School Board of Trustees Work Session & Meeting - January 11, 2021

001this work session of the laramie county school district number one board of trustees to order as a reminder of the public is welcome to attend via zoom however we are not taking questions or comments from the public during a work session if you would like to address the board there will be opportunities during our regular board meeting at six o'clock tonight at this time i will turn this meeting over to dr brown madam chair um starting out our first topic that we're going to talk about is a little financial update and budget update from chad cigarette our business our finance director so i will turn it over to jed and share the screen and get him set up there okay very good um thank you madam chair uh dr brown members of the board um

002as dr brown mentioned i'm going to give you a brief update on a couple of different areas uh with regards to finance this evening um second let me make sure that i've got control here i want to talk a little bit about the cares act funding um there's a lot of changes as a result of the recent legislation that was passed um we're balancing a lot of different funding pots of resources if you will with regards to cares i wanted to give you a brief update on where we are with those funding pieces talk a little bit about the recalibration the impact to our budget certainly is going to be the main focus there and to talk a little bit about where we are with some tentative figures as we start moving into the legislative

003session and as well as trying to meet that timeline that we talked about with the upcoming budget reductions uh this is a little bit wordy of a slide i apologize to try to keep the slides to a minimum but there's a few areas i want to point out some high level um key points from uh the recent crrsa which is uh what we're affectionately referring to as uh cares version two but as you know congress approved a 900 billion dollar pandemic emergency response bill um within that bill there's 82 billion dollars for k-12 schools and post-secondary institutions uh this is roughly four times what was in the first iteration of the cares act there are some important modifications um but overall there are three different programs uh that are authorized under that new build the

004first is the the government governor's emergency education relief fund this one's a little bit different in the sense that these funds are allocated to school districts at the governor's discretion so the executive branch has oversight on how those funds are allocated whether they're based on need or a certain initiative or directive from the governor's office the second one you see there is the elementary secondary school emergency relief fund this is esser both of these by the way i would add are continuations of existing resource funds that were in the first years act the second one unlike the the first one the gears fund is based on a formula allocation to states and school districts so you'll recall when we had the first cares appropriation uh it was determined on our title one allocation methodology so

005that took into account uh the same calculations that um title one fund um so uh you can imagine there are some school districts around the state that do not receive title one funds that do not receive the same allocations um under cares one or cares two uh and the next one you'll see is just the higher education emergency relief fund that really isn't applicable directly to uh operations i did want to point out a few things now uh the original cares act had uh specific to us or 12 different areas of allowable uses and we talked about that before when the first funding was was authorized those those broad categories still remain there were some expansions on the allowable use of those funds and i'll highlight them here the first is addressing learning loss among

006students and this is language that comes right out of the federal legislation um it's intended to be extremely flexible um but captures a few key points on how school districts utilize those resources now i would um caveat this by saying we have not received any formal rule and regulation or guidance from the us department of education yet nor heavily through the state education agency all of those entities will have some input on how we can utilize these funds um there has been some indication that we will have to expense the first cares act funding before we can access the second air cares act um we're working through that ideally we would we would like to see access to the second pot of funds if you will in that there's expanded eligible uses so we have

007more flexibility on how we can utilize that second part of funds continuing on with those expanded uses you'll see here that they have allowed some use for school facility repairs and improvements uh to reduce the transmission of viruses or other environmental health hazards similarly the number 15 you see there does allow for some inspection testing maintenance and some other capital related improvements to air quality of school facilities the legislation even goes on to say that this could uh also be used for things like doors windows those type of things um this is a departure from the first cares act in that it was explicitly prohibited um for any capital repair or costs associated with that grant so this has been a lessening of some of the restrictions with regards to the cares funding now continuing

008on with the the esser funding um they did uh include some additional reporting requirements um this is probably of no surprise all of the federal grants as well as the state funding that we get that's categorical or restricted requires some reporting back on data elements as a matter of fact i think maybe i told the the board at one point in time that we have over 68 different data collections that we provide to the state department of education many of them are our finance in nature but um with this new access to the cares act part 2 we're going to be required to report through the state department education specific detailed information on how we utilize those funds now the scope and the frequency of these reports is going to be kind of at the

009discretion of the us department education and state department education uh but we do acknowledge that there will be some significant reporting that we anticipate um as we move into that second cares act funding a big one that probably warrants some discussion is the state maintenance of effort um this is nothing new to federal program funding we've talked about this with regards to special education and title 1 funds the first cares act fund did have a maintenance of effort requirement but you'll notice that most of the language is directed at the states the state education agencies so specifically the state is required to maintain support in the upcoming fiscal year at least to the proportionate levels of k-12 funding relative to all the other overall spending and they are able to average that out over three

010years um really what the takeaway here is that the state could cut cut k-12 funding as long as it's proportionate to other areas of the state's budget there are maintenance of effort waivers that are available to the state in the sense that there's a precipitous decline in financial resources the state could pursue a waiver with the us department education um anecdotally i have heard that a lot of the times the waivers that were reviewed as part of the first cares act required that states not have a rainy day fund to access before they would grant that waiver so it's a little bit up in the air as far as what that would look like we did sign an assurance in the first cares application that we would maintain effort as a school district it's not

011explicitly required under the act but it was part of the conditional requirements that we received the money from the state um i don't see if or foresee any problem with the first year that would be a measurement of 21 to fiscal year 20. so that's the year we're in now i do wonder if they do require the district to maintain effort how we would go about receiving a waiver or something to that extent if we are looking at 100 million reduction in in state general fund allocations and so that's kind of the key there is there's a little bit of a unknown when it comes to what that's going to look like i mean if the state doesn't receive the waiver are we still going to be able to access those funds those are some

012big questions uh we're hoping to hear and get some direction on here shortly but i do expect some with the changeovers at the federal level um it'll take a little bit of time to get some of that information a couple other other notable miscellaneous provisions within the cares act or the newest version the first is the coronal bias relief fund extension now i'll probably do a horrible job of trying to explain this but there's a whole other set of funds that we were able to access as a school district through the governor's office it was what we call the crf fund where the governor was able to allocate a portion for educational purposes uh from the 1.5 billion dollars that was provided so this was the money that we utilized for uh the student devices

