five six hundred thousand dollars a year um those costs
298um were somewhat offset by um some changes in the way uh we flow special education resources to our district approved Charter Schools what used to be the required practice of us Contracting with put air and pass for them to pay their own staff um has kind of been rendered obsolete with the new legislation so we'll be able to kind of treat that flow through of money more from an accounting perspective as like a reimbursable or payable as they improve accrue those costs for special education we'll be able to relay that to the State Department of Education they'll fund them the following year and will flow through the money back and so we won't need the budgetary basis uh to facilitate that so we were able to actually bring the budget down slightly as a result
299of that but still having to profile those increased costs for some of those placements um finally uh bus purchases are another area that we continue and have expected uh some increases in the coming years uh specifically we had talked in the past about uh the buses that we have on order and the lead time that's associated with that currently our transportation team anticipates that we'll have eight to ten buses or 1.6 to 1.7 million dollars and bus approvals this upcoming year and then followed by six in 24 25. we knew that with changes in the life cycles of those buses that we were going to have to plan for those kind of bulk years where a number of buses were going to life out whether it was through mileage or years in service and so
300what we've done is taken unobligated funds at the end of the year from the Transportation budget and we've moved those into that bus purchase or equipment Reserve we anticipate that we'll bring about 1.1 million dollars back into the general fund in order to facilitate that 1.7 million dollar cost um so we'll combine that with the current year Appropriations as well as that depreciation Reserve to meet those Capital replacement needs um Mr bikini mentioned earlier um we've been able to profile uh two million dollars for a staff refresh um it's been a number of years when I first came to the district I think the last time we appropriated funds for staff refresh was 2018. um so we're excited that we have the availability to be able to um meet that need on the Staffing side
301as well now um before I move into some of the other comments regarding Insurance increases I do want to again mention um kind of the the profile in the picture where we are with utilities and I know I had an opportunity to speak with the board last week on this but as a whole our utilities are up about 16 over the prior year um about 900 000 that's a pretty big increase in the span of one year natural gas alone is up 56 percent um that's about five hundred and seventy thousand dollars for our district as a whole uh electric is up ten percent that's three hundred and ten thousand dollars um it looks as though we can anticipate at least for the the short duration um continuing to to incur some pretty significant costs
302with utilities and as I had mentioned before there's the utilization side um which certainly is an area of focus for us I think we started tonight by turning off the AC in this room so we're already starting to address that um but we also have just the rates which is something that is certainly out of our control but we'll continue to work with the facilities team on addressing some of those increases as well now with regards to utilities there's also an important aspect I mentioned earlier about higher Ridge um as uh the school comes to substantial completion uh the responsibility for the utilities of that building will shift to the district and that will happen sometime in the next fiscal year so we'll incur that additional cost for the utilities for Coyote Ridge it'll take
303a full year after students occupy the building before there's an adjustment so depending on when we have substantial completion we'll incur some costs next year for those utilities we'll have 2024-25 we will incur the cost for those utilities and then the funding mechanism should adjust for 2026. so again we have some upfront costs as a district we have to plan for um Mr chairman just a couple of other areas again I won't um uh hit on every single time uh small adjustment but it's important to point out the insurance increases that we've incurred as a district over the past few years um we are sitting um we're approaching about two million dollars a year just in property and liability insurance coverage for coverage for a district um and again um it's not because the district
304hasn't um sought out alternatives to control those costs um every year we go out to the market to have those those um plans um re-quoted uh we also have developed safety plans with our risk coordinator we've increased our deductibles to control those costs we're not unique but we continue have to balance um those those High rates of insurance as a district as a whole that we really have to carry coverage on Mr chairman shifting just a little bit um to the revenue side of the budget presentation now as we know our block grant funds or funding model allocations are distributed to us in both the form of state and local dollars um taking us a little bit back in history in 2020 and 21 we had two bills that significantly impacted the way we reflect
305mineral Grace property taxes and just for a quick reminder um there are essentially three different ways that public education is funded in Wyoming there's 12 Mills that go directly to the state for redistribution there's 25 Mills that are collected at the district level and there's six Mills that are collected at the county level and that are shared between the districts of the county so us and Laramie too um a big portion of that is going to be in the form of uh mineral-based property taxes or ad valorem taxes however in order to fund our operations we have to estimate or anticipate what the collections will be for the upcoming year um and again I won't uh be overly redundant and talk about kind of the challenges that a company that those projections but when we
