001okay we're going to get rolling here go ahead it's six o'clock i'm going to on june 7th of 2021 i'm gonna call this meeting of the laramie county school district number one board of trustees to order welcome everyone i'm so excited to have you all here if you would all stand and join me for the pledge of [Music] one allegation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and we have a lot of recognitions to do on our first item on the agenda however is adjustments to the agenda so dr brown i'm sure i do have one adjustment to the agenda um that would be under g executive sessions we will have some long-term suspension expulsions i'd like to put possible litigation in there as well very well madam chair i move
002to adopt the agenda with any agenda all in favor say aye aye motion adopted that brings us to our recognition of staff and students for outstanding achievements um we'll begin with central high school principal fred george would you come up here and talk to us about your student um danielle thank you is she here with us today okay it's an honor to to recognize daniel ivey and her mother called me today and she had a very good reason she couldn't be here this evening but she wishes she could if you tire easily then i'm going to ask you to sit down because this young lady is involved in a lot of things she's a member of our central high school music department where she plays clarinet and is in the marching band she is on
003the dance team and has lettered for four years she is active in many clubs including fellowship christian athletes our french club and key club and i don't have my glasses tonight so i'm struggling a little bit she was a member of our inaugural softball team and after completing 500 hours of communications earned her bronze silver and old congressional awards her volunteer experience mainly was with the khmer shelter and danielle is a member of 4-h where she participates in photographer photography and quilting and then finally following high school danielle attends to plan northern colorado university where she plans to study sports and exercise medicine so it's an honor to recognize daniel ivey very good thank you all right mary quash do you have uh somebody from federal western federal credit union who's going to speak as
004well yes thank you if i may first education no no no western vista federal credit unions online so i know for a student of the week oh yes yes federal credit union has been sponsoring our student of the week program um for many years and we have a representative online to say a few words about that is our student do we have something yes and they're unmuted go ahead and talk thank you my name is mick finnegan i'm the business banker at western vista and we at western vista are proud to support the school district's student of the week program again this year and each week we've had the opportunity to learn about more amazing students from laramie county in recognition of the efforts put forth by the student of the week western vista is
005proud to present a certificate of achievement and a 25 gift certificate to the recipient uh congratulations and we wish you continued success thank you we really appreciate your support there thank you very much let's give western investor a round of applause thank you mr george now you're on it again all right well it's very obvious that we have um huge support from our community for our student of the week program um in particular our credit unions and um i have with me tonight uh jim yates who is the president of first education federal credit union and throughout the time that we've been doing the student of the week program first education has been partnering with kfbc radio on weekly radio spots to recognize our students and so we have a special plaque in recognition of
006that it highlights the future leaders and and those that should be role models for all of us thank you we want jim we also want to thank you for all your service with the cheyenne schools foundation we have just really appreciate all the helping they gave us the students and their annual up run is august 28th and you can just google cheyenne schools foundation and register very good thank you all right next we will be recognizing the seal of bi-literacy awards recognized by the district world language coordinator mary brummett would you come up here please thank you good evening it is my pleasure to recognize these students there you go and zoom land if you don't is this better okay um it is my pleasure to recognize these students for earning the sale of my
007literacy what that means is these students have met a certain cut score for their proficiency in english that's determined off of a cut score of act and then they tested in either french german or spanish and they had to test in listening reading writing and speaking and they had to mean certain cut scores for that and these students met that so basically these students have what's called a functional fluency or proficiency which means we can take them and drop them in their country of language and they can survive and they can get a job they can work they can be a productive member of society and that is very very exciting for our students for our teachers for our program so i'm going to call the teachers up who have students tonight and then after
008i've introduced them and call the students up and then the teachers will present the awards so mrs mary johnson from she's our german instructor from east and south we have katie brammer mrs katie brammer from uh central spanish teacher we have mrs jenny anderson who is spanish teacher at south and we have mrs sarah evans who is french teacher at central and then if you are here for seo by literacy students please come on up and don't be shy come on there we go and then we'll just have mrs johnson start i have four students that qualified for the seal this year two of them are not here the first one is haley gold um i've really seen hayley grow a lot in four years and she's amazing so haley miles this will seem strangely
009like graduation you're the last one again miles yeager miles was my senior senior this year i also have skills for caleb pace who finished a four-year program in three and a half years and for carla rojas who is a native spanish speaker uh sealed by literacy in spanish and english and by a few points missed the seal by literacy in german all right this is brian all right um well i've got some students here from central um the first is alicante and alejandra took ap spanish with me as well and we're waiting on those tests for so hopefully we'll get those soon uh we have scarlett bainbridge who scarlett um took level two with me last year and then totally wrapped it into three and four um because of the four by four schedule and
010so i think this is a really cool thing um and then we have challenge waller who i've had challenged since what spanish won so congrats it's very exciting um and then last but not least here we've got haley wetzel who i've had since eighth grade um which is pretty darn cool to say that i've had this student for that long um i have others that are not with us tonight um josh a fern andrew bishop luis gonzalez de jesus and luis was artist um not a student of mine he was an english language learner um and so he tested in english and spanish that way uh taylor hate who also took ap spanish well haley you took me with me too sorry uh mark martinez who was also not necessarily a student of mine but
011took also a english language learner jacqueline thornell who i did have the honor teaching in level three and four and that's it awesome well thank you guys hello i'm here to recognize andrew state from south high school he received the sale of by literacy in english and spanish an interesting thing about andrew is he started this school year only in spanish two he changed his schedule due to the four by four and took spanish three he is the first student at south high school in the spanish language to ever take the test for this year by literacy and to achieve it so we are incredibly proud of you andrew thank you hi i'm sarah evans i teach french at central um and we had five students earn the ceo by literacy in french this year
012two of them are here with me this evening um and the first one um took ap french with me this year and has been in french since uh seventh grade and that is madeline ayers and the second street was also in ap french this year um after uh doing the independent study for french four in order to graduate a year early still achieve the seal and that is very flying my other three recipients are also um students who are at ap french this year and those are kaya hacker julius height and miranda miss very proud of all of them [Music] turn around we'll give you an air high five okay next we have up our wyoming high school athletic association for sportsmen's ship award so could i have uh it's going to be recognized by
013our district activities director tom siemens thank you mr siemens i have some certificates hold here that's okay yep we can be your desk hey ladies and gentlemen i'm proud to announce that we have a whole bunch of good sportsmanship awards to hand out tonight and i want to start with east high school the following students if they're here can come up kiara kershaw taylor miller and cora williams and they were recognized in the east central game uh for their professionalism leadership and respect for their teammates opponents and officials during the match and it's always awesome when we have a crosstown rivalry game and we're showing outstanding sportsmanship if you'd like to say a few words and madam chair just this was for soccer by the way because it could have been softball but this was
014soccer correct it is soccer thank you would you girls like to thank your parents cora was nominated again for the sheridan versus east soccer match and in this particular case the officials said that she had positive interaction with her teammates opponents and officials so two in one nighters outstanding young ladies um we want to thank their parents their coaches and mr teammates for zoe lambs online too okay sorry anyway i know they have good role models on the sideline and at home and they're outstanding kids so congratulations and thank you very much congratulations we also have some central soccer players that have been nominated in the same game east versus central and they are alyssa wrenchly mia gehrig and joey lamb if they're here zoe is online so zoey let's let's join we'll allow you
015to talk well she's getting on as always also nominated for the regional soccer tournament as well so she'll have two awards tonight can you find her i got her out there zoey you can immute yourself and talk there she is i don't think she's gonna talk are there any of the other um individuals in the audience that maybe are too shy to come up did we get everybody called the other players i don't see anyone else okay well i can tell you that the players were recognized as you know uh for the same thing that the east players were recognized for and that's maintaining their sideline manner their professionalism and uh shake your head out there you guys i'm sure we're very good sports and then zoey was also nominated uh at the regional tournament
016though she didn't play she was injured for for being an outstanding teammate and cheering the kids on and trying to coach him and i know she's one of the better players uh in the state i'm sure that wasn't any fun to miss the tournament but yeah she did a great job as a sportsman anyway very good well we hope she's recovered and congratulations to all of you well done the south soccer team boys soccer team was nominated for good sportsmanship and in that particular case with leadership and respect demonstrated by both coaches and players sidelined for maintaining a professional manner and that was a south's game against campbell county so the whole team got nominated and we had a snafu a few weeks ago and didn't have them all here so we thought we'd try
017it again if coach francis is here he could come up and talk about his team oh there he is okay it's a little bit strange looking out in the crowd because normally you know right away the coach was here because they'd be one of the only ones in the crowd i just want to thank south and the south boys um i always get tremendous respectful young men over there so it's really them to do it because i and we'd just like to say congratulations again to the south soccer team and i apologize for the technical difficulties um that we had a couple weeks ago when we were trying to recognize you and as well to the young men that were in the audience so um thank you so much for your participating in your good
018sportsmanship and representing south so well we're very proud of you um next on our list is our um south yes south high school fccla state champions so could i be recognized by phil thompson principal phil thompson and advisors jackie wartman and carol flores i have some certificates up here thank you i'm going to introduce our coach jackie wortman and he will introduce the players so i had three young ladies who um one got the gold medal of or at state here which was held here in cheyenne and um one of them was able to make it tonight um this is nevaeh kennedy she persevered she majorly persevered through all of this pandemic she did her project and won the gold in career investigation and i think it solidified what she thought she wants to do
019when she gets finished with college and that is to be a midwife and so she's going to go for her rn right and then emt and then become a midwife but she had major roadblocks throughout the whole time she started in the end of september beginning of october trying to get um do some job shadowing here in town or anywhere really in the state of wyoming and we ended up she or she ended up having to travel all the way to lingle and to do one job shadow and then she was also able to job shadow here at uh cheyenne obgyn with another midwife but um nevaeh is an extremely hard-working diligent persevering determined young lady and i can hardly wait to see what she does with her future career and she's got one more
020year of school and i'm looking forward to seeing her achieve gold again next year in fccla uh but anyway it's been a pleasure and an honor to be her advisor this year the other two ladies that young ladies that got gold are ellie burt as well as elena armitson and they did chapter service project display and they did a fabulous job as well um persevering throughout the entire pandemic and all that that entailed so anyway i'm very proud of them thank you do you know if the other young ladies are online at all did they join us through zoom i didn't didn't see them up there okay all right very good and then trusty we've um go ahead and commence can you tell us what fccla is and what the students do to participate and
021how tough is the state competition so um fccla stands for family community or sorry family career community leaders of america and so what we try to do is teach them leadership skills and um they are always doing something within the community and trying to make the community better and as well as themselves and our school so [Music] are there chapters at a lot of schools i'm just wondering what the competition is like um is it just well in in nevaeh's area there were 13 people who competed just in career investigation our overall the state of wyoming i believe we have about 4 000 members wow um so and with chapter service project display which lana and ellie competed in i think that there were 15 groups so so quite a few yeah excellent very good
022congratulations again thank you okay very good the next thing we have is our south high school 4a state girls track team mr thompson i have a few more quite a few more certificates for you here i just want to know i know how fast they are because you saw the spring in wyoming this year and there was a lot of moisture and they run down the halls faster than any team i've ever seen and they're not running for me so they might even run faster if that were the case but i'd like to introduce coach and our four by one hundred two hundred four four by four wow that's a long run too [Music] hi i'm joe brisboy um head coach casey steele is the other head coach and he couldn't be here tonight unfortunately
023we're also missing one of our members of the 4x4 paige giel we have cadence growth acacia growth which i just found out they're sisters i wanted to say uh so that i wrote this stuff down so i didn't forget it this is the first ever undefeated season for a relay itself it's a first ever state championship for a relay itself and the first ever best of the best award for any member of the track team at south high um paige who couldn't be here with us tonight we were looking at the record board itself and she saw there was 407 and she said oh my gosh we'll never get that our time up until that point was a 4 14. and i without hesitation said you absolutely get it um not only did we get
024it we ran a 402 um um and and came really really close we had an injury and an illness at the state meet that um stopped us from getting sub four um but the coaching staff could not be more proud of this group um we always knew that they were destined for greatness and now the state um knows that as well um i spoke to these girls ahead of time they would like me to thank their parents they knew how long they would talk if i let them happen so i would just like to congratulate you guys and thank you for this honor thank you congratulations all right very good next may i have our central high school 4a state girls track team recognized by principal fred george the ad chad whitworth and trap coach
025sean wilde i know are they out are they out in the hall are they online i thought they were are they on the home no i looked i didn't i'll check again okay all right go ahead well i i would like to to congratulate our state champion women's track team and i did write down a few things uh that i thought were pretty interesting about this team one is they had 16 girls that that went to state um not one of the girls won a state championship which i think is incredible neither did they win a second place but they won a state championship so i think that speaks to the collective power of the team and i'm very proud of them i think it's also worth noting that this group of girls has never
026lost a state championship so they won they won three state championships in the last four years obviously we didn't have one last year we we would like to think we would have won that one but i can't be certain um mail that one in um so i i it's just with a tremendous amount of honor that i recognize our women's track team and coach wild and his staff have just done a great job okay we're going to look really quickly to see if we can see any if there's any of the young ladies that were on the central high state track team or their coach would you raise your hand on zoom please dr brown is searching for you as we speak okay i am not seeing them um but principal george thank you for
027representing your team and obviously doing a wonderful job with your with your students and your coaches and athletes in cheyenne central and congratulations well thank you very much thank you okay and actually should we go ahead and read those lists off we sure can now actually i think that would be good since they're not here principal george do you mind just reading the list of names austin normally we would give them their certificates and and do that and that summer's going to happen and we won't probably have them back here please madison bailey kaylee bell emma hess emma hofmeister brinkley lewis dakota lobmyer sydney morelle avery petterton [Music] kayla pillavant elizabeth prescott lexy poiever eisendorfer kalia risendorfer sydney sawyer joshlynn seidenberg emily taper katie thompson i can't explain the science behind this but i seem
028to have gotten my papers off you did a great job thank you for taking the time to absolutely thank you so much please thank you greg all right our next um our next item is uh east high school for a state track team so could i see principal sam marriage our a.d jerry schwabs and track coaches uh travis eldridge and jesse blunt before we get started with the track i want to just take a second and congratulate cora she got the sportsmanship awards tonight for soccer in the soccer season our team improved all year and finished real strong is because of the leadership of people like cora and i know her parents are here tonight i want to make sure i recognize him you guys don't stand to be recognized then i want to introduce
029coach aldridge we had two people uh win state championships up a trend thank you very much and um they're tremendous athletes uh just really committed and dedicated to their sport really honed their craft throughout the year one's a senior and one's a freshman i bet you can't tell which one's which [Music] but mr eldridge will let you know about it and um what they did up at state we're really proud of them the great kids great students actually being the developing the senior and caleb being a senior and talia being the president so mr uh before i recognize these two wonderful young athletes i would like to just take a moment and just address dr brown and the board for uh we look back a year ago where we were at and none of this
030was going on and none of this had happened and so our board our administrative teams throughout the district have where we have worked excessively hard for our students and our athletes to be able to participate and compete this year in all activities starting in the fall and so i'd like to for us to just give those people a round of applause i had the opportunity this year to work with two great athletes um and like mr thompson said the weather this year was not very conducive to track which it never is and so um there was a little bit of talk about switching the football season and track season around um in the summertime and i thought man that would be really fantastic because we'd actually get to see what our kids could do but
031um we persevered and um we are up here today and so talia had the opportunity to compete this year at the state level and as a freshman which is pretty extraordinary she qualified in four events to sprint medley long jump the 100 and the 200 sprint and then she's a state champion in two of those four events she is a long jump state champion and was two inches off of the state record she'd actually had the state record uh in a regional week and was really shooting for it um but missed it and ended up jumping 19-4 in the long jump um we were really hoping that she'd be a meter champ but just came up to touch short but rallied came back strong and ended up beating several seniors and was 200 meter state