013for periods when the schools were at either a tier two or tier two three status that's where those resources came from we also received some funding for food service operations to address gaps in the revenue versus the expenses during the closure for the the covet feeding as well as some curriculum costs for cheyenne virtual school and i'll give you a summary i'll show you some of the grant allocations and where we are with expensing those here in a moment but the good news is that we were working frantically to obligate and expense those funds by december 31st we we were doing everything within our power to make sure that there weren't issues with supply chains we had to expense not even have an obligation with the vendor but we had to exchange money with vendors

014by december 31st we do have an exchange extension up to one year what that looks like is still under review i imagine that we'll have amendments with the governor's office on the contract and what we're required and allowed to use those funds for uh but that is good news because you'll see when i go over to some of the figures that we do have some unobligated funds that still exist within that grant um the next bullet point here is something that we've been talking about for a while now this is the ffcra now there are a couple of nuances here we talked about extending the district's plan and trying to align as close as we could with the federal program for the corona virus relief um for obviously for coped leave and those type of

015things um now we anticipated that there could be some change at the federal level um but for the most part it remains the same but i'll point out a couple of nuances it does not mandate that we provide um extended covert related leave we're obviously going to continue with what we discussed through june but there's no longer a mandate um it's purely optional and then it extends payroll credits uh for those who are eligible through march 31st and the reason i say for those who are eligible you remember that i pointed out that as a public government or local government we were not eligible for tax credits but we were able to waive the social security portion of payroll taxes on the employer side so unfortunately we did not see an extension to allow us

016to get the full credit for providing that leave that would have been a dollar for dollar um as of the december 18th payroll um we get expense about 800 thousand dollars for cover-related leave um as we move into the next payroll processing we'll have more updated figures but um we don't receive that eight hundred thousand dollar credit towards our tax liability with the federal federal government um we do uh at least at this point time uh believe that we will uh not be required to provide the social security portion of our payroll taxes on on the employer's portion um and if that's the case we'll have three more months of that that savings if you will but then after that point it'll be regular payroll taxes for the for the district to pay i mentioned

017earlier just to give you a brief summary of where we are with um the cares act funds uh you'll see that we're balancing about seven different pots of cares uh grant allocations uh the first is the sr1 we received about 4.5 million dollars uh i would tell you that there's a number of different entities that are required to be covered under that and we provide a portion of esr funds to the two charter schools within our district we also provide or did provide the opportunity for private schools to access a portion of that fund as well as home schools so um to date we've expensed or encumbered about 1.7 million dollars we do have other obligated or earmarked funds within that foreign 4.6 million but it's been used to support things like ppe remote remote

018learning summer school extended day programs and i would point out that when we first received the funding for esser what we did was we approached it to uh address the entire duration of the grant's active life cycle so we knew that the grant would be live until september of 22 and not knowing where we would be with other costs um we planned around expensing that across the entire duration as opposed to front loading all the costs that we had into the grant we wanted to make sure that we were kind of looking at it in the long term so the sr2 funds we're still waiting for direction on what that final allocation will be um we did receive gear funds um about eighty three thousand dollars uh we are um earmarking for some of those

019funds for planning and coordinating uh 19 response efforts but we have not accessed that pot of funds yet um the cure the gear 2 funds will be again at the the governor's discretion on what we receive but the next portion um that i talked about earlier with the extension of a full year on the use of those funds is the governor's response funds of the crf um the student technology funds 11.3 million uh we've expense about 9.6 million of that total grant allocation i can tell you that we had to work through a lot of logistics with just making sure that we have the devices mr mckinney did a great job of working with what we call the integrator to make sure that this the computers would work with our system uh that they were

020fully programmed charged that the cases were applied we had to work around some of the delivery issues and accepted the the elementary machines without the cases only because we had to make sure that we'd cut those checks and we had to take delivery so we've had a lot of work around on those programs um this has also helped fund the uh swivel units for classroom instruction um we're looking at how we might utilize the remaining portion of that the two charter schools did receive a portion of that funding as well for their own technology needs so that's a quick update on where we are with the student technology portion of the crf and then we also received some funding from funding for nutrition services i point out that we didn't request this funding but it

021was kind of an auto appropriation to a number of school districts we have used it to address some of the costs associated with the feeding programs during cobit 19. we anticipate that we'll be able to utilize some more of those resources to meet the 252 000 that we've been allocated as well as the third bullet you see here which is the virtual remote remote learning um dr brown was able to work with the governor's office and get another 500 000 to help support our cheyenne virtual school program and so we've been able to allocate 289 000 of that so far for curricular curriculum-related costs and software and materials chair i'd probably pause right there just a little bit before i get into some recalibration see if anybody had any questions on recalibration or excuse me

022the carries act funds yes um let's go ahead and start with uh brittany can you go back and slide madam chair so i just want to make sure i'm understanding so had they not extended those funds or the deadlines on those funds the so of the 4.6 million or whatever we would have only spent the 1.7 um madam chair uh trustee ashby the the grants that you see on the top part of the table the esser and the gear ones are active for the full um 18 months so we did not have to worry about the timeline on those the ones below where you see 11.3 and 9.5 million um if they had not extended that deadline we would have to revert the two and a two point whatever million back to the state for

023um redeposit back to the federal treasury okay thank you um christie did you have a question yes thank you madam chair um mr sicarelli you on the same line item sir one the 4.598 172 and what we've spent so far of it the 1.7 um can you know my understanding is we have quite a few students that as a result of being out last spring have maybe fallen behind i don't know if that's still current but it looks like you can use this money toward remote learning towards summer school and extended day and i'm wondering if that can be used for personnel as well to provide tutoring or educational instruction in during those times we can beef those programs up in order to try to get these kids that may have fallen behind during last