306were traditionally funded anywhere from 20 to 30 percent of our total operating costs through local taxes or local funding sources um between the change in the ad valorem tax collection process as well as the a very significant impact to the way special education is resourced to school district um we're going to move closer to a 40-60 split where 60 of our resources come from state aid 40 from local sources now um to give you a little bit of perspective of what that means for the current thing that we just finished um last summer when we discussed the budget for your consideration we estimated that we would collect about 60.5 million dollars in local tax collections that's the 25 and six Mills well as the year progressed um we were in that time frame where we
307were collecting um 20 20 production 2021 production and some of 2022 production um so we modified our estimates um and up that local tax collection by 10 million dollars so we amended our state reporting um from 60.5 to 70.6 and that in turn decreased the entitlement um our anticipation of those additional Revenue was in an effort to kind of balance that equation if you will not having too little in tax resources or not having too much well even after that adjustment uh we collected 74.8 million dollars in local taxes for the current year um so the difference between that amount and the amended report um which was the last one we could provide to the Department of Education in March uh meant that we have a 4.2 million dollar what we call an excess tax
308collection um essentially um in very straight and simple terms that means we collected next year's money this year um and because of that um it is statutorily restricted for use next year that 4.2 million is required to be used for next year's operations um and we experienced this last year's as well but we've done a lot to kind of mitigate That Swing From tax access to tax shortfall um and I'll show you a little bit about that when we get to the the eye charts on the next Pages here so um Mr chairman we're somewhat familiar with this this format um it's a kind of a required format on uh presenting our budgetary information but just to briefly walk us through uh the figures that we're seeing seeing here um the fiscal year 2223 is
309an important place to start so um we collected 216.5 million dollars total in general fund Revenue um there are a number of areas that um we had additional unanticipated revenues um this past year um not only the the ad valorem taxes that I mentioned earlier but also um in the way of Interest earnings um for my portfolios fines and forfeitures uh impact Aid motor vehicle license fees a lot of these came in the fourth quarter of last year um which led to that increased level of Revenue um specific to our investment earnings when we built the budget last July our Consolidated Investment Portfolio was making barely over one percent um in the course of less than a year we're at five percent um and so you can imagine that we went from a few hundred
310thousand dollars total and interest earnings to over three million dollars in the time span of months um was was a welcome unanticipated Revenue that's all money that's available for us for the next year um there is no recapture by the state for those revenues um we can utilize those funds within our educational system what made a little difficult was that a lot of that a majority of it came in that fourth reporter um a couple of other high points as we kind of stepped through this um we have um an additional Revenue impact from a an adjustment or an audit correction from 2018 so um from time to time the department of audit will review our funding mechanism and determine if money needs to be reallocated to the district or from the district we had
311a full audit in 2018-19 over um um our entire funding model allocation uh that audit was closed in November um it was calculated to provide an additional 1.5 million dollars to the district but we we worked um uh to to acquire those revenues um and we had very little communication over the course of the year to the point um where we thought we might have to write off that additional resourcing to the district um it showed up in her bank account on June 30th um and so that was another area um where that 1.5 million dollar was a was unanticipated I mean I'll kind of explain how that ties into our fund balance here in a moment now um as you kind of work through you'll see that we had 209.3 million dollars in expenses
312and current year funds the 5.5 that I mentioned earlier from the prior years carryover so our results from operations was a um in addition to our fund balance of 1.6 million dollars taken into account the prior Year's fund balance of 46.4 those offsets from those encumbrances that carry forward and the new ones that are added for the upcoming year and that's that 6.6 million dollars um that you'll see here now this 6.6 million dollars in carryover is really comprised of a couple of main areas there's the curricular costs from the prior year that we have to profile in our budget those are obligations that we haven't received and haven't expensed out to our accounts payable side and we're still carrying the implementation cost for Erp system we still have quite a bit of work to
313go we're only six months into the payroll side we're looking at the additional implementation on the other modules as well as the remaining years of the licensing on that system as well and that accounts for a little less than 2 million of that carryover as well now um as you see at the bottom um we have an unrestricted fund reserve of about 42.8 million dollars uh that's up about 2 million from the prior year um again primarily as a result of those additional interest earnings and that payment to the district on June 30th so um suffice it to say our fund balances is relatively flat to the prior year um which puts us in a very good position as we start talking about uh the budgetary projections and proposal for you for the upcoming year