032champion at the 4a level so um not only did talia do those great things um she was also nominated as a gatorade track athlete female of the year as well and so we have some people working on that and we're going to see what that what ends up happening there so um congratulations to liam caleb is a senior for us um caleb has worked excessively hard has dedicated his career the last two years to the track program um gave up playing some basketball and ended up going indoor track so that he could prepare for outdoor track and just worked his tail off was a leader on our team as a senior and ended up being state champion in the triple jump but also qualified in the 4x1 relay as well as the long jump i
033believe he ended up placing fourth in the long jump third and um then was a state champion in the triple jump jumping 48-7 was two inches off of a state record a pretty big honor for me is that he broke our school record which was set by a fellow teammate of mine troy dumas from the 90s and so a pretty big jump we just as a coaching staff we don't know that that um that record will be touched um again so um we're just super proud of caleb caleb has signed a scholarship to go to the university of wyoming in the fall and we'll be uh jumping for them and i know he's super excited about that so caleb is dying to talk she loves the mic but i did just want to just give
034a quick shout out to the central team you guys were fun to watch to share that 4x4 i believe south i'm sorry but you guys were i think you were nationally ranked at some point or somebody had said that so that's a pretty big honor as well and they were fun to watch week in week out and of course coach wilde and his ladies for being um repetitive state champs so i'm sure proud of cheyenne and the school assistant athletic so good job um um i just want to like congratulate like my parents and like they supported me through it all and when i had ups and when i had downs i they were just always there for me and i just really appreciate them and i really appreciate my teammates and my coaches and
035everyone that like let us have a season so thank you and um i couldn't have done it without everyone that was here supporting me so thank you um i want to thank my parents too they supported me through the entire my athletic my entire athletic career they kind of they kind of took it hard when i decided not to do basketball but uh it was definitely definitely a fun time um they did everything they could for me they took me to trainings it took me to the track uh they let me work work my butt off to get way better and i like to thank my coaches indoor and outdoor um for giving me all the opportunities to compete in the track thank you congratulations good job all right our next um award is the
0362021 p-a-e-m-s-t award state finalist heather terrell so recognized by their district math coordinator amy castle thank you it is my privilege to announce our state finalists for the 2021 presidential award for excellence in math science and um math and science teaching sorry about that and um it's a great honor this is the second year in the row laramie has had a state finalist we're still waiting for the nationals to announce their awards from the previous year but it is the highest award that the nation offers to our math science engineering and technology teachers heather is i've been um colleagues with other for nine years we taught together we were department chairs together um and and we're friends and i i can tell you there is not a minor teacher in this district she cares about
037kids she makes sure they learn their math conceptually and strives for understanding and will work every uh above and beyond for everything for those kids so it is my pleasure pleasure to recognize heather tara as our 2021 state finalist from laramie one for the paint store i just wanted to thank um amy castle for her support and encouragement um i'm following in her footsteps because she won the national um three years ago okay um i also want to thank my principal sam march for all of his support and encouragement um keeping me going and i just want to thank everybody here at the board my administrators my staff i love working with the students and staff at east high school they're awesome so thank you for the honor and privilege congratulations thank you all right
038uh the next we could we have uh dr boyd brown and principal brian cox is going to uh announce our wyoming psychologist of that the year off my name is brian cox i'm the principal at johnson junior high school i'm going to brag about uh miss roberts here for just a moment she serves at johnson junior high school as well as goings elementary and the total student population between those two buildings is roughly a thousand students and when you look back over the course of a year and all the different social emotional needs of our students i would say as a parent myself the parents as well our psychologists play a very unique and very special role in identifying ways to work with some of our most behaviorally challenged students and some of our students
039that have true learning barriers to accessing education without people like miss roberts here we wouldn't have the fundamental knowledge and training to break through some of these barriers with some of these students and so it's been an honor and a privilege to work alongside miss roberts and i can tell you over my 20 years in education i have not worked with a finer individual than miss roberts she would like me to take this opportunity to thank her parents for her as well to speak as well i just want to say thank you um i work with some amazing administration both the johnson and goins um great students great families and really the staff are phenomenal as well so thanks to all of them thank you all right now could i have mr bolin um and
040we're going to have our uh lcs d1 education support person of the year so mr boland dr brown and mary quasi i'm sure i believe that i am technology this oh your technology okay thank you thank you mary thank you thank you madam chair um so we um have honored um for the second year in a row our educational support person of the year and um but we we had a great group of nominees and finalists who went through our process just a great group of people and so um we have a powerpoint with everybody's name listed and um i will kind of watch for those okay so our finalists we we had stephanie ashford as you can see she's a transportation specialist with the transportation department and jenny finch she's our substitute coordinator as
041you can imagine she was very busy this year trying to organize substitute teachers for our district so those were our two finalists our nominees highly deserving of the award as well were daisy burke she's a special needs assistant at saddle ridge arola davis um special education para educator itself debbie haller she's the executive assistant for assistant superintendent of hr uh rhonda lobatos and and i have the the titles listed so i'm not going to to name everybody off uh with their titles here for the sake of time but kathy ponder and chris zimni then we had a few folks that did not send in photos but um would like to recognize carrie bruce julie grandpre michelle meyer chad whitworth and amanda wolf and we greatly appreciate everybody who submitted their names for consideration i'd like
042to say thanks to all the people that serve on committee that goes through you saw many people that were nominated um go through all those applications make our decision about who we're going to interview for our three finalists maybe you think because last two were very close together and one of them said grabbed out she didn't want to go through so that's such a strange thing to happen but um made it a little bit unusual here we interviewed the three and came up with the top one and um i happen to be serving as a board member of the committee and it's been a big honor to do that i'd also like to thank this wouldn't happen if we didn't have colleagues out there who nominate these people so i want to thank everybody who
043made a nomination because it takes a little bit of work to make for your nominations so thank you for reaching out now without further ado our winner this year is laura lee roberts who's a sped parent at jessup elementary i want to thank all the people i work with my principal uh julie norman tracy clement we've had a rough year this year but it's been fun i've done this for a long time and i'm just totally flabbergasted that i was awarded this i'm having my hip replaced tomorrow so this is my last hurrah [Music] so my name is barbara elizabeth and i'm flores principal and i've been doing this for about 30 years a little closer thank you hey thanks for saving me so when i interviewed laura she brought in a plate of food
044i had never interviewed somebody who brought in food to an interview but my first impression of her was far exceeded going through many many years of service with her she is at every every event that students are at you can barely tell the difference between our instructional paras and our teachers at jesup elementary so there were a lot of candidates who were qualified for this but laura is head and shoulders above all of us she knows every student by name she knows every staff member she's there every morning to greet people by name she does bus duty every night through every season and every time i try to schedule somebody else in there she comes into my office and shuts the door and tells me how important it is that she says goodbye to students
045so even you know our crazy weather here in wyoming she's out there every night so from beginning of the day throughout the day and then at the end of the day and she also teaches extended day and this is an above and beyond person i'm so thankful to all of you for choosing her to be our support person of the year congratulations well then all right we have one on the last but not least national center for intensive intervention could i have um jp denning our special services director come up this is a very special award as well thank you here jp i have some certificates i don't know do we have everyone here do we have some online awesome thank you my name is j.p denning director of special services for the school district
046um tonight we're going to recognize several special education staff for their outstanding efforts um the following staff are being recognized by the national center for intensive intervention and the wyoming department of education i'm going to call all of the movers up here i'd like to first just pause and tell a thank you to the school board for the special recognition as i read your name with me is margie robertson she is the special education director for the wyoming department of education and she's going to say work keywords as we recognize the staff members has been a special partnership working with the department department of education we appreciate their assistance and their willingness to help us in our efforts to improve the outcomes for students so sorry as i call your name if you could step
047forward martha barker tracy clement justin essex sarah finch jim hayes karen jenkins julie norman danette smith and jill gallegos so i'll introduce margie robertson to say a few words to help us with the special recognition and i'll go to work with the certificates as jp said my name is margie robertson i'm the state director of special education i'm here tonight with tom jones from the department of education who leads the dbi project here in wyoming the wde wishes to express gratitude the laramie county school district for your partnership over the past three years with the wde special education program division as we sought to improve outcomes for children with disabilities together so thank you to laramie county school district for that partnership our partnership with the dbi project began in 2018 with just a handful
048of very dedicated elementary special education teachers wde provided training direct coaching internal coach development and assistance in implementing the program that focuses on individualizing evidence-based interventions we sincerely appreciate these teachers and the staff in laramie county one that gave their time and energy learning and coaching and improving interventions and efforts for some of our most at risk students in our state a few data points that i would be remiss not to share with you lcs d1 buildings who participated in dbi saw 12 more students score proficient than in the previous year in fact several of those buildings were below the state average and after one year of dbi and implementing it well they were outpacing other state averages 96 percent of their students enrolled in dbi made progress on iep goals that is a big
049deal that should be celebrated the program noted an increase in teacher confidence and capacity in designing and implementing idea these teachers in turn noted that their skills allowed them to be more effective teachers as they adapted to the coveted crisis in fact 92 of their students made progress on iep goals despite the covet shutdown that says a lot um and sorry i'm all choked up one additional um outcome that deserves to be noted is the increase in teacher efficacy and the strengthening of relationships between teachers and their students and their families because i got to watch some of your kids own their goals and their own growth and that is however because of their efforts clara may county school district number one teachers have been recognized by the american institute of research and the national
050center for intensive intervention this resulted in a video being produced to highlight the dbi work with our own tom jones as the narrator or i said like movie star voice which has been shared at several state and national educational conferences in addition several lcs d1 teachers have been practitioner presenters in national webinars leading educators across the nation in this work so ncii reached out to wde and said you guys are doing such a fabulous work can your teachers come and leave the works pretty powerful the success with dbi here in laramie county one has led to a statewide community of practice we now have 13 districts so laramie county one was the first we have 13 districts participating 48 practitioners and several wyoming districts are knocking on our door begging us to have a district-wide
051dvi so you guys have really like drawn a spotlight to that so wd looks forward to the continued partnership and at this time i just would really like to say thank you guys for caring so much for your kids um for investing that time building those relationships you know dbi is about not giving up on kids and it's about teaching kids not to give up on themselves so thank you guys for doing that staff to make a difference and so really on behalf of the school district uh we really appreciate the department of special services we appreciate all you did what a year oh my gosh and you came through with some amazing success thank you for everything that you've done to help our students and thank you for all the effort that you've made
052to grow yourself as individuals thank you all very very much we're all very proud of the work that you do and look forward to uh more success thank you so much thank you thank you very good we're going to go ahead and um we have some individuals that we're going to kind of transition through the room go ahead and you can fill these seats in front if you want to anyone else new coming in there may be some in the halls that are coming in thank you all so much for coming go ahead and give everybody a minute to get settled is the board okay or do you need a break are we good okay yes all right very good all right all right we uh we do have um this we have a public
053hearing in this meeting um so we will take a break a little bit later um um on uh in our agenda but at this point in time then we'll go ahead and move on to the items from visitors so if you have a public statement for the board this is your opportunity to comment i would like to remind everyone because we have a public hearing about our policy amendments that um you're going to have that additional time to talk so if there's someone on zoom or just raise your hand if there's someone in the audience that would like to speak we would ask that you would go ahead and give us your name either on zoom or in person keep your comments to two to three minutes or less please not try not to repeat
054something that's been said previously and uh please keep your comments um general in nature and not personal um i would i would highly recommend i just think it's easier for the board if you've got comments about the uh amendments that are coming up in the public hearing maybe or policy thank you policy amendments to come up um at that time and make your comment at that time as opposed to to the front of this so that we're all going to have our heads in the right place at the right time if that makes sense so is there anyone in the audience that would like to address the board is there anyone on zoom you're on zoom you can raise your hand virtually um if you're on a phone it doesn't look like we have anybody
055on phones that starts six raises your hand on the phone i don't chair we don't have it okay very good and again out in the audience anyone all right very good um you will have that opportunity at the public hearing um to comment on the uh policy amendments that will be coming forward for a vote so thank you very much our upcoming meetings are june 10 2021 from one to three retirement for our superintendent dr boyd brown also dr kenny and um mr weigel um that celebration will happen from one to three on june 10th also on june 10th from five to seven we have the nsba conference debriefing for the in the boardroom for the board members and what that is is we went to the virtual national school boards association um uh education
056conference and we will be working through the different areas of the seminar that we individually uh watched and uh we'll be working through that as a board to see what we'd like to bring back if anything to our district so a little bit of homework for the board um on june 21st 2021 we have a 5 pm work session and a 6 p.m regular meeting and we are in person open ready for business so i'm i'm happy to uh to have everyone here on june 23rd we will have our 4 30 to 8 30 the wsba training um that'll be in the boardroom as well we'll be working with not only sba wsba for our board training but we'll be working with our our new superintendent that will start on july 1st dr margaret cresco
057is in the audience if you could stand for a minute i think thank you for coming and we're looking forward to working with you okay and then we have on june or july 9th on noon budget workshop with our director of finance judd ciccarelli we always look forward to that and on july 12th we will have a 5 p.m wreck mail meeting 6 pm regular board meeting and budget hearing so now we come to our individual board communication and reports do i have anything from the board oh my goodness all right um i do not see anything so we will go on to our reports from superintendents and staff turn it over to dr chair uh to start out with i asked our finance manager mr jed sicarelli to come up he's going to talk
058a little bit about where we're at with budget cuts and preparing the budget for next year and some of the reasons for that so that are you gonna drive um dr brown i'm happy to if you want to pull it up and share and pull it up for you thank you madam chair dr brown um members of board jet securely finance director and as dr brown pulls up a memo here i believe it's on the desktop there we go now i think it might just bear with us for a minute out there dr brown is pulling up the documentation he needs for mr ciccarelli's presentation he'll share that out shortly there we go okay madam chair you'll recall in march we provided an outline of the district's budget reduction plan that was developed in response
059to really a number of school finance bills that could have reduced our state funding allocations anywhere from 2 to at the time at that point we contemplated a 7 reduction in revenue that would equate to roughly a 22.5 million dollar deficit for the fiscal year 21 22. um we know that uh things didn't uh impact us to that that uh certain level um and we know that the most severe budget reduction measures will not go into effect with the 2122 school year um we did provide an amended budget plan uh that was summarized in this the memo that dr brown pulled up here that was released to coincide with the preliminary budget that i reviewed the last time we met the the real big takeaways or at least the points that um are important for
060our discussion tonight is that we're still facing decreases in revenue for the upcoming school year uh as well as escalating costs uh increases in expenses approximately 4.7 million and decreases in revenue of about 3.8 million are really what framed the budget reduction proposal that you're reviewing here tonight now um the amended budget continues to utilize the feedback that we discussed last fall as we were facing what we anticipated to be very significant reductions from the state legislature that included feedback from stakeholder surveys a review of district revenue streams our current expenditure patterns as a school district and the use of the federal relief funds where it was possible as a part of that budget reduction survey the most commonly cited reductions uh were for central administration central administration reductions student activities professional development and areas
061not required by state statutes uh and to varying levels all these areas have been addressed in the preliminary budget uh that again i reviewed at the last meeting now um just as to kind of wrap up the preface as we walk through this memo there is very little doubt that we'll continue to address these decreases in state revenue as we proceed all the more important that we take steps now knowing that failing to act would really only exacerbate the problems for the upcoming fiscal years so the memo outlines eight areas of budget reductions um proposed for the upcoming year and i'll uh talk a little bit more in depth on some of them and some of them we have talked about quite a bit as a group so certainly feel free to stop me and
062ask questions as we go but the first one you'll see here is the reduction of our supplemental transfers to our nutrition services fund you'll recall that the the district supplements our food operations by roughly 1.3 to 1.5 million dollars a year and that's through transfers from our general operating funds into our nutrition service fund um since the covet 19 the federal government has authorized free meals for students through the usda summer feeding program and that will be extended into the upcoming school year as well we have received additional federal subsidies beyond what's typically provided in a normal year and as a result we've been able to reduce or eliminate transfers to supplement those programs for the upcoming year now i do want to make a little bit of a note in some of these areas