024spring up to speed manager trustee claussen um absolutely as a matter of fact um we did augment our summer school programs to provide more intensive educational opportunities using these funds so we were able to to cover the costs of the personnel that were providing like the elementary academies that were later in the fall as a result of kind of the disruption to our summer school schedule um we are uh we just as a matter of fact have conversations today on how we might utilize the next wave of esser to meet those those instructional needs um they have allowed us to do things that are specifically related to compensation for staff um as you know there's a lot of restrictions that come into play with how we utilize those but um we are absolutely looking at

025how we can leverage those funds for instructional loss thank you thank you mr bulman yes thank you were there any funds that were requested by any private schools or any of the homeschooled students madam chair um trustee bolin we did not receive any private schools that responded to our inquiry on if they would like to participate in the karzak funding uh we received four home school students um that did reply that they would like to participate and so we're working on developing a plan on how to use what we call the equitable services portion of that grant where they can meet the same 15 needs that i covered earlier and how that applies to them i would tell you that with the home schools it's a little bit nuanced in the sense that if there's

026a need for technology or something like that the district has to maintain ownership and oversight over the devices and those type of things so it's a little bit cumbersome on how that works it's a little bit outside of uh what we've typically done so we're working through those four school home school families to develop a plan on utilization of those funds and with the um charter schools since they request the money do they report back to us as far how they spent those funds that we report that on or do they report directly back to whoever we report to madam chair trustee bolan um we act as the uh what we call kind of the cognizant agency or the the pass through the fiscal entity so the two charter schools report to us um in

027a sense that as long as they meet the the requirements of the statute we do provide reimbursement to them and we report back to the state department education which in turn reports back to the federal government so that adds another layer but they are accountable to us as the school district well their funds they have to spend already and then we just reimburse them is that that works manchester trustee bowling that's correct just as um we have to expense um the costs associated with this grant cash flow and then ask the state department for education for reimbursement the same thing happens with the charter schools they um we in a sense are acting as the state department of education where they submit the reimbursement request to us they've already expensed it then we draw it

028from the state and then pay them thank you are there any other questions all right you can continue all right madam chair um just a couple of points i'd like to bring up with regards to recalibration uh as we've talked about in the past the recalibration committee moved forward a draft bill that does a number of things uh certainly the the biggest one is 100 million dollar reduction in statewide funding that uh has been mentioned and and discussed uh quite frequently over the last few weeks but i wanted to talk about a couple of things in particular there are not only the reductions to the statewide block grant funding but there's also some minor things maybe more of a formatting nature but it codifies was previously uncodified funding mechanisms in our state finance system so

029that had always been operationalized through what we call an attachment to the legislature or through actual statute this brings all of those mechanics of the funding model into the the text of our statutes um everything on how we allocate resources for teachers and supplies materials people's support personnel so you can imagine that when you look at this bill there's many many many pages but a lot of that is just bringing that attachment into the codified version of statute now there's uh also some key points that dr brown has talked about with the committee before is the additional sales and use tax or at least the authority now a couple of key points with regards to that um is the language at least at this point in time uh states that um additional sales and use

030tax could be levied if amount is determined and necessary to fulfill constitutional requirements essentially what this means is that nothing's effective until an enactment of a another law specifying the amount of tax necessary so um i'm certainly not an attorney there's a loss well more versed people that would be able to address that um but it doesn't automatically kick in with additional sales and use taxes there'll be a requirement to determine what the amount is to fulfill the constitutional requirements and then some other type of legislative action to actually bring that tax into the system there's also the point that we've talked about before that the previous legislative reductions to k-12 funding and the impact of the model input still remain i've spoke about this before and i i promise i'm trying not to to

031revisit a lot of our conversations but um really what this means is when we're talking about the 100 million dollar reduction in funding this doesn't take into account the additional costs or reduction in revenue from previous legislative action and i'll talk a little bit about that when we get to the slide but um the the main nuance uh that we're addressing here with regards to 100 million is not only that there's not a sunset date associated with that that is permanent in nature at least if it's passed as currently written but we also have more than 100 million dollars in reductions likely as a result of the upcoming fiscal year and to give you a little bit of an idea of how that works um what i've done here is shown a couple of different

032things uh the first is you'll see the funding model allocation um in a couple of different iterations so the first box you see is the statewide total and so this is statewide funding currently under the current fiscal year the state is funding a block grant model of about 1.5 billion dollars now when we look at that when you move to the right on the table you'll see that laramie school district one's a share of that 1.5 billion dollars is 213.9 million so i'm going to give you information with regards to the statewide total and then our district's total as well so you can kind of see what that means for us as a as a whole now the current legislative model as it compares to um a couple of different scenarios that were discussed with

033the recalibration committee addressed a couple of things um what they call the eb or evidence-based model uh the first uh i guess iteration that was discussed was a model that would adopt a new regional cost adjustment methodology as well as provide salaries that are in the 75th percentile compared to comparable professions in wyoming now the 75th percentile is synonymous with what the model provides for salary as opposed to what is actually paid or what the market requires in school districts so when you think of the 75th percentile and the comparability um and i'm again i'm not an economist but the way i would describe this is that if an accountant makes let's say 106 of what the average salary would be compared to the nation as a whole or even when you look at it

034from district to district then you would expect a teacher or comparable profession would have the same six percent differential so the 75th percentile adjusts for things like the duration of the contract year for teachers those type of things now they also talked about a couple of other things which is the 85th percentile which is more reflective of where we actually compensate staff that's really what the market has required for funding um in the sense that we pay more than what the model provides and we've talked about the uh the eca's and how they haven't been applied and some of the nuances that come with how that amount amount is calculated the key point being that that salary that's in the current legislative model was originally developed in 2006. now when you compare that to the

035current legislative funding um you would see that that the i'm going to say the cheapest version of an evidence evidence-based model provides 20.9 million dollars more on the statewide level and about 3.5 million more for our district as a comparison now i mentioned the 85th percentile which again is is more um reflective of actual market conditions um the same the same criteria the evidence based model has different class sizes different allocations for people support positions there's different components that are funded differently but it does uh in this scenario reflect the new rca and salaries at the 85 percentile that would provide 96.9 million more dollars for the state as a whole and 15.1 million for our district um and that's even with larger class sizes and a lot of different components that the model in