314um unfortunately there's a number that I can't see behind here let me see if we move it there we go um so more specific to the budget for your consideration we have 216.5 million dollars in revenue profiled for the upcoming year um I have accounted for those adjustments in those ad alarm tax collections we've increased our projection outlook for our interest earnings um but taking into account uh where we expect the Federal Reserve to be in a year from now um knowing that we're very limited in what investment vehicles as a school district we can invest in um it would be a little bit premature for us to assume that this five percent interest rate as it will happen indefinitely but for the foreseeable future at least since this next coming fiscal year we've built
315our projections around that um expenses 228.4 million dollars and I um discussed earlier taking into account the additional 6.6 and carryover expenses that you'll see at the very bottom we have a projected fund balance of 35.1 uh just shy of 35.2 million dollars now keep in mind um there's always an important caveat here um that would be the fund balance if we had no carryover money that followed from 23 24 into 24 and 25 so you'll um inevitably you'll see some level of additional fund balance that's obligated that'll carry over into the next year um Mr Man I I promise I'm I'm trying to hit the high point so I just have a few more slides to go um on the next slide you'll see that um we have the general fund uh outlined in
316what we call major function areas in public education expenditures are classified in a uniform chart of accounts prescribed by the Department of Education um and so as the appropriators budget allocations um are uh determined at what we call that again that major function level so you'll see here about 56 percent of our proposed general fund expense budget is in the instruction level or 131.4 million dollars this includes regular and special education CTE virtual education and so on at the next level instructional support that's about 11.8 percent of the budget that includes things like guidance counselors related Services social workers nursing um all those support services that we provide to students and again we're speaking specifically to the general plan now the general support area 31.6 percent um is not just Central admin there's a lot
317of pieces that are part of our operations that are included in that calculation things like Transportation facility maintenance technology your business services all those are a piece of that General support area and that represents about 74.3 million dollars of the proposed budget now there's always um a lot of different ways that um budgetary information can be summarized another part of our mandated chart of accounts is what we call Objects um and this really describes the type of expenditure um as you know the vast majority of our general fund budget supports Personnel 82.5 percent of our budget will be designated in the general fund for salaries and benefits that's about uh 886.7 million dollars supplies and materials will be 19.3 million or about 8.6 percent of our general fund budget our purchase Services about 4.8 this
318includes insurance that I mentioned earlier Communications internet repair and maintenance tuition to support the Dual current programs that we heard about earlier um in some capital outlay in certain situations and then finally the transfers or other um this is uh primarily the funding support that we provide to the Charter Schools um in our district this the district approved Charter Schools uh the flow through that is resource to those two schools makes up us the the majority of that last 2.5 percent so Mr chairman um a lot of information on the general fund I will just hit a few of the areas regarding those supplemental funds that I mentioned earlier um we've gone in quite a bit of detail on the general fund in the past few months um so I'll just kind of draw your
319attention to the special Revenue fund column again I apologize it's a little hard to see a lot of information crammed on a tiny little slide um but our Consolidated grants as we know we're ending the the the the timeline for the S3 funds this will be the last full year of sr3 as of um today we have about 24 million dollars unobligated on Esser funds we have six million of that 24 year March for the retention for our staff um and that leaves us about 18 or 19 million dollars for the course of the upcoming year we will return to a more normalized Grant allocation of about 14 million dollars to our district as a whole for our Consolidated grants our special education our USDA grants are outside in the Enterprise fund um but of
320course we have other areas that are part of those special Revenue funds so you'll see the expenditure amounts of about 42.3 million dollars that takes into account what's left of those Esser funds as well as the new year allocations for those Consolidated grants I mentioned earlier major maintenance funds this includes that formula formula allocation for major repair costs um Mr doordris gave a quick summary of some of the work that they're doing to leverage additional funds for things like remodel needs at the junior high level and so we profiled uh 25 million dollars in expenditures for the upcoming year that's significantly more than what you've seen in the past that's going to address a lot of the building and facility needs that were presented in may as well as the efforts of the facilities Department
321to leverage those funds to to meet those needs for those major remodels at the junior high level um cap Pawn is the next column you'll see over or Capital Construction rather um you'll see a 746 000 um that's the pot air and past leases for their two buildings um that's a flow through from the state that comes through the district and to those schools that number will be modified as we get final routine maintenance calculations that somewhat offset that amount we have about 13.7 million dollars left in the Coyote Ridge project to expense um that's included in the profile for Capital Construction as well as the neighborhood facility demolition that's about another 377 thousand dollars and then some of the modulars that the district receives money from the state are also included in that total