063you'll see proposals that are going to be time limited and this certainly would qualify as one of those as that is time limited um so long as those federal subsidies are supporting our operations where we don't have to subsidize those programs um we'll be able to address and adapt our general fund operational budget now as those subsidies come to an end uh we'll have to be very cognizant that that's going to be a liability for the general fund again once those subsidies end so there's a couple of them in here that i will point out that we have to think forward as to what will happen once these time limited funds are gone um madam chair the next one you'll see are reductions to student activities roughly a 1.4 million dollar estimated savings now just
064as a little bit of background our cost providing activities and athletics in our district has risen steadily over the past six years we expense on average uh about two to two and a half million dollars more than what the state allocates through our funding model and of course as a block grant the district is able to address our specific needs and priorities the flexibility that is provided through us through a block grant but um as we can all attest this past legislative session uh there have been multiple draft bills that not only propose to reduce student activity funding to the school district but could potentially uh have invoked penalties for excess spending over what the funding model allocates now this could be partially as a result of the school finance consultants recalibration efforts dr brown
065and i were um on meetings and phone calls with uh the uh consultants that were looking specifically at student activities um not only in 2015 but in 2017 and the 2020 year as well now um i think there's some credence to um the uniqueness of wyoming that as a rural state we will have higher costs than a lot of the comparative comparative regional states around wyoming but there are few observations that the school finance consultants did uh report out as far as their uh final report to the legislature the first was that wyoming school districts offer many more sports um we also hire more coaches and assistant coaches for many of those activities and then um one other observation that they made was districts tend to provide stipends linked to actual base salaries uh which
066the average is closer to current market pay for base salaries rather than the model's base salary which was really kind of the premise of the recommendations for a state funding mechanism now for our district in particular um our student activities expenses are roughly 75 to 80 percent um for personnel so um just to reference back a little bit um into recent history in 2019 uh when we were evaluating the addition of softball as an approved activity we proposed covering those additional costs through activity related efficiency such as controlling and limiting overtime as well as examining our compensation practices as a district as a whole for activities so with the decreasing resources and the likelihood of further restrictions on activity funding going forward we felt it was important to address uh the additional 2 million spent
067a year to supplement student activities in the current and upcoming school year so in the million or excuse me in the memo you'll see the 1.4 million dollar in savings is summarized in two large areas the first is the elimination of the elementary athletics program we spend approximately four hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year on student activities at the elementary level uh roughly 92 percent of that is on personnel costs now in most school districts elementary sports programs provided outside of the public education are made possible through community partnerships mr bartlett has already been in communication with the cheyennes park and rec about supporting our youth sports programs through the use of our district facilities and looking at the rec mill to support some student sponsorship programs excuse me as well the potential for
068uh the elementary track program i understand has been a major point of concern we anticipate that we'll be able to continue with that as part of the school day with limited expense to the district going forward now a second uh large component of that 1.4 million dollar recommendation is the restructuring of differential pay so we coordinated with the cheyenne teachers education association and completed the work on a multi-year review uh to make recommendations on the reduction of activities in athletics deficit spending and a review of differential compensation practices now as we were reviewing numerous compensation policies around wyoming there's a wide variety of programs and methods for compensation even again within our own state we excuse me the differential salaries for our district in particular we're in the top usually one or two places of
069each of the categories that we reviewed so our proposal which was based heavily off of natrona's district model that considers the length of season a number of participants and other indicators to determine a compensation level will make up roughly about seven seven hundred fifty thousand dollars of that one point four million dollar recommendation um we also uh understand that this does impact staff um and propose to take into consideration those large reductions and then salary by holding some staff hold harmless i guess what we would uh call it in the event that the differential pay was greater than 20 now um there will be some severely impacted people um and we do anticipate that cabinet will be able to review some of the severely impacted people on a case-by-case basis knowing that there is still
070work to be done to finalize and implement this program as a whole the committee also identified additional recommendations for savings that included the standard standardization of programs across the triads centralized travel oversight moving away from stipends for supervisory duties in lieu of hourly rates and then moving to a flat rate for support services provided at home events and madam chair before i pause for questions or mr siemens has anything to ask i think you'll see that there's um a number of different budget reduction measures that we'll cover that really make up the roughly 8.3 million dollars that we need to balance excuse the upcoming school year's uh financial budget recommendations so manager i'd be happy to pause for a moment and see if there's any questions anyone questions okay i would just like a point
071of clarification and um or actually just uh full disclosure to the public mr ciccarelli has been amazing at keeping the board um engaged and informed and uh in in discussion um about what what needs to happen for our budget reduction so the fact that there aren't questions up here isn't that we're doing that boom let's go it's just that we we have spent a lot of time um with mr securely and dr brown and mr bartlett and uh mr weigle i mean a lot of individuals have been in these conversations for the last several months if not over a year year and a half i mean we're we're we're we're very fortunate to have these individuals that are are working so hard to keep us informed and and do the very best they can to
072bring us a balanced budget so thank you john um thank you madam chair and then um for the the next portion thank you dr brown for scrolling um the next uh area is a reduction of general fund positions through retirements um and the use of alternative funding sources and this is anticipated to save the district roughly five million dollars um what this would entail is the reduction of personnel costs through um reduced general fund hiring uh position transfers and eliminating vacant positions where possible included in this overall profile savings of about five million dollars are four administrative level positions that will not be filled um and again is my caveat to earlier about the the temporary nature of some of these recommendations um we do have a recommendation i'm sorry i don't mean to interrupt
073but i am going to we just lost our internet signal i think so i don't yeah it looks like it just popped back up whatever magically you just needed to stand up let me let me check on uh zoom please i can still hear you great thank you thanks brittany very good um madam chair i was uh about to mention that the temporary effect of one of the the position allocations that we will present as far as our final budget proposal in july which would be to use positions that meet the criteria for allowable costs under the cares or american rescue plan to be funded through those federal aid dollars again just without careful planning these positions can become general fund liabilities in the absence of those general fund dollars this will typically be to
074support the programs that we discussed earlier through the cheyenne virtual school program and other funded positions for student support um madam chair there's a number of other recommendations here and i'll just touch on those briefly as we've had the opportunity to talk about these before the first is the elimination of the ap testing reimbursement you'll recall that students who successfully passed the ap exams may request have certain exam fees reimbursed by the district um we'll phase out that reimbursement um in 2123 excuse me 22 23 knowing that we do have some students that will qualify for that reimbursement in the upcoming year um also uh as as the list kind of flows through the next couple pages reducing funding for national activity travel um also eliminating or reducing select contract service agreements um reducing funding
075for staff development and then the last note that you'll see there is the use of budget reserves now you'll notice that in this proposal the district anticipates that we'll use a minimum of one and a half million dollars in reserves or carry over funds to provide a balanced budget for the upcoming year of course this level may fluctuate before the budget is presented in july we could experience a larger deficit spend or less depending on where those final revenue calculations come out and with that madam chair that was a quick overview i'm happy to address any questions that the trustees may have had doctor wiedersphone yeah uh mr sicker rally i just wanted to mention the item number four we talked about the elimination of ap testing reimbursement and one of the discussion items that
076we had previously was that we talked about the possibility of tapping into our community partners as as a source of funds for that particular purpose specifically i think we talked about cheyenne schools foundation possibly be being willing to assist those students with the with those those ap testing fees that they encounter so i just wanted to offer that to the public and that's one thing that we'll be pursuing to see if we can find a community partner to make sure that that's not quite as onerous for our students as as it could be so thank you and rich would uh dr wiederspahn is actually our representative from the board for the cheyenne schools foundation so he he will be that contact to those individuals if you need some help with that so thank you go
077ahead trustee hermann so and maybe dr brown or mr perelli could respond to this but i believe some if not all at least some of these um real hard looks at how our spending money gets started even before um the impending doom that was uh sort of contemplated by the legislature just pull it down you need that i'm sorry just i'm sorry i'll just start over again just to ask that were there some or all of these were under the microscope for places for us to spend the money more wisely more carefully to look for places to save that maybe over the years and practice had gotten us kind of sideways with good spending uh practices although the current budget crisis kind of sharpened our pencil i guess to say but but we were already
078looking at some or all of these is that correct um manager trustee herman that is correct we acknowledged um you know roughly three years ago that uh supplementing student activities by more than two million dollars is uh not sustainable every year um so we started down on on this road a while back now certainly um you know as the the revenue from the state ebbs and flows we're very cognizant of where those adjustments take place there has been a strong emphasis on student activities uh we have benchmarked ourselves against the markets of you know other districts and compensation levels um to give it a little bit more perspective we spend roughly 60 percent more than what we're allocated uh the state as a whole um spends maybe 25 to 30 percent more than what's what's
079allocated through the funding model our our nearest district as far as size uh natrona um they spend about two million dollars less a year on student activities than our district does as a whole so if i just like make an observation that i appreciate the um attempt to you know spend public tax money prudently and look for those places where um maybe um unnecessary spending could be cut while preserving what we could of the activities and um i appreciate that go ahead okay uh trusty clawson okay thank you madam chair um mr cicarella you just said something that that made me wonder um if if we vote to eliminate the elementary sports which i think we all agree is unfortunate what uh what do you anticipate will be the percentage of of money we'll be
080spending at that point um on student activities will that get us more aligned with what other districts are spending or will will we still be over chair trustee clawson great question um the the roughly five hundred thousand dollars that we spend a year in student activities um would would still have us overspending by roughly one and a half million dollars a year um in comparison to the resources that are allocated so we'd still be outside the parameters again noting that we do have the flexibility in the block grant to make these changes and these adjustments as we go unfortunately we've seen this the gap widening as the resources for things like student activities and supplies and equipment and technology and utilities trends down um our expenses are trending up one good are there other do
081you have any follow-ups okay anyone else no all right um and and that is the the unfortunate elimination of i don't i know there's no one on this board that's jumping up and down about cutting athletics um at uh elementary activities um i i know that for sure we've all you know and on mr cicarelli you've got children in the elementary ages as well so i'm sure as a parent you're not doing a happy dance either so but this is a part right that's one piece of all of these other pieces that need to come together to bring us a balanced budget is that um madam chair that is correct and as a matter of fact i had a conversation with my daughter recently about this this exact um budget reduction proposal and it isn't
082easy um and maybe to to to put a little bit of a silver lining um the way that we've envisioned this this process moving forward um it'll give us the ability to adapt um we know that there'll be modifications and adjustments that we need to make as we go um as schools build their programs uh to adjust the compensation levels as those programs grow this will give us the flexibility to hopefully um you know still continue to support student activities um although noting that a lot of this is in personal compensation very good thank you and thank you for sharing your personal experience as well is there any other questions are there any other questions all right very good thank you chair next i'd like to give just a little update on the um so
083those are my fellow board members that are wondering um if we skip something though we didn't we just uh gave judd uh mr ciccarelli a little break instead of leaving him up here back to back so dr brown is going to give us a covet update and then judd will step back in there thank you i'm keeping you on your toes rich yeah that's right we didn't let everybody in on that didn't we not just want to talk a little bit about where the um the the uh removal of the statewide order health orders um has taken us um i've highlighted some things this memo comes from the wyoming department of health and uh just kind of gives us some guidance and recommendations it says one of the statements is moving forward unless circumstances circumstances
084warrant additional statewide or local order specific protocols for the safe operation of k-12 schools during the pandemic will be determined at the school district level the talks at the end this is the wyoming department of health encourages school officials to consult with their county health officers develop protocols appropriate for each specific school district and again you're aware that we meet on a weekly basis with our county health officers we do plan to have a work session on the 21st at five o'clock that will um address some of that moving forward and have the opportunity to move forward with talking about what we think is going to happen but i did want to give some recommendations that they have it says the recommendations from the wyoming department of health involve six corp prevention strategies uh these
085strategies include the following so their first strategy is uh vaccination against covid19 the second is physical distancing third is the use of face coverings fourth is contact tracing in combination with isolation and quarantine fifth is hand washing and respiratory etiquette and the sixth is cleaning and maintaining healthy facilities i want to just go down through a little bit and talk about how some of the other things that they wanted to talk about they talk about metrics and k-12 schools are encouraged to monitor these metrics on a county basis and consult with county health officials as appropriate adapt adaptations preventive measures based on transmission levels and again you can go to the state health site and then they'll show you you can find the pages that will show you exactly where everything's happening again prevention strategy
086one is vaccinations i didn't highlight that prevention strategy two is physical distancing again they recommend that we have six foot separation between individuals and it should be maintained as much as possible with the following exceptions and it talks about wearing face masks you can be within three feet so again that separation of six feet which is very difficult in some of our schools to do core prevention strategy number three is face coverings the wyoming health department recommends that students teachers staff and visitors including anybody that comes into the building where face coverings indoor in situations where six feet of separation cannot be maintained and again it says we should uh we should consult with our local health officials if we're considering making face coverings optional we did that when we made them not required but
087recommended four is this contract tracing and i'm going to pull up a little isolation and and a quarantine graph that's out there on the website again it reminds us that if everyone is wearing a mask a mask the person who is covet positive again they're going to be isolated but anyone else around them if they were wearing their mask they are going to self-monitor themselves if the um when the unmasked student or staff test positive and the close contacts were wearing their masks the the positive person is going to be isolated and all of those people even if they were wearing their masks will be quarantined when and a masked student or staff from test positive and some close contacts were wearing their masks and some weren't the people that are wearing their mask will
088be on self-monitor those that were not wearing a mask will be quarantined and then when an unmasked student or staff test positive in close contact we're not wearing masks again the positive will be isolated and those close contacts will be quarantined and quarantine is for 14 days unless you get tested and then you have to be tested after five days and then you can come back out at seven days i believe and then they're down to ten days if you were um if everything works right um the what was i going to go with that i lost my trans thought but the idea of being vaccinated um also keeps you from being quarantined so if you are vaccinated you will not be quarantined well let's see that right that's right where was that again the
089quarantine period of 10 days following the exposure is um if the person remains asymptomatic instead of the 14 days and a quarantine period of 7 days with a negative pcr test on day 5 or later again hand washing and then taking good care of our facilities is is another one so with that i'd answer any questions again we're going to have a workshop five to six next board meeting to probably go a little more in depth into that and we'll have our health officials our health officials will be here dr um hartman will be here kathy evans will be here and i believe casey mullins will be here as well are there questions just uh trustee bolin has there been anything special for next year that's that's what we'll be uh discussing on the 21st
090again it's kind of uncertain whenever i when we talk with the health officials because they do not know if it's going to we're going to get a different strain that the the vaccines don't work with but for just like the the wyoming health department in the short run they don't see themselves making any changes to health orders um and our county health don't think that we're looking at changing where we're at as well i love summer school summer school we're going to follow exactly where we're at right now excuse me i don't know where this goes i'm sorry um there'll be time for public comment thank you for raising your hand but we will have um we'll have it here a public hearing and then at the end of our meeting we um and that's
091on the amendment to the policies but um we'll also have a public uh public comment session close to do you have it did you get an agenda no no okay okay that's all right there's a there should be one over in the door yeah and that will kind of give you another box we'll take care of that um yes but we um we will have an opportunity um two more opportunities actually for um public comment also and isn't it true is it critical german that if someone has a question about policies or whatever they can contact the attendance office absolutely at another time for instance they can't wait because that's oh yes if if it's not something that you'd like to address at this board meeting then you may contact the office so thank you
092all right but i will be looking for you if you stay we'll we'll get you up there thank you very much all right i'm sure next i'd uh ask judd ciccarelli to come back up uh business manager and talk a little bit about our incentive and ma'am i apologize but i had my cancer treatment on friday and i am having some problems with uh sweats so yeah it's okay i'll be taking care of myself all right you're fine thank you if you need a minute go ahead thank you manager dr brown members of the board again judd ciprali finance director um so i'm going to talk about a little bit something different now so you recall last spring there was a law that was passed called the family's first coronavirus response act one of the