036the evidence-based research is different from the legislative model that we're currently funded under now um the committee also looked at what would the evidence-based model provide if it relied on the current regional cost adjustment again at the 75th and the 85th percentile even utilizing the rca which is one of the more expensive components if you will from the evidence-based model versus the legislative model um the model would generate about 45.7 million more dollars and then for our district it's back to the 35 or excuse me 3.5 million the reason being is that under either scenario our district receives the same regional cost adjustment whether it's under the old adjustment or the new we receive the same adjustment so you'll see that these numbers are going to look a little bit similar for us there's other

037districts across the state have very different figures as a matter of fact dr brown's talked about natrona um there's a sheridan school districts there's a number of them that are heavily impacted by the regional cost adjustment teton is probably the biggest example but when you look at salaries at the 85th percentile using the old rca our district again would receive 15.1 million more dollars so those are the the four different areas that they looked at the evidence-based research to determine the funding model amount and i wanted to talk about how that looks with regards to the hundred million dollars that actually is moving forward in that draft bill so if we use the same year with the same reduction of 100 million dollars um what that would mean for our district is the roughly 15

038million decrease and it's a little bit more than what you see in some of the legislative service um publications only because i'm looking at the current year so we can have an apples to apples comparison so that would generate about 198 million dollars for our district which is i think the last time our district was under 200 million dollars was a 2015 um and a similar student count or adm count if you will so um you can imagine that a lot changes in five or six years um 15 million dollars is pretty significant in the grand scheme of things on how that might look now if you look at that compared to the evidence-based model um you could take that 20 million dollars that i talked about earlier when you look at quote unquote model

039that's about 120 million difference between the evidence-based model and where we're funding for our district that would be about 18 and a half million so if the evidence-based model is the true cost of education we would be about 18.5 million dollars below that mark now a couple of things that uh are are worthy of mentioning here as well is how this impacts where we are with our reserves and as a board we've worked with you to make sure that we have the resources that we need to navigate the decrease in funding but what this would do is by lowering our funding model guarantee or the actual amount that we get from the state it also reduces the amount that we can save so that 15 cap kicks in um so to give you an example

040the maximum reserve level that we have is about 32 million dollars with the reduction that moves our maximum cap down to 29.8 so in a sense that 15 million reduction also means that we can save or we can't save 2.3 million dollars that we would have under the previous funding allocation so that alone presents some challenges as we move forward as well the madam chair um i was going to give you some some ballpark figures with regards to where we were with our budget reduction initiative and the planning moving forward and just as a quick reminder to the board we talked about approaching it in three different tiered structures uh the first tier is the the level of reductions that we would operationalize regardless of any of the reduction scenarios so this is the basic

041um where we're starting the standard budget if you will the second tier was additional programs that we would uh incur only if there are certain levels of revenue reduction were impacting the district so uh we'll talk about what those percentages look like um and to structure that the tier one that we're working off currently is the seven percent which is roughly the hundred million dollar reduction the tier two would be a ten percent reduction and a tier three would be a 13 reduction and um on the tier three uh those are the last measure reductions if you will if there's a 13 or more cut those are the programs that we would um build into our budget proposal so that you have kind of a clear picture of this is where we are with the

042standard budget this is what happens if we hit a 10 reduction and this is what we hit as a we still don't have clarity on where those exact numbers are but we're going to be able to to be flexible enough to address where the legislature ultimately ends with some of the revenue reductions and again these i want to go over a few different high-level figures and these are all very subject to change um this is just as of where we are um working through the budget process but i've structured the reductions here in three different columns um it moves from the highest reduction tier three down to a tier one again there's the thirteen ten and seven percent decreases so when we're trying to identify what the target target shortfall is we have to take

043into account first what we know will increase as far as expenses so this is what i talked about as far as the things that we know will happen with health insurance the cost of utilities um the advancement or changes in salary schedules those type of things we know that that cost is roughly 4.7 million the model endpoints or inputs are the changes in adm and education experience health insurance the changes from last session this is a pretty conservative estimate about 2.93 million dollars in revenue reductions if nothing happens with the legislature and then when we factor in uh the upcoming year and what the revenue impact might look like um we range from anywhere from 27.6 um on a 13 reduction to 14.9 it's a little bit different than the slide i went over earlier

044because it's forward facing we know that the adm counts are down um and we know that the proportion of our district to the state as a whole is going to vary from year to year so our reduction could look a little bit different that's why it's not a little over 15 million it's just from the variability on our student counts as uh comparison to the state as a whole so the total shortfall um that we're working with right now um in addressing budget plans around are ranging from anywhere from 30 to 35.2 million down to the 22.5 million and i would tell you again that that seven percent is the standard budget that we're working a budget plan around now that's the revenue side um to talk a little bit about what that looks like

045on the expense side and again this is this is uh an important point to bring up is that this is general fund only um i just talked about the additional funding for cares act and all these other pieces there's always going to be interactions on how we can and can't use those funds um we're definitely looking at every opportunity we can to help alleviate some of the pressure on our general fund with those those federal funds but keep in mind a lot of those federal funds are designed to not allow us to have any flexibility of bringing those into our general operations um there's some some changes with the interpretation of the cares act that we're hoping to leverage that'll help us a little bit but we still have to move forward with how we're

046going to be funded through the state government and so um the same reductions apply here we're working um some some proposals around department budgets are being reduced anywhere from 6.3 on the high end down to 4.7 million dollars um and again those are all the departments that you see when we go through the budget book that are you know everything from facilities to construction to all the department level budgets that we have at the district office that we um administer through different budget officers we also have the school level budgets this can range anywhere currently from 2.2 million reduction to about 560 000 again these are very tentative and subject to change and then the personnel side um representing anywhere from 26.7 to 17.2 million dollars in reductions um and this is the one that

047we spend considerably more time on as you can imagine the non-personnel versus the personnel side um there's a number of different aspects that we have to consider when we're approaching this this is really again just a targeted amount and then all the details of how we're going to support that initiative are going to be presented to you as we move through the reduction process now the total ranges from 35.2 uh down to 22 and a half and you'll recall in december when i addressed the committee the 28 and a half was where we were starting with the standard of the baseline adjustment so with this the most recent bill we felt comfortable using that as the baseline going forward knowing that there could be potential for additional cuts additional reductions that could exceed the seven