322expense budget of 14.9 million now the next column over is the special building fund um again this is where we expense the projects for uh the Cheyenne community recreation District um that we talked about earlier so we have um the projects that are expensed out of that fund and then the rec district reimburses the the district for those projects those are included in the profile of the amount of 13.2 million as well as the enhancements to Coyote Ridge that are outside of the states allowable uses or adequacy for the capital construction projects and then um some potential improvements to the AG facility um and um other uh demolition costs if necessary on the art buildings um what is important to note is on that special building fund I talked about that 1.1 million dollars earlier
323that we need to use to meet the needs for our bus purchases for the upcoming year so that 1.1 million dollars that you see there at the bottom uh other transfers would go back into the general fund allow us to reimbur excuse me allow us to expense out the purchase of those buses and then we will be reimbursed by the state over the course of five years uh the next column almost there Mr chairman um is the nutrition and um tuition pre-k program um just a quick note um your nutrition services team um just this past year served over 927 uh thousand school lunches uh 361 000 breakfasts uh as well as 21 000 um adult meals for sites that qualified um you have a very fiscally minded nutrition services staff and I can't say
324enough about Miss Roth and the team over there um they've put a lot of effort into building out their catering program um and what that does is allows us to run that Enterprise and offset some of the costs that go along with nutrition services so every time the catering service end of a nutrition services provides services to in the to the district or even outside parties that money goes right back into our nutrition services operations which is a great Enterprise for our district as a whole um they're doing great things with some of those programs over there now along those lines maybe start with the good news and then end with the bad news on nutrition services um we did have some carryover federal aid from covid-19 that was providing a little bit of additional
325revenue for meal price reimbursement we had an additional 40 cents for lunches uh 15 cents per breakfast which means as that money ends for the upcoming year uh we'll do lose about three to four hundred thousand dollars in Revenue in our nutrition services for the upcoming year so we've actually profiled a decrease in federal revenue and you'll see that here 4.5 million dollars that's down about three 350 000 from the prior year um this is a long way of explaining that at some point um it's likely that the general fund will have to go back to supplementing nutrition services um as you know in years past up until the pandemic money was helping support USDA programs our district routinely transferred 1.3 to 1.5 million dollars just to keep the nutrition services function balanced um it's
326typically not a self-sustaining operation in school districts but our team has done a lot to try to build it that way the fact that we've had three years of not having to support the program going on for is really a testament to that additional federal aid that we received in the work of the nutrition services team a couple of other areas of course um there'll be impacts to labor as a result of negotiated agreements um the pek program continues to um grow in enrollment as Dr Crespo mentioned earlier um opening the third site uh in a matter of days we had those seats filled um we've adjusted some of the tuition structure around those programs as a matter of fact I mentioned earlier that we might have to make some adjusting entries just the other
327day I noticed some of our um our title program expenses were hitting that tuition PK account and so we'll we'll need to journal entry those out but um we're excited about the program moving forward and finding that um lack of a better term um balance between the tuition costs and the expenditures for that that program as a whole uh finally um I'll just touch on the trust funds um there's a lot of history um on the work that the district has done um to address our liabilities around our health and Senate fund and our retention incentive programs um I'll I'll be brief on these but just say that you'll notice that the ending balance for those trust funds those two combined trust funds it's about 12.9 million dollars when we develop these trusts our goal
328was within 20 years uh to fully fund those programs uh we're on track um we're on track to actually exceed that 20-year estimate as of the fiscal year in 22 we are about 70 funded as we brought back the health incentive program we did see that increase they're they're very positively correlated those two programs so as more people take the health incentive program we have to pay out the retention as well um so we did see that increase this past year on the retention side um so we've eroded some of that that groundwork but we've been able to to keep on Pace with fully funding those programs and um I think it's within Arm's Reach of meeting that uh that goal within 10 years instead of 20. um which is which is which is great
329news and we'll have more information as we complete the the year and bring our actuaries into that that conversation uh so Mr chairman just as I conclude um thanks again for your time and attention uh during the last few months as we developed the fiscal year uh 24 proposal um as always we seek to prioritize educational needs of our students while maintaining that fiscal responsibility uh I think we've done that with the well positioned and balanced budget for the upcoming year and I'm certainly uh happy to address any questions the board members might have no questions a couple clarifications okay so as I was looking at um last year's Department stuff I just had a couple clarifying questions obviously I wasn't on the board so I wasn't aware of the changes but um two departments