093requirements under that act was um school districts like ours or any other political subdivision uh was required to pay or provide paid leave for employees that were unable to work because they were quarantined or if they had a family member who was quarantined now um as part of that requirement um political subdivisions like the school district were a little bit unique in the sense that we did not receive the tax credits or the payroll tax credits that would offset that liability or that expense for the district now um at the time we had a lot of discussion on how we were going to pay for that unfunded mandate as a matter of fact later on as we evaluated the programs we came to the board and proposed that we even extend that program knowing that
094it was an important benefit for our staff but more to the point of of the funding piece initially our natural inclination was to use money provided from the cares act which was to respond to covet 19 impacts on school districts to pay for that unfunded mandate or additional expense that the district did not previously um foresee with the upcoming year and now however at that point uh we were told that those funds would not be uh allowed for use to cover that covet 19 leave so we looked to other areas within our budget to to cover that cost we were fortunate to receive some unanticipated revenue from the state school foundation program on some reallocation of special education dollars that helped fund that particular program and then we also looked at other budget contingencies to
095meet that cost or that need um recently the good news is that we received revised guidance just within the last maybe four to six weeks that we are allowed to use those cares funds for that cobit 19 related leave so really what this did was um allowed us to reclassify these costs um from a to a federal grant and essentially freed up uh roughly about 1.4 million dollars for the district that we had expensed um year-to-date on that coveted 19 leave now as an important note i want to mention that these freed up funds are really temporary savings in the sense that they cannot be interchanged with next year's budget due to a number of things certainly reserve limits is one of them and just the time limited nature of kind of this unanticipated cost
096savings that we received at the very very end of the year so as a part of our discussion in cabinet we brought forward a recommendation uh to acknowledge the additional impacts to staff in implementing covet 19 protocols so what we did was we reallocated our general operating funds freed up by the use of these cares act funds towards a one-time appreciation payment to staff for their work and keeping the district open and safe for learning um so these funds were allocated to permanent staff as a one-time and again um as referencing back to our earlier conversation a non-recurring 750 payment knowing that our budgetary position is going to change um not only towards the end of this year but as we move into future fiscal years for the district as a whole um but we
097wanted to provide an update and um how those those funds have allowed us to support staff in this way happy to address questions okay questions from the board all right so can um just for those that may not um may not have caught what you said the reason that we're not going to be able to use that to fund elementary athletics is i'm imagining these are this is a one-time savings for the district and we are limited on the amount of resources that we can carry over year to year so this is really um again a one-time savings that we couldn't use to forward fund our budget deficits going forward thank you just wanted to make sure that was out there one more time because it's it's hard i mean all of where i appreciate
098you um gathering those resources and and making this this all work and of course we as a board and administration sincerely support all of the work that you all have done to get us through this coveted crisis and and pandemic as well as and taking such great care of our our students and keeping our schools open so thank you for your work and if there's no further questions oh mr bollywood yes i'd just like to comment i was attending all of the unit negotiations and this was announced during the negotiations we were going to be doing this and all the units were very appreciative of of us giving them something to appreciate their work during the year so very good thank you thank you mr ciccarelli thank you madam chair again i think we got
099probably the best business manager in the state worked for the state now works for us so again i want to thank him for all the work that he does in keeping us lined up with our finances and doing a great job there and with that that's the end of my report now very good moving on in our agenda we're at d1 which is the consent agenda routine matters all agenda items listed with the designation of ca are considered to be routine items by the governing body and will be enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussion on these items any item removed from the consent agenda will be considered in its normal sequence on the agenda does any board member request to remove a motion from the consent agenda seeing none mr thank
100you brittany i'm sorry i didn't mean to leave you out there we'll pause a little longer thank you any opposed hearing then the motion to pass the against the consent agenda is approved right now we are yes and i have a request here um thank you all for uh staying and we are going to have just a quick board break before we um make our uh opening to our our d3 new business so um individuals that will be ready to speak for the public hearing can be putting their thoughts in place and we'll we'll be getting that going but right now we'll go ahead and take a ten you want five ten minute body break ten minute break thank you very much okay we have about two minutes left and then we'll get started again
101okay very good um thank you and thank you for coming back after that break i appreciate that we'll go to our new business d3 dr wiedersphone madam chair i move to approve amending the laramie county school district number one board policies and adopt all changes in its entirety all right at this time we will recess our regular board meeting and convene to a public hearing for our 2021 policy amendments dr brown madam chair just to start us off um wanted to give you guys a little background on a few things um and ask for some other folks to give some uh some background on information on uh some of the title nine questions and comments that we've received out there so i'm going to kick that off and have a few comments and then i'm
102going to ask um a few of our staff members and legal counsel to come up and give us some information on that so talk a little bit about the title ix regulations the u.s department of education issued the final title nine regulations on may 6 2020 under president trump's administration it was put in place to create another appeal for sexual harassment and the policy and regulations we are talking about apply only to the sexual harassment we followed the rules that have uh that's one question we follow the rules that we've been given that have been given to school districts by the federal government um two attorneys out there in the state that have been pretty integral in this are kelly pearson who is our one of our attorneys and tracy copenhaver she's worked with him
103quite a bit and collaborated with him and worked through the federal laws and regulations to help school districts put policies and regulations in place to meet the federal regulations for wyoming school districts title ix does not take away any rights from individuals it provides more due process people have all the rights and appeals they would have for any situation we are still required to follow all state laws regarding employment including the right for hearings the district is is required to follow all seven of our negotiated agreements regarding due process discipline and termination so it doesn't change anybody's rights to appeal to work forward on anything the choice to use a preponderance of evidence is to be in line with all of the other decisions we we make including termination hearings for certified staff under the
104wyoming state statute for continuing contract teachers title ix sexual harassment federal regulation is unrelated to the critical race theory uh david evans who's normally here is out of town this evening and i'd ask kelly pearson who is one of our legal counsel um and considered a leader and a trainer for the state of wyoming school districts regarding titan line to come up to the podium and start talking a little bit about some background so kelly if you'd come up to the point well kelly's making her way up there i just want to remind everybody we will have a public comment section um this is just our trying to bring our board and and the public kind of together at where these where these policies are so thank you chair members of the board republic before
105we go into the specifics of the part you'll have to get a little closer yeah and you can take your mask off if you're comfortable you don't have to if you don't want to but yeah thank you before we get into the specifics of these amendments i wanted to provide some background in context and i'm talking about the amendments to chapter six and chapter eight those amendments are driven exclusively by changes in federal regulations to give you some background on that i think we're all where 1972 title ix was enacted by congress that prohibits prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex since that time uh beginning in 2001 the office for civil rights department under the department of education has provided school districts with guidance that sets general parameters on how they are to respond
106to allegations of sexual harassment sexual harassment is a form of sexual discrimination and that's how it operated up until 2017 we had guidance documents that they gave boards they set the parameters and gave boards great discretion they were you're you the board had to develop a process that was fair you had to develop a process that was timely there were certain things that needed to be in there you had to have a title ix coordinator but it wasn't prescriptive it didn't tell the board exactly what they had to do so at that point the board had discretion and that's the policy that we've been working under up until this last year in 2017 to do that in november of 2018 under the trump administration in an effort to protect greater rights they felt the need
107to actually go through a formal rule making process and so there were rules proposed in november of 2018 that went through the formal rulemaking process there were 150 000 comments to that process in may on may 6 2020 those rules were finalized um those rules went to effect august 14 so it's those rules then that districts have had to build their title ix programs around over the last year those rules dictate how a district is to respond to title ix it is very your new policies are almost verbatim from the 37 pages of rules that came out on may 6. now with these 37 pages of rules there were 2 000 pages of a preamble trying to explain all the different facets of this rule and we'll get into some of maybe the more specifics
108about some of the issues that were addressed in the preamble but i just thought it was important that you all have that background and to understand why we are here while we are having to overhaul this system and we are talking as dr brown said about sexual harassment at this point we have a separate process for sexual harassment under the law than we do for other forms of discrimination and harassment before we talk about the details and michelle proctor is the laramie county school district number one title ix coordinator so she is your in-house expert on title ix she is the the gatekeeper she is i call her the quarterback kind of pulling all the pieces together and making sure this program runs um but before michelle talks about some specifics and how this has
109actually worked in the district because the districts had to work under these administrative regulations because they went into effect on april 14th and i was working on august 14th correct and i forgot an important point there this guidance that we used to work under didn't have the force and effect of law these regulations that we now are under have the force and effect of law so if the district doesn't follow them they risk losing their uh state the federal funding so that's why it's so important that we make sure that we are in compliance with these new regulations but i wanted to uh before michelle goes into the details kind of talk about the legal precepts that are interwoven into these new regulations these regulations as i said really came about as a result of
110many concerns at the higher level um higher education higher education level for due process were alleged those that were accused were they getting sufficient due process and so that has been one of the primary focuses on these new regulations is to ensure due process greater due process than what has been in place prior to these regulations um there was a an emphasis on fairness to the victim and the accused there is uh throughout the process the accused is uh presumed innocent and that is stated and articulated in uh correspondence and folks have been trained on what that means the formal complaint process there's now a very formal rigid complaint process and there's a lot of it to provide rights before discipline can be imposed so there's a long process that can take anywhere from 30
111to 90 days depending upon how it plays out before anyone is ever disciplined whether it be teacher or student under these new regulations um there's substantial information rights for victims and the accused and what this means is when the investigator gathers all their evidence they share it with both parties and both parties get a chance to respond to that evidence and say well wait a second you didn't look at this or i don't agree with that they provide a written response to the investigator who then takes that into consideration and then summarizes his evidence in an investigative report that investigative report is then shared with the parties who get to write a response to that final report and all of that then goes to your decision maker who takes that and then lets the parties
112ask each other written questions so there's a constant flow of information between the two parties so that everyone no one is being surprised by any information that's out there and everyone has a chance in the process to provide information that they think is important to the process and to provide witnesses that they think are important to the process the other thing that's very different about these rules as it stands as it stood in this district before april august uh 2020 your investigator was the same person as the decision maker now your title knight coordinator your investigator your decision maker and anyone who facilitates informal resolution are separate people and they uh there's a strong emphasis that they have no conflict of interest and that they are not biased there's training built in to this program
113required training on bias and conflict of interest and michelle can talk to you about how that process what she goes through what she and her team go through to determine whether she gets a complaint how do we determine that going into this that our investigator is not biased or that our decision maker is not biased the terminology we have complainants and respondents we don't have targets and you know harassers and anymore we have complainants is the individual student or teacher who claims that they have uh that they've been the subject of sexual harassment and or their parents um and the respondent who is the uh person accused of sexual harassment uh there's a strong emphasis in the new rules about you do not base um any of your decisions upon stereotypes about you know male
114female or um you know student teacher um and what's key in this and has been very important to you know let me stand back as a um as a school district as a political subdivision you were bound by the wyoming and the us constitution so in every policy you have you have to abide by a u.s constitution including free speech and these new regulations not talk through you specifically how the definitions themselves show you that the protections of freedom of speech are inherent in the new regulations so what is sexual harassment and this is the big change there are three types of sexual harassment and these are as defined in these regulations and these definitions uh the first is quid pro quo i think we're all kind of familiar with that this is a district
115employee conditioning the provision of an aid benefit or service of the district on the individual's participation in unwelcome sexual conduct the limit is to a district employee it's not student on student so you it's not a situation where you have the editor of the newspaper saying you know if you do x i'll you know print you your um article on the first page this is only for district employees for the regulations let me skip to the third one because the first and the third are not the ones that get the most attention we see those very rarely the third is the sexual violence prong we call it this is sexual assault dating violence domestic violence or stalking these are all defined under federal law the clery act and the violence against women act and these
116definitions are contained in your regulations the second prong is where we see and i i work with districts across the state so it's not just in this district so um i advise districts on on title nine and so the ninety percent of what i see is in the second prong we call this the hostile environment prompt harassment under the hostile environment prong is unwelcome conduct to be determined by a reasonable person to be severe pervasive and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person equal access to the district's educational program you have to hit the standard for it to even get in the door to qualify and i want to show you the difference then between the old definition that was in chapter 8 section 25 and the new definition the old definition um and
117these was you know this came from the office for civil rights was that sexual harassment was unwelcome conduct determined by a reasonable person so someone in that uh outside looking in to be severe pervasive or persistent and to interfere with or limit a student's ability to participate in or benefit from the school service activities or opportunities so we had an or severe pervasive or persistent and it just had to interfere with or limited students access our ability to participate under the new definition in chapter six and chapter eight sexual harassment is defined as unwelcome conduct determined by a reasonable person to be severe pervasive and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person's equal access to the school's education program or activity so while conduct may still fall on another policy the conduct has to
118be severe pervasive and objectively offensive it has to hit a pretty high standard to trigger the process under the sexual harassment uh regulation i want to stand back and revisit free speech though because if you look at this definition i mean i think we all know that free speech is free speech but you can't walk into a movie theater and yell fire because some speech is found to not be you you get protected from that speech that's the same here and and it's very consistent with the office for civil rights you have speech and expressive conduct may be punishable when the speech becomes serious serious enough to lose that protected status right it has to be serious enough to lose the protection of freedom of speech so here it has to be severe pervasive and
119objectively offensive that effectively denies equal access to the school's education program so inherent in the definition is a protection that you've got to hit this limit with what you're saying to even to to have that speech limited in any way miss pearson is that the exact language that we have in the policies yes for the regulation what's the new definition is the exact policy in chapter six and chapter eight so that's kind of the the legal background and i i think it's important to the board to understand we are now a year in working with this policy how it's played out in practical terms um so michelle proctor is going to take that and we're going to probably uh tag team some of this and address some of the other concerns so you guys might
120be asking yourself what's the point of a title ix investigation the point is that it's supposed to be fair impartiable impartial reliable and thorough the investigation has to be prompt and equitable to all parties so it's not just to the accuser or accused but both the complainant and the respondent um the intent of the investigation is what's important too is the intent of the investigation is to ensure we end the discrimination and prevent its recurrence so that's the goal as we move through that process we must also adhere to the presumption of innocence until the investigation is complete so it's innocent until proven guilty um and the decision maker administers a final ruling of determination that's not consequences it's just determination of whether the incident meets the standard of sexual harassment under the law so
121one of the concerns i heard was about the different roles that are part of this process so i wanted to provide some clarity um so we have the title ix coordinator which is myself we have a deputy title ix coordinator which is patty paredes we have investigators we have 18 different people trained as investigators throughout our district at different levels in different departments to be able to address different concerns we have decision makers patty's also trained as that chris zimni and our legal counsel can also serve as a decision maker and we also have appeals that could go to a superintendent assistant superintendents or legal counsel can you state i'm sorry michelle thank you um i know who chris zimni is but could you tell us who who he is in the district do you
122have this he is our omnibus [Music] okay all right thank you yeah michelle if i can ask you how do you make the decision um as far as what investigator to use you've got 18 trained in the district certain decision makers how do we ensure that they are unbiased and impartial yeah so as part of what we do as we go throughout the process we look at for example if the claim were to come from central high school there wouldn't be an investigator any one part of the title ix process no one would come from central high school so you want to make sure that that staff member doesn't already have previous knowledge of anyone involved um or the situation also we would look at it might be within that triad so the triad could