048percent but that's how we're going to structure it going forward for now um madam chair was going to talk a little bit about um kind of an update to our timeline um and where we are uh i've kind of created this slide before uh information from the legislature was probably today and i think dr brown is probably going to go over a little bit of that update knowing we are with sessions starting tomorrow um and then the opportunity for some some virtual sessions i think the key takeaway here is that statutorily we still have deadlines to meet with the board uh we still have to present you with the preliminary budget in may there's nothing that's going to change that so we're still working forward with um developing those three different draft versions of a

049budget i've kind of explained this is uh we're effectually creating three different budgets within the same fiscal year and so that's kind of the work that's going on behind the scenes to make this all work um now with the changes of the legislative dates we're hopeful that we might have some absolution with where we are with those bills um certainly we're not excited to have budget reductions but for us to be able to move forward we have to have an idea where we are especially with the contracts for teachers to be left and all these other pieces that come in play with this timeline there's a lot of moving pieces we're hopeful that some of these committee bills will be addressed and we'll have opportunity again to testify and provide some input to the legislative

050committees on how these even seven percent reductions impact us um and uh hopefully advocate for some lesser reductions as we move forward um madam chair i'm happy to address any questions get into to see details um and provide any information that the board might request madam chair thank you jud can we look at uh recalibration slide real quick yeah so i guess the one the one that i'm i think i understand it but i understand there is i'm looking at the third sub bullet there the one that provides additional sales and use tax amounts so i'm assuming there is no bill currently is that is that correct um venture trustee we respond there is a bill the recalibration bill captures both the 100 million reduction and the the possibility of additional sales and use taxes

051but it does require further legislation to actually enact that sales tax okay so when they talk about the amounts that are necessary to fulfill the constitutional requirements so are they talking about the issue of educational equity across the state are they talking about the basket of goods that we have we have to provide both how's that what is the issue i believe in the within the context of the school finance bill they're addressing the basket of goods and what is the cost necessary to support the basket of goods the constitutional requirements associated around school finance i'm sure if i could just so the so there's a to be determined amount regarding uh sales and use tax correct management distribution so if that is that correct there's a to be determined amount correct exactly um certainly

052the the revenue side is just as varying as where we are with the expenditure side um the tax that may you know hypothetically need to be um passed in order to cover the school foundation deficit could be different if you know there's rebounds in certain aspects of coal or oil or cess valuation those type of things so it is very flexible correct so now with the sale and sales and use tax that they would they would impose would that apply to the state as a whole or would that be determined by individual school districts madam chair trustee we respond um that would not be discretionary for the school districts that's currently written so it would be levied at the the statewide level and who makes that determination the state the department of education or the

053governor's office or who does that manager trustee would respond that would require the legislature to determine what that tax is or necessary and that's why they have that language in there that's not effective until the enactment of the law so that would be discretionary based on the legislative action so apparently they feel comfortable at some point making a determination as to how much money is going to have to be raised in order for us to provide the basket of goods that they've identified is that correct medicare trustee would expand the way i would characterize it is it it it allows the legislature to address kind of a moving target if the deficit is uh 300 million dollars of biennium versus 100 million dollars biennium that sales and use tax rate might be significantly different so

054it allows them the flexibility to adjust that rate based on kind of the profile of the school foundation program at the time okay my last question matt i'm sure if i could so i guess my understanding is that's the only revenue enhancement [Music] process or element that they've identified so far is adjusting the sales and use tax revenue manager trustee reached on that is correct that's the only uh revenue enhancement that's been discussed so far or presented um thank you madam chairman um so just to sort of clarify that there's still a lot we don't know that has not been determined yet and that would be the model um and i guess what is the intersection between this recalibration piece um which has a lot of unknowns in that as well and the model itself

055um how do we where do we go without having both pieces in place madam chair um trustee hermann uh that's that's the 1.5 billion dollar question without a clear direction on where the legislature will end um and where the model intersects with the current recalibration bill um i would tell you that the the strongest course of action and what my recommendation is is to continue with the tiered structures approaches that we have if uh by some fortunate event we incur less than a seven percent reduction that'll give us the opportunity to adjust um i think uh really with the unknowns that you mentioned uh we're not going to really have a clear idea until we not only get final direction from the legislature on what laws will be changed but changed but also where we

056are with the federal program funding all the other pieces that come into play so it's a little bit of a hurry up and weight gain but we don't have the luxury of waiting um and so that's why um when you talk about that intersection that's what that's what's really um requiring the most of our time is to go through these what-if scenarios and make sure that we have a contingency to address each one of those thank you any further questions thank you thank you jed very much that was very very good and very helpful can i take one moment absolutely i'm gonna remind um since everybody wasn't sitting at the podium i'm gonna remind him of the mute button that's right up here by your mic if you hit that then um that'll take care

057of some of the background noise um it's right up here by your it's a little toggle if you hit that um then that'll take care of some of the background feedback thank you and then obviously i need it when you're ready to speak thank you go ahead ma'am chair i'd like to have dave can i talk a little bit about some of the things that may change as we move forward with [Music] um with the school facilities commission so mr bartlett go ahead madam chair members of the board so um just wanted to give you a little update as as uh most of you you're aware when uh we're looking at uh capital construction that's based on what we call the needs index uh and typically the old process of how we would prioritize projects

058is we would they would look at capacity and then they would look at condition and those would be the two driving factors and how we we would get a building pushed up to the list and finally get it funded through the legislature the past seven years the state has used a district-wide capacity calculation in this process which for laramie won well we weren't happy about it we we worked with them because we were over 100 capacity so we were receiving capacity schools you know the tricky part with that is sometimes um if you've got a neighborhood school that's overcrowded uh and you're looking at a district-wide average we may have two neighborhoods clear across town and so then of course as you know we have to pick or choose where we're going to put that