330specifically one was the Department of Instruction um it went from a budget of 204. 000 to 877 roughly um could you explain why there was that change Mr chairman uh trustee Humphrey um absolutely um so those are the instructional budgets um as we develop the new enterprise resource planning or Erp system uh we looked at that as an opportunity to realign our budgets um so we had two instructional budgets that we combined into one so there wasn't an increase in either of those areas there was a primary and a secondary we just made it one instructional budget okay thank you for the clarification and last the department of the superintendent in fiscal year 2021 2022 was about 35 000 and then there was that 400 000 jump the following year could you explain what that
331was forward Please Mr chairman uh trustee Humphrey um absolutely so um during that same process of realigning our budget um we had 400 000 actually it was five hundred thousand dollars that um was allocated to the operations budget um which was there for strategic initiatives for superintendents um that money obviously didn't belong in the support operations budget so it was reduced and then transferred over to uh the superintendent budget um that budget has been used for things like supporting the Strategic um initiatives facilitator as far as professional development um accessing um alternative language resources for school districts that didn't have them typically that budget really in the last three or four years has only spent 30 to maybe forty thousand dollars a year okay thank you for the clarification any other questions thank you Mr
332secretly for putting together this budget and the presentation I really learned a lot last Friday when you met before so thank you for entertaining your questions then I just have one question that I it occurred to me tonight um it was on your previous slide and um I think I might have saw if you can share that again um a spending amount under instruction for um sorry it's on the right before the questions slide yet okay so under expenditures for um I can't see the title but it's the second from the right column um and under expenditures for instruction it looks like it's 411 875 uh 411 875 and I was wondering if you were talking about the cost of pre-K did you say that Mr chairman um Tracy Clausen that is correct so the
333instructional costs you see there um are for the tuition PVA program um as profiled in a separate fund within the budget book but you're correct 411 would be the estimated instructional costs so my my question really is um my I thought that the uh tuition-based pre-ks would pay for themselves is this is this an expenditure that won't be paid for through tuition Mr chairman um trustee Claussen um there is tuition that um that covers a majority of that 411. um if you look um a little bit higher on that really hard to read um we won't be very visible here because they're they're Consolidated but um we're estimating the revenue to be 255 um thousand dollars in tuition Revenue which is a pretty conservative estimate for those three tuition PK programs which offsets that 411
334um which would leave about 130 to 150 um that would need to be supported through a general fund transfer um we believe that we're taking incremental steps to lowering that transfer amount um and we've we've looked pretty hard at um what the uh the the benefit of those programs as we know um the investment in early childhood provides a huge Advantage financially as students progress through the education system less interventions those type of things so um we believe that the tuition program will start to come into more equilibrium with the costs um certainly the change in the tuition structure that I mentioned earlier is going to enhance them thank you Mr secretly I just um I'm sorry I'm I'm really tired thinking really well but um the ending balance on that final slide down on
335the very bottom right corner of over 78 million dollars so that's that's what we're projecting to have over from what all of our Revenue sources are and what our outgo is next fiscal year or the I guess now the current fiscal year but where does that 78 million go what happens with that at the end of the year if that's really where we're sitting with the Surplus um I'm sorry I really am tired um Mr chairman um trustee Smith um thank you for the question so that 78 million uh represents a fund balance if you will um and so that is the the unobligated level of resources that the district have across those those different funds um that money is a part of our Investment Portfolio um we invest those resources to the to the
336three million I talked about earlier now keep in mind some of those areas um are intended to grow that fund of balance uh specific to the trust funds um we know that between um the health incentive fund and the retention incentive fund um that we have liabilities between those two uh one is uh close to 19 million the other one's 20 million so we have about 40 million dollars depending on where we are with the Actuarial evaluation um we've been able to fund the explicit portion of those and so as we build that fund balance and those trust funds it's going to pay for that future liability um the ending balance in the general fund uh is what I mentioned earlier is used to to cash flow the rest of our operations um it's used
337to help um cash those and front those checks for things like rec district funds um uh federal funds through the grant program um in other areas so um Mr chairman trustee uh Smith if I've answered your question I might be a little tired too so if I miss the mark please let me know um and then I if if I may um I just wanted to thank you and your team and everybody that's put time and effort into this I'm not a money person and I mean I my numbers sort of make my head spin anyway even when I'm not tired um but I I can't even imagine the the work and the hours that you guys have put into this um and balancing things so thank you very much um that said I just