123also go to the junior high but if that student went to the junior high maybe knew the principal or knew the investigator that works at mccormick that probably wouldn't be the right solution either so we go through their record whether it's employee or student to see where they've been enrolled who they worked for in the past to be able to eliminate that bias and then we have all anyone who's involved in the title ix process has to sign and agree to an impartiality questionnaire so it states that they understand that they don't know any of the parties involved they don't have previous knowledge of the incident and if anything that comes up throughout the investigation either it's evidence that comes up maybe a witness that they know that they would bring that forward and we
124would be able to reassign a different investigator to ensure we can move forward with our impartial investigation yeah and so i think we're lucky to have a big school district um that we have a lot of resources i know there's smaller school districts that don't have the opportunity to have as many people trained under their own roof but a key piece of information about the roles is that a person can only serve in one role on the title 19 throughout the process so the reason why we have paddy trained as a deputy title ix coordinator is that if i have bias if i know someone in a situation um conflicts of interest she would be able to step in as a trained court coordinator and facilitate the process it's the same thing with investigators if
125patty serves as the coordinator she can't serve as an investigator or a decision maker and that's the reason we have multiple people trained so as we have those moving parts we can put the appropriate people in the right places at the right time so um what if i'm concerned that although you went through the criteria and they seem to be pretty tough but what if i'm concerned that um if you have a personal vendetta or a certain sensitivity you can jump over some of those hurdles and some of the investigations may not meet that standard is that is that possible or how could could that happen thank you madam chair jesse herman just to clever are you talking about an investigator if you had an investigator so party i called the title 19 if one
126of your members had a vendetta is it possible that they could somehow get through the screening process and participate is that what you're asking that and or on the the previous slide that talked about you know a complaint had to um hit all these marks before it went to an investigation so i in both those cases could all these safeguards be gotten around or how would we know i mean i'm just you know well maybe it's a time to explain the gatekeeper role that your timeline coordinator plays so that you kind of understand so there'd be no abuse of the process i guess it's what i'm looking for yeah and we'll i'll start to cover that in the next couple of slides that should answer some of that question so i want to clarify what
127my role is as a title nine coordinator or paddy's as the deputy title nine coordinator if she's serving in my place so my role is to have oversight um essentially be high level a play caller or quarterback of the situation so i appoint an investigator we i oversee the whole investigation process from a high level to help course correct as needed or add additional guidance or investigators if that's needed i train the investigators within the district we did that this last year with kelly as well as part of our training last fall i helped strat strategize the investigation so what are the steps we take how are we going to go about it and what's the appropriate schedule for it i conduct an initial assessment um with the complainant so the person that filed the
128complaint meet with them talk to them about the incident or incidents go through it and make an initial assessment of whether or not it means the definition of sexual harassment under the law or if it's not and i don't mean to know but that's an important part so you go back to that to those definitions and if everything if somebody comes in and says i have a complaint and put it in writing you have to look at it and say even if everything they say is true does it still mean this definition and that's part of what michelle does my role is also to offer supportive measures so supportive measures could be a variety of different things and i'll address that here in another slide too but supportive measures are to make are to make
129sure everyone feels comfortable safe coming to our schools or our buildings um so whether it's personnel or students and those it could be anywhere from counseling safety plans um change of schedules if needed work arrangements it's very dependent on the situation of what those would be and it's offered to both parties it's not just the complaint but also offered to the responders because they're on the footing as this process works its way through my role is also to send notices to parties so i facilitate the communication between the district and all parties involved throughout the investigation um i facilitate evidence and report review with the party so all parties get 10 days to review the report and i help facilitate that answer any questions and if they have more information to bring forward i help
130get that to the investigator um i review the investigation report to ensure that it's complete everything's been added in all the evidence is in there um and it's as complete as it can be and then i add it for compliance and for timeliness of the investigation so we have a lot of timelines that are required we're required to meet throughout it so my job is to ensure we're not skipping a step um and adhering to those mandated timelines and yes please all right question talk about the two reviewing investigation report have you determined something was off in that report do you have the power to edit it or would you have to go back to the team i would have to go back to the investigator who wrote it or the investigators who put that
131together um i honestly had probably worked with legal counsel a little bit i want that process looks like because i don't have access to edit it because i wasn't necessarily part of the interview so editing it without being part of the investigation itself wouldn't be appropriate thank you and i'm also the record people keeper for all documents so we're required to keep anything that happens under title nine for seven years and it's also housed with me i'm in a locked drawer so the next couple slides i want to talk to you a little bit about what the process looks like once a formal complaint is filed so the first part is the title line coordinator or coordinator so if patty and i are working together on one we would both meet with someone we would
132meet with a complainant and talk to them about the incident ask some clarifying questions gather some facts and offer supportive measures so like i said earlier supportive measures could be referral to counseling medical or other health services referral to the employee assistance program altering work arrangements for employees safety planning transportation accommodations implementing contact limitations academic support or class schedule modifications or any other tailored measure that would help someone feel support supported as they move through this process um the title line coordinator will then meet with the person filing the complaint to discuss it like i said seek more information and serve as that gatekeeper on whether or not the incident meets the definition of sexual harassment um or not or if it's unknown if we are unsure if i'm unsure meets that definition we move
133forward to a formal investigative process if it doesn't fall under title ix it gets forwarded back either to a school supervisor or superintendent to follow up on a different policy violation which would be outside of title ix the investigation process i have a couple slides that go through it it's a lot of information it's a lot to come to slides but i kind of wanted to bullet point it for you if we move forward to a formal investigation the first step is i assign an investigator we go through that process to determine who's the right candidate who's the right person we have people in special services that are trained we have people administrators at elementary junior high in high school so that way we can find the right person also for the topic that it
134might be covering um and we have options if there's any bias i then send notification to all parties so all parties get notification of the allegations so both um the claimant the yeah the claimant and the respondent both get the formal notification that there's been allegations they know who's making the allegations um and what it entails i'll develop an investigation strategy with that investigator the investigator will then interview the complainant and then the respondent um there's potential for informal resolution if both parties agree um two or both or all parties agree to an informal resolution that can be facilitated where we move outside of the title ix process to resolve the issue the investigator then interviews any witnesses and gathers evidence provided by both parties so all parties can provide evidence and witnesses then the
135investigator will draft the investigation report and they send that draft of the report and any evidence to all parties and each party gets 10 days to respond or present new information so if there's new evidence that comes forward additional witnesses um we would then have to add that to it and that could delay the overall process but that's why they get 10 days to review it and one thing to note excuse me all of this is um can you step up to the mic when you talk sorry i know there's only one yeah go ahead it's the additional due process for the respondent because before in these investigations you didn't have to notify them of what the allegations were the principal could just go in and start interviewing now that allegations actually have to be
136spelled out in writing with an opportunity and a given with sufficient opportunity for them to prepare for their interview so that is just an example of one of the due process mechanisms that is built into these regulations um the next part is the investigator will assess and address any new information that's brought forth after that that report review um and the title ix coordinator will send the final draft once that's all completed any additional information is in there timeline coordinator sends the final draft to all parties and the decision maker so that decision maker again is a separate person so it's now an additional person that's brought in or a panel or legal counsel that's brought in to serve as that decision maker and they'll facilitate a hearing so under the final rule it's we're
137mandated to do a cross-examination so the higher ed level that has to be in person um at the k-12 we have the option to do written response we have a different age group so all parties can exchange written response written questions to each other that decision maker will then make a determination of responsibility based on the investigative report the evidence provided in the hearing cross-examination process again that decision maker is making a determination of does the incident meet the definition of sexual harassment under the law they're not making determination of any sanctions or discipline the appeals process then starts next so once that decision has been made formal notice goes to all parties and they get 10 days to review that determination and file for appeal and then sanctions and discipline will be administered i
138think this is a key piece i heard this question a lot so students it would still go through the assistant superintendent of instructions office in the district student discipline matrix um and if its employees would go through the assistant superintendent of hr and it must follow the discipline processes outlined in board policy and in the negotiated agreements including any additional due process under those guidelines right so this is just one part of the process it still has anyone's attention you've got to step up to this yeah thank you before anyone potentially loses a job or is removed from school as a student there is additional process built in by other policies and state statutes yeah okay we're going to have a party let's go ahead and done trustee clawson all right thank you madam chair
139i don't promise a party but i have a question um i was curious could you please go further into the appeals process because you just mentioned there is an appeals process once the decision maker decides if it applies to title ix you know under the statute but you didn't really go into what does the appeals process look like for the accused sure so it's not just it wouldn't just be for the accused or the respondent appeals could also go for the person filing the claim so it goes for both parties appeals there's three reasons for appeal the first is for procedural irregularity within the process so if we didn't follow our process they could appeal it um if they if there was bias in anyone involved in the title ix process they'd be able to
140appeal for that um and the third one new evidence that's right it's new evidence that gets brought forth that could change the outcome or has the potential to change the outcome of the determination thank you and again that as i just said that that part of the appeals process still has more process within the school right there's more after excuse me um and rich there's but there's more appeal so like after this is all finished and there's appeals within this process but then there's also additional appeals outside of this process that hasn't been taken away correct correct so there's still the formal grievance process that's outlined in all the negotiated agreements so someone could still file agreements there's termination hearings that have to be followed um so all of that goes into that determination if
141that's what it is but either way the appeal for the title ix decision has the three parameters but outside of that if there's any discipline or policy questions they have the normal grievance process they can follow and just to follow up on that i don't know what's going on i apologize madam chair the one thing that we have to remember is they are only looking into that one issue when um when it comes down to discipline or sanctions that will be something that will happen with um the associate superintendents looking at their entire file whether it's their file for discipline for the student or their personnel file for their um if they're an employee so this is just one issue that they're looking at there's an overall complexity of what's gone on previously either with
142a student or with a staff member and there's a whole other layer of due process with that piece of it in that you have state statute that require that provides a hearing for a teacher uh and this would be just one component you know as you said the the report or the decision makers decision would be part of that piece of the story to tell or the reason the decision the the superintendent would make a recommendation for termination but there are other pieces to that as well and there's an extensive hearing process under wyoming state law for teacher termination suspensions or dismissals the same is true for students there is state statute that governs when you can suspend or expel a student for greater than 10 days and there is due process that attaches to
143that as well but a hearing is required within 10 days of the recommendation of termination of dismissal so this is just one piece of it it's not the final um ultimate in game there is a whole another layer built into this rich yeah i'm sure thank you my question really dealt with the appeal process too is it not correct that there's an appeal opportunity and you spoke to this a little bit outside of the school district so if you're if you're aggrieved by the process you have you have other layers of appeal that you can go to if you're not satisfied with what's happened within our school district or even within our state are you talking about federal appeal correct you're talking about absolutely there's a there's a federal district court just down the road
144that you can file an appeal for a violation of title ix right that's that's very important thank you all right any any other questions okay good sorry i got so entwined so thank you michelle yeah no problem then um the other concern i've heard a lot about is the power of the decision maker so i want to share a little bit of information of what that their umbrella of oversight looks like so the role of the decision maker in our regulations in our district is that they review the final investigative report they facilitate the cross-examination be a written response for all parties again that's part of the due process is that all parties get to participate in that they assess all the information in the final report evidence and cross-examination process to make a determination
145of the incidents meet the definition of sexual harassment and information under the law they may make suggestions on the final rule it says that they may make suggestions for sanctions or discipline to the assistant superintendent of hr for employees or instructions for students but the suggestions should be options that aim to end their harassment discrimination and prevent its recurrence so again just because something moves through a formal investigation process doesn't mean expulsion doesn't mean termination because the goal is to ensure whatever we do throughout the process is that it's not going to continue to happen um and there won't be a recurrence in the future a key thing to remember is the decision maker and the title ix coordinator do not administer the discipline so that is separate so any issues with students will go
146through the assistant superintendent of instruction in that discipline matrix um and anything for personnel moves go through the human resources superintendent just to correct the the regulations um do require that they that the or the decision maker make a recommendation now that's just a recommendation to then your superintendent um assistant superintendent of uh instruction or assistant superintendent of human resources um the other piece that i wanted you know we had understood there's concern about is the standard of evidence the the bar by which um the decision maker decides whether the alleged activity has um constitutes sexual harassment i think i'm allergic to this thing sorry and the reason that the right the regulations and this is in the 2000 page preamble gives the option for preponderance of the evidence or clear and convincing and in
147reading through those pages the reason they did that was the reason that that we chose to offer the preponderance of evidence because the uh office of civil rights understood that you may have state statutes from negotiated agreements to dictate the level of the evidence so that your board should be consistent across so across the spectrum that that in wyoming under teacher employment law the standard is preponderance of the evidence so in looking at sexual harassment in the context of a teacher the standard is preponderance of the evidence in wyoming under the student expulsion and suspension law the standard is preponderance of the evidence so before the state is going to allow the board to either fire a teacher or to expel a student then the preponderance of evidence standard has to be met and for
148consistency purposes the regulations contemplate that your administrative regulation will be consistent with your state statute as well as your other policies every other disciplinary policy that this district has uses the preponderance of evidence standards so to maintain that consistency with state statute and other policy that was the purpose for the recommendation of preponderance of evidence standard very good other questions so yes dr reader you know i get let me just to preface a little bit i a little bit of my background i've been involved in human resources for about 20 years and so i've conducted sexual harassment investigations both in this school district and other districts in colorado so you know i've read the language i've received the emails from people about concerns over the language you know i find that you know other than
149a few tweaks recently in august of 2020 the regulations really haven't changed there are some there are some changes but i think they have not been subsequent when i read the emails and i have a couple of specific questions but it seems to me that people that are concerned about these policies are concerned more with the application of the policy as opposed to the specific language it appears to me that people are concerned that the policy will be abused in its application some comments that i've gotten are we seeing the language of the policy that gives extraordinary and excessive powers to the title ix decision maker i think michelle answered that i don't see it in the language but you know obviously there are people that believe that it's there the other one is does
150the language of the policy serve to limit or restrict the constitutional rights of those who fall into the policy well i think in your presentation you've said no it does not is there an inherent bias in the language of the policy that would prevent its even-handed application some people apparently think that there is an inherent bias in that so you know i guess i think if in all the times that i've done investigation fairness is really the criteria that you try to keep in front of you all the time if it's not a fair process to all parties involved it's not it's worthless and i think for this board member my expectation is and i believe that the language of the policy is pretty clear in that regard that people are going to be treated
151fairly i think it bends over backwards to make sure that that happens and i think that there are penalties involved when it doesn't happen people can can appeal decisions all the way to the federal court if they're offended by the decision maker's decision that affects their livelihood someone called me on the phone the other day and said rich i'm afraid that someone's going to make an innocent comment and they're going to lose their job over it i don't think that's going to happen when i when i was a building principal i was involved in some sexual harassment investigations under title ix our building principles work with students and staff and parents every day they do a great job if they didn't they wouldn't be doing what they're doing they're not going to violate a person's