059school so you don't always get to have the full remedy um so i would would point out though that they have if you're over 100 percent you hit the needs index for capacity and then condition is its own separate list and as you're aware we have 12 schools in the top 20 in in the high priority and the condition list but they've actually not uh addressed a conditioned school or replaced a condition school in the last two bienniums so over the past uh i'd say 18 months um uh laramie won teton [Music] carbon 2 and campbell county have been working with the state on on a governmenting documents committee and and we've been allowed to give input to kind of help try and address some of the issues and probably one of the biggest issues

060uh that many of you have heard me talk to you about over the past few years is uh the question of educational suitability so we may have buildings that are overcrowded or they may be at capacity we have some that are in great condition but they may not actually be suitable to address the educational needs in today's world um and so the way we would get educational suitability addressed is through the remedy process if we had a conditioned school um and we were doing a renovation or replacement then we could address the educational suitability um so the the chart that i have uh put up here and i've given you each a little clear copy at your table is kind of a compilation of what the they're looking at potentially for the new process so

061what they would like to do is consolidate the three scores um you know we were tickled number one that they are going to look at educational suitability in the past educational suitability would look at illumination which is just the quality of lighting in the classroom they would look at technology readiness and that iaq would be indoor air quality now we think of indoor air quality as does it does have the ability to heat or cool depending upon the season and their their function actually is are we able to move air so in august if you can open windows and turn a fan on um then that rate's okay um but one of the things that they did not have a score on would be the appropriateness of student environment and so we've spent um probably

062about a part of a year helping them develop an instrument and so that work will go forward and they will be scoring that um so now the the educational suitability will be a combination of illumination tech readiness indoor air quality and appropriateness of educational space and that appropriateness of educational space is actually going to be 51 of that overall educational suitability score so that that's something that the school districts really pushed hard for i think that will help um where we get into our concerns is if you take those four dark circles and you move up that's your ed suitability we're going to add ed suitability and the facility condition and combine those scores to come up with a condition score so with that your your appropriateness of space even though it's half of the

063suitability score uh as it moves up it's only going to be about 25 of the overall condition score so it does kind of blend it and and bury it a little bit but i think we can we can work with that um probably the most concerning thing right now is they're considering combining condition capacity and educational adequacy uh into one score which would give them a remediation schedule now our concerns here lie in that they want to use a district-wide average and what i would tell you is if you looked at our individual buildings we have about somewhere in the range of 12 to 14 schools that are at or above 100 capacity but when you look at district-wide average because we've opened schools like meadowlark and prairie wind and we've added over a thousand

064seats that has a tendency to lower our district-wide capacity so if that if that capacity score is one-third of the score then our older buildings that are in poor condition and and are not uh educationally suitable or adequate um that's it's just going to get buried and so um during the process and and they we are still through the development process but but i did want to make sure you were aware um we are either we have proposed one of two remedies to this one is we use the building condition score the building at suitability score and the building capacity score because they were combining three like scores of us one site um they would then list all 400 sites in the district in the state and then they could go through and develop a

065remedy from that now there's a statute in there that says you must first consider non-construction alternatives so for us we've said if we have two districts that are adjoining and one comes up on the list sure we can look to reboundry but if you look at laramie one as a whole would we want to re-boundary every year or every every biennium and those of you who've been here through boundary changes you know that's kind of painful and we don't want to do that um the second alternative remedy that we proposed was that we keep capacity over here by itself and we find a way to do the condition and suitability and capacity as two separate lists i'm not sure that that necessarily is going to work because that's what we have now that's why we

066have 12 schools in the top 20. but i can tell you that if they were to look at district-wide capacity statewide they will not have one project rise to the need of a remedy so there's kind of some numbers things going on here um currently as i said we're working through the processes with this committee and when they're done uh we will share it out to the districts and then they will have to go through the rulemaking process which at that point in time i've talked to dr brown and we will get in front of all of the superintendents across the state kind of let them know the pros and the cons of this but the reality is if you're not a school that's dealing with capacity issues you may not even be aware some

067of this work's going on because in a small district you know if you've got an elementary junior high on a high school and you've gotten two new buildings you may be done in the facility realm for 50 years where you know we we've still got a few buildings so we're we're very aware and you know we kind of take it upon ourselves to make sure the other districts are up to speed so i just wanted to make sure you aware that one thing's for certain uh they will rescore the condition of all of our buildings statewide all over over 400 of them this upcoming year so that will cause that remedy list to shuffle regardless whether they stay with the old method or the new and we expect that i mean our schools can move

068three four five slots when they do that depending upon how they deteriorate compared to others um but if they combine the three and they put capacity in there um i i think we may have to look at you know some other alternatives i'm not sure what that would be but uh we will not have as it stands in today's capacity numbers we won't have a school rise to the the level of remedy so be happy to answer any questions you have okay we've got a limited amount of time so please make them quick and i'll start with uh trustee ashby madam chair i i think i just didn't hear what is educational adequacy so yes they have well so they they kind of use two different terms so educational suitability um is the the building's

069ability to teach uh help support instruction adequacy maybe is it adequate space do you have adequate power so the two get get a little bit but um by by the way the statute reads they will use they will have adequacy and they have a set of adequacy standards that they use and they score the buildings by so that will be part of that that score but suitability gets rolled up under condition okay clear as mud i know um trustee classic thank you madam chair just a quick question about capacity in that issue that you're raising um does that mean if you have one seat available you're you've got you know you have how do i wear this if you have one seat available in an old school is that going to keep you from consideration

070or do they look at how many how much availability you have in your school sure um trustee classen great question um what i would tell you is they look at your trailing and leading uh indicator data so they will look at enrollment if we're on an upward trend they will actually project out five years to determine where where we are um the issue is if you're in a time of declining enrollment then of course that pushes that decline out five years and uh there is a way that we can go and present the most current data which uh we we do quite frequently because we get these little kind of mini up and down trends uh and my biggest concern right now when we talk capacity is of course we've got several hundred kids in