338um I'm gonna be voting no tonight and it's more for some philosophical reasons and I I won't get into that now um just but I I wanted to say thank you for all your work it really has nothing to do with the not all what all you've done here in your preparation so thank you anybody else Mr cigarelli I would also like to say thank you for the work that you've done and to your staff I can only imagine the hours that you've put in so thank you and it's very late time so so back in February I had asked if I could see some POS or invoices and for a couple of weeks I didn't hear anything I asked again and then I was like we told no and I believe that Jed you're
339doing a pretty good job as far as filling Us in as to the checks that we write but sometimes I think a little more detail to those checks is warranted and I asked one more time I asked also if I could just get a read-only version into Thailand which then I was told that well then every trustee would have to have the same ability I thought that was great but once again I was told no so for that reason because I think that just that last layer of transparency that I know in other districts in Wyoming they are getting I'm going to be in about tonight foreign [Music] concerning our budget before next year are we checking online too there's no one there there's no way in life okay nobody's raising the hand if you
340want to if you're online and wants to chairman bowling he can see the so he can sit on that right if anybody wants to come and raise your hand and we're not seeing any hands raised I don't see anybody coming to the microphone here so we will move on and we'll recess the button here and go back into our regular section and we're at d 3.19 am I am I reading this entire thing or just yes no just the top just okay good thank you Mr chairman I move to approve the Laramie County School District number one budget for FY 2024. second period motion of seconds to approve our budget for fiscal year 2024 all those in favor say aye aye aye aye okay can I see your show of hands okay so we have
341four votes so it passes okay so she has all right so next one we're going to Leading dates all right so our next meeting is a regular board meeting will be held Monday August 15 2022 at 6 PM work session will begin at 5 pm and I do need to ask where we have finished the um I'm sorry obviously all right so this is what's wrong on here evidently August 21st is the actual meeting I guess okay so that's going to be a 6 PM work session will be at 5 pm okay before I say the business the district's done I want to ask we've gone through two rounds of people coming to the agenda meeting so we're now starting the third round so it's open to anybody at this point so and that is
342going to be [Music] that's the Wednesday before that so that's going to be on Wednesday the 16th at 2 o'clock okay Alicia and who else I can actually make that one okay so we got Melissa and Renee all right so those two will be coming to the second agenda meeting Mr Remington okay now I'm gonna say this is the district is done and so now we're going to the second public input session and we have one person Mr Reynolds thank you for sticking around with all of that no time all right trustees uh thank you for hearing me again I'd like to start ending meetings uh you heard it tonight a long time ago the end game for libraries the end of libraries procurement this has never been about banning or pulling books we all
343know that's a horrible idea and the people on the right side of History do not ban or pull books now this has always been about one thing cutting down the future to the size of the present let's understand something you cannot Define sexually explicit right now not in a way that would hold up in a challenge or in a court that's what this whole debate has been about you don't like State Statute or you read it horribly so you want to create a new one you want your politically extremist and theocratically designed Concepts to determine what the future could possibly hold for our students you want to destroy future books future authors future stories future libraries you want to eliminate what you consider future crimes to appease what you feel now basically you want people
344who look and think like you now to be comfortable and not be challenged by news stories new ideas new definitions the game trustees is limiting our students Futures to repeat to P is a closed and find my presence Richard Rody wrote that hope is the ability to believe that the future will be unspecifically different from and unspecifically Freer than the past you want to eliminate that hope to eliminate the broader future a more inclusive future now the game is on the record now we know you want to cut the future to the size of the president now we know your politics are more important than our students futures but since you want to eliminate their future let's talk about that past you love to bring up to Kill a Mockingbird every medium and it makes
345sense It Centers racial tension on naive white girl it creates the archetype of a white Serena complete with his black servant and the black man he is supposed to save is not only physically challenged so as not to be threatening but he dies anyway this book is exactly why we have to let contemporary standards of a future time continue to set up set which books we use and buy To Kill a Mockingbird makes white people feel safe and centered and dominant of course it's beloved it's also Antiquated and quite honestly racist in many ways this is an example of cutting the present cutting the future down to the size of the present books by Nick Stone Andy Thomas Jason Reynolds and more are better more relevant and more accessible but this is the game a
346future made finite by present extremist politics a future cut down to the size of the present our students deserve their future not your pets thank you please there's anybody else here who wants me is there okay so we're going to and we're going to go into exact position Mr chairman I move to go into executive session at this time prior to adjournment for the purpose of possible student long-term suspensions and explosions potential litigation and personnel second all right you have a motion to go on Executive section all those in favor say aye aye aye as opposed no questions