152rights in an effort and what would the the outcome of that would be to they would be losing their job i'm sure our superintendent wouldn't wouldn't put up with that nor would our legal counsel we can't be doing that kind of thing and i don't you know i don't make these comments to be dismissive of those people that are concerned about these policies not at all because you assert you certainly have your right to your opinion i respect that we may not not always agree but i expect i respect your right to express your opinion and i've just tried to pass on a few of the things that people have shared with me and you know personally i'm satisfied with with the paulie as a policy as it's written i think it's going to be
153implemented fairly and it's going to serve our students and staff so thank you thank you yes chairman madam chairman if i may add one thing to what trustee your sponsor said if we can tell you how this is actually played out in this district this year and i can tell you i don't work with every district in the state but i work with quite a few of them on title ix issues and i can count on one hand the number of investigations that have occurred this year because of the high standard of that definition of severe pervasive and objectively offensive and if you can share michelle our experience in this district um you know we've we've not even done an investigation yet this year under these new regulations correct we've not done a formal investigation
154um i get calls the principals are do a really nice job of contacting me when an issue may come up that might meet um the definition of sexual harassment i've contacted a lot of parents this year and talked them through the process let them know their rights um to file a claim or not to file a claim um but honestly the standard of severe pervasive and objectively offensive i talk to kelly a lot about it when things come up it's extremely hard to meet that definition because even if it meets it as severe or pervasive if it's not objectively offensive we can't move forward under title nine or any of the other ones so that's what makes it that definition makes a really big impact it really limits our ability to move forward on with
155a formal investigation um and we've not had one that's fallen under that yet and that would only be under title correct correct there may still be other disciplinary factors that it may trigger within our discipline matrix and other things like that through board policy regularly and per the regulations and it's in the policy if a complaint comes in that on its face right if you take everything is true it doesn't meet that definition michelle shell dismissed that that's for the regulations okay thank you um who's next margaritaville thank you thank you madam chairman and i just wanted to comment that what um i think what what i heard a lot in the comments is um people want to be assured that there were safeguards that people were not going to be as mentioned um punished
156for making an innocent or or or mild comment safeguards against maybe biased investigators biased decision makers uh guard guards against someone being blindsided not seeing and being able to respond that's what i kind of read and i think i think what you've explained tonight is a process with a lot of safeguards in it and and i hope um and and i i think um you know we're not going to have frivolous complaints get past the first the first gatekeeper is what i i perceived thank you trustee bowling um answered partly but one of my first question that was how often does it happen in our district and you said there's been no investigations but there have been some complaints so it looks like the process is working so far in our district that we haven't
157gone to the complaint process yet but statewide you said there were a handful do you know what percentage without getting into exactly details of those actually went through and were found to be substantial chairman trustee bolan i don't represent every district in the state i do get involved i've gotten involved with probably six to eight and to date i know one that's gone all the way through the appeals process um and maybe one or two others that have um but generally not i mean it is very rare because of the um because of the definition and because of the process itself doesn't mean like uh superintendent brown says that they don't come under harassment you know bullying type of policy but it's it's not it's been unusual this year to have the complaints go all
158the way through the process my second question has to do with the burden of proof um you're saying with main review for doing that is to be consistent um the clear and convincing evidence is actually a higher level correct so can you explain to me what problems that would cause if we use that instead of the preponderance of evidence madam chair trustee bowlin um number one just from a practical standpoint you have all of your investigators and you know your administrators have spent years under the preponderance of evidence standard because that's what all the rest of our policies use so we would definitely need to do a retraining of what clearing convincing is because you're correct it has a higher standard secondly you could have um is is the inconsistency between between policies right i
159mean you know how do you say that sexual harassment requires clear and convincing but you know bringing a gun to school doesn't you know they're both bad things that could happen if proven um and so why wouldn't that have the same standard as well so i think it's the it's it's singling out sexual harassment is requiring a higher level of proof than some equally and uh you know mis equally bad misconduct that could have the same or similar consequences for students or teachers you know of other jurisdictions that use the um the higher standard not in wyoming no outside of miami are you aware of it i am not thank you okay thank you um trustee oh she so trustee smith you're good go ahead i'll just go down the line if you don't mind
160mrs clausen thank you thank you for explaining this in more depth tonight i appreciate that i know we've heard it before but appreciate the refresher and just more detailed explanation on things um i have just a few questions for you and one is one i don't believe you've addressed tonight but can you just clarify for us what happens if the accusation is an accusation of a criminal act so it i i mean if if there are investigations beyond what the district is doing madam chair uh trustee smith just like with all of our policies if we have knowledge of any criminal act we call law enforcement now under title ix you still have an obligation to investigate even if there's a parallel [Music] criminal investigation but we generally work fairly closely with our law enforcement
161to make sure that we don't in our investigation that we don't um taint any evidence um and you know we try to work with them but we doesn't relieve us of our obligations the school district to then investigate as well because again your standards are different um and their consequences at school that could be different out in the community and that's what i thought i just wanted you to clear that fight for that for everyone tonight um in terms of some of the feedback and suggestions that we've gotten from the public because as you know we've we've heard quite a bit um on email from folks one of the issues is the constitutionally protected speech and i understand that the the ocr and i mean with this legislation or this regulation that this is a
162it's an important thing and i i know we're we're starting from that basis but in the policies that we are voting on tonight for the manual we have added a section or a statement unconstitutionally protected speech to the student section but not to the employees section is there would there be a benefit to making that as you just said it's important to have the consistency between policies but would there be a benefit to making sure that is in both the student and the employee sections madam chair uh trustee smith they are not in the the constitutionally protected free speech clause is not in the sexual harassment piece of students it's in the harassment bullying and intimidation policy so it in so both the employee and the student piece of the title non-sexual harassment administrative regulation
163there is not that language it is just in the bullying harassment okay okay um and then i just had one final question for you um and i wanted to pull up one of these emails um there's been a request that we look at broadening the basis for appeals and that's um many of these emails have the the same language on that but if we were to address that in the policies as they stand right now in this draft form um and what we're voting on tonight would adding language and broadening that basis for appeal affect our compliance at all with the title ix regulations madam chair trustee smith the timeline regulations do allow a board to make a determination for additional bases the reason that we have kept it narrow is because because of the
164due process that's built in up to that point and the due process that's built in after that point otherwise this process continues to go on and on and we don't make that next you know transition to the next layer of due process with this okay thank you very much okay trustee clawson thank you thank you for waiting um thank you for your explanation it was helpful for me to understand especially the due process that is in place through the contracts for employees and also for what occurs if the students is recommended for expulsion so that was good for me and i appreciate the language i agree with my colleagues who i think might from what i understand from the emails that we received which were quite a lot and by the way i just want
165to say for those of you that might be here that wrote some emails to us that i really respect the process of reaching out to the board i appreciate that the public engages on these issues and i think it's very important that we listen to and we work with our community when they do engage on issues so i definitely read your emails and appreciate your the time you took to to weigh in um having said that i think that a lot of the concerns um and examples that were um over what we see a lot today in the news and um in just an in general society where a stray comment or a statement that was never intended to hurt someone um or offend them is used to malign a person and um and to
166ruin them ruin their reputation and possibly take away their job or or lead to discipline that should probably have never occurred right so i think that living in a society the way we do even though you've never s my colleague down the way said i've never seen this abused i think there's a concern that it could be and if we can at least all acknowledge that then the question becomes how do we write policy that prevents the potential for for um it's become weaponized um and used incorrectly and so um so that that's a question that i have and it leads me to the next ques it leads me to my question for you is is the definition of um severe pervasive and objectively offensive is that a legal term or is that defined more
167specifically because if it's not already set as a legal term that means a certain thing then i could see where it would be very highly subjective depending on who's interpreting it madam chair trustee clawson that language comes from the u.s supreme court case the davis case in 1998 it was the first time a school district was held accountable for monetary damages for um allowing sexual harassment or for its failure to respond to allegations of sexual harassment so it is a legal term okay um so you are you know we heard that you're consulted when cases come up um and could you give us some additional definition or words or context in which you interpret that that terminology please madam chair trustee class and i'm glad to when we talk about something if i have someone
168call me and say this is what's happened um you know we we talk about um was it a one-time deal um was it ongoing um how did it impact the student because is did it effectively deny or the or the teacher whomever it was did it effectively deny them access to an educational opportunity or activity um you know uh we walk through each because if you have to prove the severe pervasive you know was it was it everyone saying something was it one person saying something or is it the same person saying something five different times um that the first time in and of itself probably wasn't much but the fifth time and the student quit wanting to go to class then we have a problem there you know the whole point is everyone should
169be able to have access equal access to class and to the opportunities the school district provides and if for some reason we're limiting that because of something someone's saying on a consistent severe pervasive basis and we're limiting that access then we have a problem we need to address that problem and so that's you know the level that we look at it the other thing that i see sometimes in in an initial investigation is it will be one incident maybe with one student but an investigation proves or starts to show that we have one student who um uh or the the the respondent has had similar interactions with seven or eight other complainants right and then we we have we have an obligation to address that because if we don't number one it's not best for
170the educational environment and number two we're looking at legal liability so those are the types of questions we start to ask and there is and i i try to work with and i know michelle and i have talked as we do training this year we really want to spend the time on what is sexual harassment because that is you know hard for folks to get their brain around what you can go through and as part of trainings that i do i've pulled legal cases out that have interpreted the davis standard um and um you know kind of done the quiz after we've kind of gone through it is this you know uh is this um severe pervasive objectively offensive um school down the road in colorado's college uh the school for the deaf there was
171a student that was um molested repeatedly over four years it was brought the attention of the school nothing ever happened they were found and you know a tremendous uh jury settlement was against them under the same data standard so yes i do go look back at the case law when i'm helping districts work through this okay thank you and i have one more question um it relates to the question that mrs smith just asked about the constitutional language i as you know proposed the amendment to add the constitutional language just to clarify that that language when it pertained to the other section on bullying and harassment and at the time i i know that uh one of our public members um put forth at the potential of adding the constitutional language in this section as
172well to apply to our employees and our students and i was just wondering if you could walk me through i understand that legally we are required to follow the constitution so um you know we would definitely want our policies to align with federal law and our our constitutional rights but is there um a compelling reason to not add that language to apply to these sections well i i met him here trustee clawson um a couple of thoughts there can you step back up to the mic for me thanks kelly sorry um first of all um just so that you're aware the regulations the 34 cfr 106 where that contains 679 regulations actually has at 0.6 um it says you know nothing here changes your obligations under the us constitution so it's built into the regulations
173what concerns me about starting to add it the way we did in that harassment policies and that harassment policy we added you know unless it is x right unless you know we will not you know we won't uh limit speech in any way unless it does x well the minute we do that in this policy we potentially interfere with um the definitions that are there right i mean it's built into that definition that it has to be so severe pervasive and objectively offensive so the minute you start trying to use that same language that we put into chapter eight on bullying harassment if you put that same language into this regulation they're inconsistent so that is my concern and bigger picture do we need to put that in all of our policies because there are
174a lot of policies that deal with speech so is it is it necessary but that's you know decision for the board thank you are there any other questions from the board okay all right very good now i'd like to acknowledge the emails that we um we actually had a 45-day review and that ended a week ago friday and we continued to get emails after that 45-day review and the board still took all of those emails under consideration so even though they were received after that 45-day review because we thought it was important to really consider everyone's opinion on this so i as a board chair normally respond to um emails that come to me and that's in our board governance at is board chair speak for the board and so um um those i will
175not be responding to because they are part they're considered part of that public comment so unless there's something that specifically addresses like um the uh somehow there was a section that uh it was assumed that this was part of critical race theory and that is not correct so that is misinformation and um so those i will respond to um but i will not be responding to the additional um public comment that we're looking at here as a board so um my next uh section of this is our public we are open for public comment um the rules that we've always had uh are still the same please step up to the podium uh state your name um and also try and keep it between two and three minutes and uh try to not be repetitive
176in your comments and keep it general in nature and dr brown for those of you that are out there on zoom if there's someone that would still like to comment um and uh mrs ashby is still with us as a board trustee so if there's something that you would just raise your hand brittany and dr brown's watching if you've got any additional comments or questions so is there anyone at this time at the board um or in the board room that would like to speak yes mr wilson thank you chairman renee and trustees i have two things here uh and i would ask your indulgence to allow me to just take 30 seconds to read a statement from nathan winters from the family policy alliance separate from my own comments nathan winters of family policy
177alliance of wyoming asked me to read a couple of sentences for this public hearing he wrote dear school board i am thankful for the opportunity to speak about the proposed policy amendments however i'm sorry i cannot visit with you this evening i just texted him back and forth he's still on the road i would ask that you refer to the attorney-prepared concerns that i submitted on june 1st listing six points for you to consider as you vote on these policy changes sincerely nathan winters executive director of family policy alliance of wyoming and with that if i could i'll just take a couple minutes first uh i heard much of the same presentation before uh the one of the concerns that i have as a person who was on your policy committee and raised these concerns
178repeatedly and asked for information and dialogue about these sorts of things to be able to ask the sorts of questions if the trustees just asked i was not given that opportunity to speak other than at very short meetings where we would be running up against the eight o'clock deadline and it was time to go i recall being at a meeting with uh all of you at the committee of the whole and asking does this trouble any of you except me and there was just complete silence and then within uh ten seconds the answer came back from the chairman of that meeting no and we moved on that was the same meeting where i expressed the concern that the constitutional protection was not being extended on the sexual harassment side so my encouragement to you would
179be what i have spent many many hours reading that huge stack of documents that i would get the day before or the day of the meetings because i care about our schools i respect the fact that all of you not all of you have day jobs but many of you do i am fortunate right now to be retired and felt like this is a good opportunity for me to not just complain but to give productive feedback i do not feel like the process equipped me well to do that or the rest of the people in here i understand there are about 90 comments from my correspondence with the public records act uh custodian for the district so i would just encourage more transparency and more dialogue i do not have time to address the notes
180that i that i've raised here and i also could not flip through those two inches of policy changes in time to be able to point out specific questions i might have had for your legal or uh ms proctor about some of the concerns that i still see remain same ones that i have written about before i loved your opening with the pledge of allegiance with liberty and justice for all the proposed changes to chapter 6 and chapter 8 for handling sexual harassment and discrimination still give an adequate regard for justice due process and constitutional rights i would love to see an amendment to address the issue that uh trustee clausen just made the sure one she made before but it should be applied throughout the policies uh second to change the standard of evidence from
181preponderance of evidence to clear and convincing evidence it is a terrible charge to have discrimination or sexual harassment determination found by an adjudicator and according to policy it doesn't say that it's a panel or legal advisor it says the title ix decision maker is the sole person making that decision now if is that is to be some sort of a panel that would include people that have not been trained and certified by weak and by the association of title ix administrators both of which i can take it to the website these organizations are heavily influenced by critical theory ideology not critical race theory important difference a press class versus privileged class and there's built into the dialogue there that a reasonable person is not defined by the people in this audience the oppressed person is
182defined by your special class in that who is that is who is determined to be the reasonable person i apologize it's hard to make that statement when i have a three-minute limit but this is a challenge to be able to have confidence in a system that has worked very well for you i understand that you're very happy with how it's worked before but as i read the national news these kinds of things could happen here we've just seen them in the last week since all these this stuff came in about cases with a person using uh saying i will not use the wrong pronoun i feel like that would viola i'll use the person's name but i will not use the wrong pronoun that would violate my conscience and the person is suspended the teacher