071virtual so we're hoping that they do not take um 2021's enrollment data and and apply that because it's just such a large anomaly but what i would tell you is if i have uh a school that has five modulars and two miles down the road i have a school that has maybe they're averaging five kids in the classroom under under capacity those would be average and so that school with the modules would not elevate to uh the height of a need my question is you said that we probably don't have anything for coming up for capacity so that means our numbers have changed enough in our district that even though we have planning money right now for another bicycle school that's not likely to come up um well we uh mr bone we are continuing

072to do the the design on that and it will go out for bid and we're hoping they will allow us to exercise that that contract because when uh that project was funded we were over capacity at the time and in that part of town as as you're all well aware we all of those elementaries are either at or above capacity um where we've experienced some decline is in in the avenues and whatnot um many of our homes have been converted to businesses and we have seen a decline in numbers in those areas and so um as i've i've tried to point out is if you look at laramie one geographically uh we're we're 13 miles by 11 miles of of urban um residency and uh um to average all of us but then to look

073at goshen county where from torrington to lingle is 10 miles they actually treat those as two separate towns and so we do feel like if if you're going to do this district-wide average you know we feel like it forces us to bus because if i'm over capacity right now the way the rules read in a particular school they won't even fund a modular if the district average is under 100 so therefore i have to bust to the next open available place uh and and so as i said we're working with this committee um you know we've managed to get some them to hear certain points that have helped us um and i'm not really sure where our capacity will come out because we just had a group of folks walk every classroom in the entire

074district last summer to verify what the usage is and that room usage will have a huge impact on where we come out with capacity and we believe by our numbers we are k-12 about 800 students over capacity and keep in mind k-12 um the high schools we know that we've got three editions planned if we can determine the world capacity but where we get in trouble at the second area is our junior highs because they were nine or seven nine buildings um they show as only being at about 67 capacity so again when they average everything it does skew the data thank you actually we're out of time tim can you follow back up with um um mr bartlett um thank you so much mr bartlett i appreciate your presentation and we are like right

075at the one minute almost from the six o'clock hour so that will adjourn our conclude our business for the work session and um um we are like right there so should we do that yeah can we in just one second okay go ahead we got so anybody out there we're going to take just a quick uh bathroom break for board members and then we'll be right back it's six o'clock and i will call the laramie county school district number one board of trustees board meeting to order january 11 2021 um could we start with the pledge of allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you dr brown welcome everyone um dr brown do we have any adjustments to the

076agenda madam chair i do not have any adjustments to the agenda tonight madam chair i need to adopt the agenda second and we'll move on to our uh next item on the agenda and it is recognition of staff and students and for outstanding achievements so if i could have um principal phil thompson from south high school come up and talk about or is he online bill here i am online all right hi thompson and uh talk about our our uh your student um aaron joe i'm going to say it right joe jonas joe jonas yes thank you uh i hope aaron's online she's very shy and i had to really prod her to get on aaron aaron builds rapport she's just the most genuine student she'd ever want she makes people around her feel good

077in addition to being a great student who excels in her honors classes ap and college classes aaron has been involved in band drama and speech at debate each december she volunteers with christmas operation and holds a steady part-time job year-round on a personal level no obstacle or challenge is too big for aaron she recognizes all our values of honorable enthusiastic responsible and determined we love that we get to recognize students like aaron thank you very good aaron would you like to say a few words and congratulations aaron you'll have to unmute yourself hi i'm so sorry about that we're having some technical difficulties with the um the zoom app you're doing great go ahead we'd love to hear from you all right um what was the last thing that was said i totally didn't hear

078any of that we were all bragging about you so we're just curious if you'd like to say a few words about south high school and possibly some of your activities and your future plans since you're a senior and and we're excited to hear all about you um i think my experience at south has been a very big mix of things but it's definitely been the best high school experience i could ask for i've met a lot of really great people and i've definitely had a lot of really good connections with teachers that i didn't think i could find during school so it was really great um my future plans are to go to csu and i think i want to study philosophy um i don't quite know yet what all of you done that's a

079good start and a great school so um your uh school district and and your school we're all very very proud of you could everyone give her a big round of applause please oh thank you thank you and we'd also like to uh congratulate your parents so um thank you so much for being a active part of south high school and a part of our district and we wish you the best ah thank you again thank you all right um we have uh cody sheets is our student of the week for carrie junior high could i have principal derek nissen um come up and talk to us about cody i have a certificate here for you principal nissa thank you madam chair members of the board it is with a great deal of pleasure that i

080get the chance to bring before you cody sheets so he is in football and basketball and in between those seasons he goes out of his way to make sure he's still involved at carrie through our access program our beyblade club our bay blade club and our gsa group as well so he is so actively involved and still keeps straight a's but interestingly enough that's not why he was nominated or brought forward what he was brought forward and proposed and nominated for this award was because he is respectful and helpful to adults always willing and volunteers to work with any student in class and not only that the teachers see that he brings out the best in other people's other people and at the same time represents what's in the best of our society so it's

081my pleasure to present cody sheets um for your selection very good thank you do we have cody on the line if you'd like to say a few words cody good welcome hello hi how are you how are you and are you excited to be here today um yes and i am excited to be here today good can you tell us a little bit about yourself what's your favorite organization or your favorite thing about carrie junior hi cody um my favorite thing about cary junior high is meeting all the people that work there and all the other students very good well it sounds like you're a very busy guy and and we're incredibly proud of you your district your community your school so congratulations and congratulations to your parents can i have everyone give her a

082big round of applause for me thank you so cody and erin you both will be receiving um some gift cards as well as your certificate from your principals could i have mary quas talk a little bit about that good marianne very good yes ma'am sheriff sorry i was on mute members of the board um i am just pleased to to be able to announce that we have a sponsor for those certificates um western vista credit union and um our representative this evening to discuss that um is aaron espinoza and i believe i saw erin on the line very good welcome thank you so much ashley stated my name is aaron espinoza and i am a financial service officer at western vista credit union is honored to support the school district's student of the week program