183is suspended in the redacted publicly available version of the laramie county school district one internal investigation on the pervasiveness of discriminatory harassment intimidation and bullying at mccormick it cited numerous incidents of teachers not referring to students by the name and or pronoun that they wish to be identified with these issues have come up at gsa meetings students are not comfortable with teachers and peers because of this issue so a concern that i have is that someone could even inadvertently use the wrong pronoun twice and be found guilty of discrimination or harassment under this policy as i understand it this the briefing that we just received said that in order for any sexual harassment charge to be found uh it had to be pervasive and uh ongoing uh through those three words that that were described
184before that only applies to protecting the district and the hostile atmosphere it does not apply to student a or teacher b it applies to the overall atmosphere i would love to have those words apply to every charge under under chapter six and chapter eight and that would satisfy my concerns but as i understand it right now that does not apply to everything these are detailed matters i want to respect your time and not not overdo it i mentioned four things in my emails the first one was the protecting the constitution that recognized freedom of speech uh with some amendments the second would be to change the standard of evidence because of the the terrible consequences of being found guilty of a title ix offense to allow for the appeal the appeal process should be made
185clear um it shouldn't have to go to district court go hire a lawyer at 250 an hour or more in order to get a fair appeal beyond the the etixa train certified uh title ix decision maker and finally i my understanding is the title ix decision makers responsibility i was going to flip through and try to find a specific thing but the decision of the title ix decision maker is final is what it says in the policy which implies to me that there is no there is no appeal within the system um i would love to see that that determination of guilt not just i understand that the the the punishment is decided by the regular system but just that determination of guilt that is going to be a career ender in today's environment our
186today's environment is horribly divisive and we need to protect everybody's rights with liberty and justice for all thank you trustees and thank you so much for giving me the extra time superintendent brown and um i look i look forward to further discussion uh i'd stand for questions if you have questions of me if there's something that you would like to take offline in particular let me know and i would be pleased to meet with you are there any questions all right i'm very good thank you mr wilson and thank you very much for serving on um your last year serving on uh subcommittee three thank you all right are there is there anyone else that would like to speak at this time if you can come up to the podium thank you and state your
187name thank you my name is susan graham and i really appreciate all of the effort that was gone through it explained so much more than what i was aware of i do have personal experience having um a family member uh go through a title ix process at a uh university not of this state um this family member was the complainant originally um but then because of the criminal level of the complaint the police got involved and the respondent lied and so the title ix complaint was flipped and my family member became the respondent and the respondent became the complainant and the law got involved and it escalated to the point where what started in october didn't end it's still not over and it hasn't even gotten to the appeals process um now again this was
188at a university level there was a criminal part the police got involved the police information became part of the title ix complaint when legal representation was finally sought by my family member um since the family member was the original complainant they were advised it'd be good if you would just drop this complaint um but it served to escalate to a point where um what mr wilson said in so far as a career long-term career ruining was going to happen unless the complaint was dropped um the the records are kept for seven years is that true if the complaint is dropped they're still kept again i thank you very much um i think there might be unintended consequences um and i appreciate mr wilson's uh diligence in as a community helping to work things out so
189thank you thank you are there any other questions from the floor or any other statement sorry from the floor and online i do not see anyone with their hand raised if you were interested in speaking on the policies please raise your virtual hand i do not see any now all right i'd really like to thank um both of um our individuals that spoke tonight um and uh shared their experiences and their their thoughts about um these policy amendments um and i guess uh i'm going to yes i'm going to bring it back to the board for further discussion but i'd like to close the public comment part of this first so we will um adjourn from that public comment and our public hearing thank you so ending public comment and our public hearing and we
190will reconvene our regular board meeting so for continued discussion from the board we do have a pilot we do have a motion on the floor and open um for to approve these policies so is there further discussion um thank you i'm curious and and and kind of intrigued by the idea that of what mr wilson just said about the severe pervasive and objectively offensive um measure and i'm wondering about how he suggested it apply across the board to our chapter six and chapter eight and i just i'd like to hear a little bit more about how that will work and what the impacts of that suggestion would be so i don't know if miss pearson or our titan title nine coordinator would like to answer that but yeah that's a question i have kelly could
191you manager could you go ahead and send it to mike yeah so we have it all on the zoom sorry at your favorite place okay thank you and chair trustee clawson not quite sure i understand the question if you could help me um from what i understand from mr wilson's uh comments earlier he had suggested that perhaps the pervasives sorry excuse me the severe pervasive and objectively offensive language apply to all the policies in chapter six and chapter eight okay um go ahead can you take your mouth it's hard to understand you have such a soft voice so thank you kelly tell my kids that so we're saying i mean the severe pervasive and objectively offensive does apply in the sexual harassment components or administrative regulation in chapter six and chapter eight is that what
192they comply are you saying then we take that same severe pervasive and objectively offensive and apply it in a title seven context because that's the other piece in title six is the employee employee piece is a severe pervasive work because it's a different standard i guess i would refer to mr wilson's suggestion because he it was his not mine i'm just doing it justice as i read over the offenses that are described in there the severe pervasive and objectively offensive principle stuff only applies to the hostile environment it does not apply to a child charge against one teacher or one student who should for example fail make an inadvertent comment that somebody finds that cause them causes them emotional stress so this is not something where there is our culture is together on what is
193reasonable and when we say if there if there's a student and i use the example of that's been in national news recently of of this causing huge turmoil and making the national news i would hate to see that blowing up here i would love to see people trying to respect each other appropriately and making reasonable accommodations in order to uh respect everyone so that everyone can get a good education but then a quote that i just read from the mccormick thing the complaint from the gsa club was was that they will not use our preferred pronouns they'll use their they're not saying they're using the dis preferred pronouns they're saying they're not using our pronouns is that something that's going to now become objectionably uh that that is a that is offensive to a student
194and causes them distress apparently it is so so distressing that it ended up in the formal report from the mccormick incident so those are the sorts of things and then talking with superintendent brown two years ago um i said is this going to be a problem my recollection was you said this isn't going to be a problem here clarification though my understanding is that the mccormick um incident was actually under our old policy correct not these new it's a good example though of what can easily happen here okay and what is the expectations of certain portions of our community and what i believe should be a reasonable accommodation made to folks who wish to work around that okay as you've heard in the news okay thank you mr wilson um i'll go ahead and let
195kelly address that but with the i just wanted everyone to know that that that the mccormick happened under our old title nine rules not these current ones that went into august of 2020. correct madam chair of the standard under the old rules which is which is directly to your point it's a we're asking for a higher standard in chapter six chapter eight under the old uh policy that if it if it weren't amended it would be severe pervasive or um persistent that um uh could limit access so it was a lower standard in that mccormick investigation than the standard that is before this board today is the severe pervasive and objectively offensive standard so it is the standard as well as the quid pro quo and the sexual violence standard those are the standards by
196which sexual harassment is judged um in this in these policies in all offenses or just the the stalking definitions are defined by the regulations and defined in statute but is i believe we looked at one of the uh the amendments that we made in the policy committee because um you know that such a great process to raise these concerns and to go back and look is that we added one of the definitions actually into the policy itself of stalking that shows that there has to be a course of conduct and so that that edit actually made it into these final um final regulations it does not that's the challenge okay all right i'm gonna come back to the go ahead and sure i will come back to the board discussion here thank you very much
197don't answer this question you answer my question first of all okay okay to change the definition of the policy would mean that this district were not in compliance with the regulations and be at risk of losing federal funding okay so by applying that language you're saying that we would be compromising federal funding because we would not be in compliance with federal regulations if i'm understanding the question uh trustee clawson is if we add that severe pervasive to prong one the good pro quo and prong three the sexual violence piece of it if we're acting looking to add severe pervasive and objectively offensive to all three of those prongs not just the second prong that would be contrary to um federal regulation and law and therefore could potentially uh cause a risk of federal funding okay
198okay kelly if you can clarify something oh yes please thank you madam chair i appreciate it um i want to make sure i understand um what i'm most interested in is that we have good strong policy or no one can interpret it wrongly in most cases i don't think we will but we don't want to allow for potential and i think that's the concern that mr wilson and others have voiced in in the letters that we've received so i'm i'm i was probing you earlier about this legal term these words because i wanted to know if it was a term that was used regularly and you confirmed that for me and i was curious and so i'm i'm following that through with my thoughts of just how do we as a district apply this to
199our students and and to our employees um to protect them from being accused wrongly in this language severe pervasive and objectively offensive it really sets the bar high um and i think that's a good thing that's you know our country is based on the idea that we're innocent until proven guilty and that you have to really bring evidence to bear to accuse someone of doing of wrongdoing and so i'm intrigued by the idea of applying this language more broadly but you're saying that if we do apply this to our students and employees we'll be in violation of federal regulations trustee clawson if we apply it outside of that second prong out of that david that that uh hostile environment if we apply it to the quid pro quo prong that we said you know that
200a district employee i'm trying to think yeah i would even add it to that one you know would have to and that's the one exchanging you know sexual favors for grades um i don't know how it would fit into that one and so we're talking then the sexual violence one which is the domestic violence stalking um sexual violence piece of it and those are those are defined terms both in the regulations and and under i mean in the federal regulations and under the law that oh great um so if you you're looking at adding to the sexual assault or the quid pro quo this language of severe pervasive and objectively defensive that are we on the same page there i want to make sure i think you're i'm beginning to understand your point um that
201there are certain things that you can't allow to occur in in general let alone at a higher standard is that what you mean yes yes i understand now i appreciate that very much well i i guess i'm i would just like to state for the public's benefit that i'm really in favor of us having nice clean policy i think we all are um to be fair um that where we don't allow for our policies to be weaponized and to be overly used by anyone in any future state right hopefully our current folks i don't think do this but we've got to think about long term and are we are we passing good policy that's airtight and that won't allow for um popular fads and and uh and i i don't know the words are i'm
202are escaping me but where people you know currently are i'm very sensitive to what they consider microaggressions or offenses that were never intended to be taken that way and so i definitely want to make sure that we're careful in that way and i was on policy three and we did cover a lot of territory and i think that um delving into these issues a little deeper we'd mr wilson tried um i even tried one one evening but we ran out of time and i think it's worth us really taking the time to think about these things and make sure that we don't as as one as the lady spoke earlier we don't have unintended consequences so i'll leave it at that thank you thank you mrs clausen we have brittany ashby with her hand up
203thank you brittany uh please yep so i just wanted to you know i i can see the concerns that people have brought forward that you know there's a lot of things happening in the world and that i think we've had some things be taken too far however i you know having worked in hr and worked in policy for a long time to me there is no such thing as an airtight policy um if you have an airtight policy then you're likely not managing the issue that it's set up to deal with in the first place um and so i don't want to take something so far that we also can't actually deal with real sexual harassment or um any of those issues um you know and i i hear where you're coming from i do
204um and and maybe there is some benefit to looking at it again but i also would ask the question of kelly what is our expectation from the feds is there do these policies have to be updated at a certain point before we're out of compliance what is what is the expectation from us on how how these get updated and when go ahead madam chair uh trust c ashby um let me stand back even further not to get too far into the weeds this is not a policy can you this is not a policy this is an administrative regulation because by law this process had to go into effect on august 14 2020. so we've been working under this administrative regulation this entire year because the law required us to so um and so that is
205hopefully that answers you know the question as far as that goes it went through the policy process because i think is and i'll defer to dr brown but that administrative regulations often do and it was a good process it needed that transparency in that betting but to maybe stand back a little bit let's not forget what i said maybe two hours ago which is these started in november of 2018 they had 150 000 comments at the at the national level that were responded to and vetted by stakeholders across the country so these were really in an effort to tighten the policy because before then we had many more cases of wrongly accused especially at the higher ed level that didn't get that due process so this was really an effort to to tighten that policy
206and to raise that standard so that it was very clear to folks thank you guys just real quick but one thing that i commented to the board and to the public previously is the nice thing one of the nicest things that this board does in this district does is they evaluate their policies on a yearly basis so if there's something that comes up that needs change a lot of this is driven by the federal regulations we don't have a choice to to change it without being at risk of not having federal funds but again i think you're going to have the opportunity again next year right at this meeting to go through these policies again and if there's something that is not working it could be changed at that time mr uh dr wiederspen yeah
207i just wanted trustee ashby really made the point that i was going to make because you know i think everyone would agree that a policy is only as good as the person who interprets it and you know my experience has been you know it's there is no such thing as an airtight policy try as we may to build in all sorts of safeguards and ways that we can eliminate misinterpretation it's it's going to happen and i think we just have to you know exercise our fidelity out in the workplace to make sure that the policies are implemented as they were intended and i think that's the best that we can do i don't mean to just you know i don't mean to dismiss people's concerns that there's potential for abuse here there's always potential for
208abuse we just have to make sure that we minimize any potential to to the greatest extent that we can so thank you yes mr boland um yes i would just like to say that um because we do go through these every single year of the policies we don't go through every single one of them every single year but anyone in the community has the opportunity to propose any kind of a change or to reconsider any part of these policies um they just need to request that through the district level so and then the committee will go through those so um as i was listening today a lot of my questions that had come up from all the comments about things were answered um i'm still a little uncomfortable with the burden of proof i think
209i'd rather see the clearer and whatever the higher level is when but i think since all the others have that in there i guess i'm a little more comfortable with that at this point um and we've gone through this whole year right now you did make a comment that we weren't changing the policies we are changing some of the policies there are some slight policy changes mainly just kind of statements and definitions is mainly what's in there so there is some policy change but most of all it has been controversial it's in the regulation part so thank you thank you are there any other questions for kelly uh mrs pearson before we let her sit down again thank you actually thank you all very much for staying with us and having this discussion and michelle
210proctor and kelly pearson and i know that um i know that uh the the board is very aware and i i know that each one of us took all of the comments um and uh reviewed as well as did their work i think every single one of us was on some sort of policy committee um policy one subcommittee one two or three as a board we are we all participate on those three policy committees as well as administrators teachers uh ctea representative community members um we have uh it's it's really quite a process and then we come together as a committee of the whole and review those processes again as committee of the whole so with no further discussion um or amendments okay we will uh put this all in favor we have that motion
211on the on the floor and seconded to approve um actually i'm going to have mr wiederspaun just read that we've already approved it but would you read the motion again to approve amending the laramie county school district number one board policies and adopt all changes in its entirety second any further discussion all in favor say aye aye opposed no motion britney are you voting nope i did hi hi thank you we heard you we didn't hear you before so thank you all right very good i'll try and like have a little pause there again so thank you go ahead mr wienerschool d-32 so to approve the appointment madam chair i moved to approve the appointment of james fraley in the interim position of assistant superintendent of instruction effective july 1st 2021 and to a plate
212and to place him on the appropriate step of the administrative salary schedule second is there any discussion all in favor say aye all right okay oppose no hearing none um welcome aboard to mr james braley is he still with us all right very good please stand everybody to approve the appointment of victoria thompson in the position of assistant superintendent of human resources effective july 1 2021 and to place her on the appropriate step of the administrative salary schedule second is there any discussion being done all in favor say aye hi oppose no motion passes welcome aboard to our human resources victoria thompson is she very well stan oh thank you very nice to meet you madam chair i moved to approve the appointment of jessica meyer in the position of associate principal of cary junior
213high and to place her on the appropriate step of the administrative salary schedule effective for the 2021-2022 school year seven is there any discussion saying then all in favor say aye now motion passes welcome aboard to um yes and would you stand thank you [Applause] madam chair i move to ratify the negotiated agreements for the 2021-2022 contract here for the superintendent's staff and the assistant superintendent of support operations second is there any discussion seeing that all in favor say aye all right hi oppose no you're doing so good caring none um motion passes to ratify the support operations thank you madam sure i moved to ratify the negotiated agreement for the 2021-2022 contract year for school administrators coordinators program administrators supervisors kitchen managers and school psychologists units second is there any discussion all in favor
214say aye oppose no motion passes and i'm sure i move to ratify the negotiated agreement for the 2021-2022 contract year for the technical and support services para educators custodial services transportation services and nutrition services units second is there any discussion yes mr boland i'd just like to give you that i did was able to attend all of the sessions not necessarily every minute of every session but um very good discussion on all those a lot of issues were brought up and one of the things that i still find very good about this process is you've been a trust build over many years of doing this process and that trust comes through many times in the negotiations when somebody will say let me take care of that and the other side is trusting that that will
215get taken care of and so it really shortens the process when you don't try to get every single detail into the contracts and you get interested on both sides it won't get taken care of so get a very good negotiations season again and i look forward to watching it again okay yes i did like trustee bowling i had sat in on two different negotiated agreement sessions and you know if you really want to know how things work in the school district you just need to sit in and listen to the dialogue between supervisors and people in the workplace so for example i set in on a discussion between bus drivers and their supervisors you hear lots of discussion about the challenges they face every day that you normally don't hear about you know they talk
216about how difficult it is to be an out of a route bus driver when you know when things are limited because of colbit and that's just one example but the dedication that these people have and the willingness that they're they have to do their job with with excellence and on the other side the willingness of supervisors to listen and be good supervisors is very impressive so you know and trustee bolin has been doing that for years and and i did it when i was in hr and it's always enlightening to sit down and just hear the dialogue that goes on it's it's a very interesting process if you've never done it i would recommend that you just take the opportunity to sit in and do all that very good any further discussion all in favor
217say aye all right oppose no motion passes madam chair i move to ratify the negotiated agreement for the 2021-2022 contract year for the cheyenne teachers education association unit second any discussion i'm just going to add i'd like to thank everyone who participated in those negotiations throughout our staff and also mr bolin and dr wiederspahn i really appreciate that so i'm hearing no further discussion all in favor say aye all right opposed now thank you motion passes adam chair i move to approve the appointment of matt schlegel in the position of social emotional learning administrator and to place him on the appropriate step of the administrative salary schedule effective for the 2021-2022 school year only second is there any discussion yes please and i guess i'd like dr brown to briefly describe this is some of
218that one-time only money it's temporary but i guess you know it's an example of how we're using the one-time covert related money to take care of a problem at least temporarily can you just briefly see what mr freda will be doing madam chair and i i think mr schlegel is prepared to answer that question probably a little bit better than i am so mr schlegel if you'll come up he'll talk a little bit about that but this is some of the one-time money um that we are getting from for federal grants and having the opportunity to um um put some people in places that we felt like we needed some help after we've gone through a coveted and then thank you mr clayton yeah madam chair members of the boards thank you very much for
219the opportunity to visit with you tonight about this exciting uh opportunity and this this new creative and innovative position um i'll be briefing my comments and have some time at the end for any questions usually as administrator we're in bed by about eight o'clock so um not having school today will certainly be helpful honored to be the recommended candidate for this position i have been following what's been going on around the district around the nation for schools that in districts and states that implement a robust tier one um social emotional learning curriculum to all students at the elementary level and the results are nothing short of phenomenal and so having the opportunity to begin that work in our district i think is going to be critical to the success of moving forward one of the
220things that we have about three-fourths of those positions uh currently recommended to be filled the people who will be going into the classroom teaching social emotional learning on the specialist schedule and so one of the things that we'll be doing in a short period of time is coming together and taking a look at how social emotional learning can help us reach our mission and vision across the district how can we take 30 to 60 minutes a week and really look at how do we improve graduation rates through social emotional learning how do we change the trajectory of students who are struggling both with externalizing behavior and internalizing behavior so in this in this position that's one of the first things that we're going to be doing another thing that we would be doing um when
221we take acronyms in public education and we put them together it's really confusing so we've combined this and sel together so some of our first work is going to be some rebranding to say who are we and what are we doing to make a difference for students and so i'll probably be getting with dr fraley and dr crespo to ask for some forgiveness of saying hey can we change our name here can we do something that's really meaningful for kids and when it's time for us to to go into the classroom we're not just providing planning time for teachers but this is what we're doing this captures the essence of how we're helping children with their social emotional learning um some other things that we'd be doing in the next 45 to 70 days so
222that we're ready to implement a robust tier one program when school starts i think really is guided by the work that the divorce taught us several years ago when they taught us what things the professional learning community need to know and those first quest the first question excuse me is what is it we want students to know and be able to do so bringing 26 people together not being independent contractors to say what is it we expect every first grader to know and be able to do in the realm of social emotional learning how about every sixth grade and make sure that we have alignment across the district in terms of all of those things that are really important that we want students to know and be able to do the next question that the
223the group we'll be answering is how will we know when we get there right and more broadly how will we be able to share it with you guys the successes that we see through the research how can we share the success with the school board with our senior leadership team with our building principles to say here's the time that you've given us this gift and here's what we've done with it we also want to be able to report out to parents to say here's the things that we've done with your child and this is the result so we'll be working on that second question question three and four in the summer i think are really important for us to do and those questions that the deforest taught us is um what are we gonna do
224when students when we walk in the room they already pretty much know what we're doing right there's gonna be times when the sel coordinator or educator goes in and that lesson students already know it so how do we provide a robust enrichment system and leadership opportunities for our kids in pre-k our four-year-olds all the way to our 12 and 13 year olds how do we provide a robust enrichment system for in leadership opportunities for those students and likewise just like we have a really robust system for intervening for students in reading writing and math how about students that struggle with those tier one concepts inside of social emotional learning how do we provide interventions for those students and reteaching opportunities so that we can do that and i think when if we can get all
225that done it's kind of like flying a plane while you build it but the plane's already taken off right so now we're catching the plane my colleagues have already developed schedules and they already have some plans in place so aligning all of those things like i said so we don't have 26 independent contractors meeting the needs of kids is going to be some of our primary work when we first begin our work and i would throw it out to questions for you guys questions anyone no caring none i'm super excited i think the rest of the board is too so welcome aboard appreciate your presentation thank you all right that's the doctor i believe we still need to vote but we still that's right thank you okay so thank you for keeping me on track
226um all in favor no more discussion so all in favor please say yes hi thank you brittany all opposed hearing then thank you uh mr schlegel you are approved i appreciate your patience and i'm sorry that i was i jumped the gun there madam chair madam chair i moved to approve the purchase of two school buses from the state of wyoming bus bid as supplied by the wyoming department of education for an amount not to exceed 241 576 dollars and to declare two buses as salvage per the requirements of the diesel emission reduction act second is there any discussion yes mr bowman i can certainly see as i look at this chart or one of these has 181 000 miles the other one is 211 000 miles once of 2007 2009 we're certainly pushing some
227new limits on our buses because of the transportation regulations so i'm sure that's going to have some effect on keeping our mechanics more busy than they have been in the past so i see we can release a couple of them at least no further discussion all in favor say aye all right motion passes madam chair i move to approve the appointment of chad woodworks mark pleb and jerry schlabs in the position of triad athletic director and to place them on the appropriate step of the administrative salary schedule effective for the 2021-2022 school year second is there any discussion yes mrs claussen madam chair i had a discussion today with mr siemens our district-wide activities director and in our conversation i asked him about savings and and you know we're moving to have our our triad
228athletic or activities directors be be in charge of both our our high school and our junior highs and in that discussion realized that we're saving about 35 000 or estimated around that amount by by doing this and i just think it's worth noting for the public that um even in this decision we're seeking to find savings so i appreciate that and um and i just want to share that information with the public thank you appreciate that any further discussion yes mr bullen you know i think the fact that we're moving to try it later because i think it's going to even though we're getting progressive to get rid of the elementary athletics i think the fact that we have somebody in each triad to look at that maybe can market size some smaller events to
229look at the kids can still do some competition because we're looking at it within each triad so i think maybe that'll give us some um leeway to be able to do support for our kids even though we're eliminating the official elementary program and i i would also add that um you know our each triad is worked with their uh uh ads to develop a um skills progression um that we will i'm sure we'll still continue to use and and work with so at the junior high level on up so i look forward to some of these changes and and to see how how this progresses so thank you for pointing out those items is there any further discussion all in favor say aye [Music] oppose no motion passes madam chair i move to approve a
230contract with town and country plumbing incorporated for plumbing upgrades at various sites second is there any discussion saying none all in favor say aye opposed no motion passes madam chair i move to approve the appointment of fawn bartlett in the position interim principal of meadowlark elementary and to place her on the appropriate step of the administrative salary schedule effective for the 2021-2022 school year second is there any discussion all in favor say aye all right ms bartlett's here too yes mrs bartlett could you stand welcome madam chair i move to approve the appointment of jennifer lima in the interim position of assistant principal of meadowlark elementary and to place her on the appropriate step of the administrative salary schedule effective for the 2021-2022 school year second is there any discussion saying hearing then motion passes
231do we have her here no all right well we'll just tell her virtually if uh if jennifer lehmann is not here we'll tell her welcome aboard virtually and we're excited to have her at meadowlark as well congratulations moving on to our future business the next board regular board meeting will be held monday june 21st 2021 at 6 00 pm a work session will begin at 5 pm um we will have at this time we have another opportunity for public comment is there anyone else that would like to uh make a public comment yes if you can just state your name and the rules are still the same you've been here all night long so you already know hi my name is amanda angel i am a parent to a sixth grader or soon-to-be sixth grader
232i also have a uh sophomore and a junior and admittedly i came here for one reason and there was a couple other concerns that i have so the first one is the funding with the elementary school you know you can look up any scholarly articles or non-scholarly articles for that matter on the benefits of after school activities in fact i think i've sent all of you um an article a couple months back so to cut the funding from elementary schools especially after everything the kids have been through in the last year mr schlegel you actually kind of wrote my speech uh this is again this is offhand um you said the goal is emotional learning and to do meaningful things well that's what sports does for kids so if you have children that's probably one
233of the only times besides parent-teacher conferences that parents come into the school i know my my son goes to prairie wind and i look forward to seeing miss huego she always said hi and waved and you know you get to know the teachers miss lobato so to cut that out there are kids that don't have parents that are involved in their sports so they won't have the opportunities to do the intramural sports through the city so please keep that in mind when you look at funding you know we approve you guys just approved a dozen different positions what about our kids i mean that so um you also said a robust and meaningful leadership opportunities isn't that what sports is is leadership opportunities so that's my first concern the second concern i have and it's
234actually i don't know if this is interactive but for you dr brown and i actually am the parent that brought up the mass concerns with this with the sports you know we had our kids messed up and then we sent them on the track in the july heat doesn't make a lot of sense um we all saw the story about the athlete in washington that fell over at the finish line um during a track meet but my question is with the guidance for next year's um coven and how to respond you had the you had the four different triads and what it is my family had coveted in february i know this because i had antibody testing with that said um unvaccinated people which i will not have my children especially my sophomore and junior
235my 15 and 16 year old vaccinated they've had covet though so they have the antibodies and i'm happy to pay for that testing are we considering that when we are looking at what constitutes quarantine because if my girls go to school and they don't wear a mask and they are exposed but they've already had coveted so that's just as good as the vaccine so is that being taken into consideration it seems like we've all forgotten basic immunology in the past year i was a lab tech for 17 years and it's mind-blowing what is happening i wanna answer that real quickly okay we're gonna follow what the wyoming department of health and our county health officials tell us that's all from them okay and then is that based on cdc guidelines where is that coming from
236i believe some of it's on cdc and some of its um rules and regulations that the wyoming health department has put together okay so are we going to consider then the people that have antibodies that's questions okay so i need to bring that up to dr hartman okay and i will do so um i think that's all so i appreciate it i know it's been a long night my kids have been texting me all that long asking when i'm coming home thank you for thank you and thank you for speaking appreciate it um the um susan graham again thank you again for this opportunity to speak with you uh i'm chairman trustees um i have been trying to have a discussion um with our health department and have even visited with uh the state health
237department um dr alexa harris um in regards to information that i would really like to get into your hands something about policies that i can get to you especially regards to how our metrics are developed statewide and county wide they are based on the pcr test are you aware that november 2020 portugal had a lawsuit in which it was determined that pcr testing is not scientific basis for diagnosis a similar lawsuit was ruled on in vienna march 24th 2021 i'd love to get you this information because it's based on a document from euro surveillance 22 scientists medical doctors went through the report that said pcr is the way to diagnose covid and it was found to have 10 fatal flaws i'd love to get you that information because the health department won't talk to me
238so maybe you guys could talk to them the metrics are based on false data we need to know that how do i get that information to you you will email that to me i'll get it thank you is there anyone else is it yes please madam chair trustees my name is jason hoover when i listen to your covid uh considerations for next year now listen to your superintendent particularly in the exchange i find it striking that you seem to forget at least too many of us that we elected you we elected you we elected you we did not elect you this excuse that you use to hide behind a county health officer doesn't pass muster with the parents we expect you with courage and intelligence to exercise your common sense and to protect our children
239first not necessarily each other not your teachers not your administrators you have a duty to protect him too all of that must be balanced against the needs of the children whether that's in finding money for sports or whether that's in restricting the lives of these children thank you for your time thank you i'm russ bain um i'm curious if we can find proof as susan stated in regards to how the health department makes their decisions not being valid does that matter to you guys would you do anything different than what you've done then just listen to the health department oh i'm sorry i know that dr brown responded earlier to public con to a public comment but usually we don't have an interaction because rules rules rules come on guys just answer the question yes
240or no yesterday would you change your behavior i'll just speak as board chair we have taken the position to follow our health officials recommendations officers recommendations because they have a greater breadth and depth of knowledge than than what we have and so um i would hope as i can comment to you as a as a citizen i would hope that if you have um data that and and information that doesn't agree with the metrics and and where our county and and state health officials are then honestly they would be the ones where that discussion should probably happen because they don't hear us they don't hear us they don't listen to us you guys affect our children they make up ideas okay and you pick their ideas and their ideas aren't winners their ideas are indoctrination
241and who's paying who it's not about what's right and i think you guys all know this i think it's real clear out there thank you thank you is there anyone else i appreciate everyone's comment and time in staying um and and sharing with us um and i i will guarantee you that we all as a board take that all very seriously and um and i know that we are going to have our health officials on the june 21st our next meeting um they will be here at the work session um and we will have further discussion with them um concerning opening up schools and and where no one has a crystal ball on where this is going but the board was concerned about how we're going to open up um and what that what our
242administration how they're all working together because we will have a an opening plan again is that correct for the wyoming department of education so we will be working through multiple meetings but it's going to begin on um that work session on june the 21st so thank you member will yes now that has been publicly noticed will it be um available public can sit in and listen to it oh absolutely in the public recession yes absolutely so i want to make sure everyone knew that that it will be open to the public zoom and and and and yes all right very good yes please and is that dr brown is that the the work session where that i requested so that we could address whether or not to allow for people to choose whether to wear
243masks or not in the fall and to discuss those issues we'll have a discussion with our health officials about where they see that going and where the health officials are i think when i read from the wyoming department of ed from wyoming's department of health statement they don't see themselves going back to providing um orders that would require us to have masks on unless something changes drastically okay so yeah we'll have that dr brown can we get a copy of the letter you shared with us tonight in your presentation um yeah and i shared it earlier did you send it yeah i'm sorry i must have not seen it thank you okay any other questions all right very good um again thank you for the public comment we um are uh dr weeder's fun our
244next item is uh executive session i'm sure i move to go into executive session at this time prior to it prior to adjournment for the purpose of possible student long-term suspension expulsions and litigation second all in favor say aye thank you and thank you all for coming and staying and