083once again this year each week we are delighted to learn about the amazing kids we have in laramie county in recognition of their efforts put forth by the student of the week we are proud to present a certificate of achievement and 25 visa gift card to the recipients we congratulate you on this honor and wish you nothing but success in the future very good one um thank you so much and thanks western vista for your support if everybody could give one more round of applause for everyone thank you very good we also have um the honor i'd like to have uh mr george the principal of central high school okay i guess i need to look out in the audience hello mr george um we have a certificate of accomplishment for uh nick lamp and

084we'll let you tell everyone a little bit more about that and it's quite an honor so thank you madam chair board dr brown yes i'm quite honored to recognize mr lamp as our wyoming association of secondary school principals assistant principal of the year i've had the pleasure working alongside mr lamp for the past five years and during this time i've found him to be energetic and intelligent and he always has a smile on his face he's taken many leadership roles at central high including overseeing all athletics and activities organizing the administration of state testing serving as our school safety chairman developing our master schedule mr lamp is well liked and respected by colleagues parents and students he is predictably positive and upbeat and mr lamp is someone students feel comfortable speaking with and parents can

085count on him as a valuable resource and finally he's both humble and even tempered and while mr lamp is not often late if he is it's because he stopped to help somebody although to be honest he uh he can also be found at the pastry section at the maverick quite often so uh hats off to mr lamp and we just really appreciate him very good mr lamp would you like to say a few words uh yes thank you so much um i'm very humbled by this award and and you know as as everybody knows who's on an administrative team it takes a team effort uh to make it through the to make it through the day and the school year especially uh with all the challenges that we're currently faced and i would definitely say

086uh this war this award is just as much my my team uh my administrative team in central high school's award as it is mine and i'm just very humbled and honored uh that i was selected this year and and just hope that i can live up to the to the the award itself and so thank you so much very good congratulations mr lam could we go ahead and give him a hand for um and uh central's very lucky to have you so i know you've got a great team out there and and uh congratulations we're very excited for you and for this district thank you all right um the next item on our agenda is items from visitors um do we have any uh hands raised this is your opportunity to address the board if

087you would like to speak all you have to do is go down to the bottom part of your screen and raise your hand and we'll allow you to speak very good all right we do have one we do we do have one mr wilson i would just ask that you introduce yourself and that you keep your comments to two to three minutes and please keep your comments general in nature and uh please do not be redundant on your remarks welcome mr wilson thank you for hosting this and making it open uh am i coming through my audio yes you are great um i'm uh been participating on uh policy subcommittee three and i'm uh here tonight to uh hear the presentation from the um the diversity part of the agenda so thank you for making

088this available to us uh despite the difficulties that covet is giving us to not be present in person thank you and thank you for participating on that sub committee are there any other hands dr brown mountain chair i did not see any other hands okay very good there will be a second opportunity if someone decides later on that they would like to speak or address the board it happens a little later on in our agenda at this time we'll announce upcoming meetings we have a january 13 2021 at 5 30 we have a policy advisory committee meeting two which is virtual on january 25th 2021 from four to five pm we have policy advisory subcommittee one boardroom um and virtual madam chair yes that one may be canceled we we're going to send out all

089of our information that we've changed and if everybody's in agreement we will probably cancel that meeting all right very good i'm sure that he will keep everyone notified um january 25th 2021 from 6 to 7 30 p.m policy advisory subcommittee 3 in the admin 152 it is virtual as well um january 27 2021 9 a.m is a review of the superintendent applications with the wyoming school boards association and i believe that's scheduled until two and um and that that will be an executive session that will be an executive session we also have february 1st 2021 at 5 pm work session 6 pm regular board meeting in the board room it is virtual for the public and in person for lcs d1 trustee and staff moving on to our agenda it's now time for individual communications

090from the board and board reports do i have anyone trustee herman thank you german uh just to mention that um if you haven't had a chance to go look at the uh the literacy materials written wisdom that the district has put out for public comment and anticipating a vote um shortly on adoption of them um it's um i would just say i just stopped up there last week and looked them over and i was very impressed with the variety of materials that were for the students but also that um you know in kindergarten they were writing responses in into by hand and so uh implicit puts the kids on a trajectory and you know this literacy has been staged by the board as a priority and i would say these materials um believe me they

091don't phone it in and it covers a variety of situations and exercises of techniques but also we've heard a lot about um learning to read reading to learn and as you get up in the grades i mean even starting with second grade the information is very dense text and very heavy on information and heavy's gone afterwards actually it's very enhanced with information and so um and i and i talked with dr revine that our uh language arts coordinator and about the materials are crosswalk to many different disciplines to social studies and and and it really is in science and well probably less science but um uh the children who read that material going to learn an awful lot it's going to enhance their work on in every subject area so i really think um if

092you want to go up which they're in the hallway outside room 210 take a look at it um but i was very very impressed i think the screening committee committee that worked on it did an excellent job at um getting materials and again i talked to dr rayvine about how people um complain about we you know we were with the latest fad and fashion and everyone have to relearn and and she was confident that if we adopt this um it will be good for several years and it's well supported by the vendor but also it has a lot of professional learning community engagement so it's going to be a lot of supports for the teachers and a lot of collaboration involved in there so it looks great i have to say thank you very good

093do i have any other board reports all right um i have a couple things i'd like to mention um on that same note if anyone has questions or hasn't had a chance to look at that please hop up there and do that or give eric jackson or dr revine uh a call and address some of your concerns or questions um or just let them know where you are with all of this so i'm i'm looking forward to a lot of staff in the district looking at that and really really giving them a lot of feedback and and a lot of participation in in where in assessing that program and um addressing any questions or concerns so you don't know until you feel you ask so please make that happen um we also have an opportunity

094coming up for our board for um the national school boards association has a conference it will be virtual this year and i just wanted to visit a little bit about that um so planting the seed i think it's february the 19th is that correct darlene that we need to get our our vote in on what we're going to do whether or not we decide to go it is 600 a person um i'm happy to talk to our new board members about this and you probably got the email i'm considered i'm concerning the national school boards association conference so since it is all virtual this year it's really kind of a bargain because it's six hundred dollars a person or um it maxes out at nine people for thirty six hundred dollars um so marguerite or

095anyone that's been there would you like to address that a little bit about um what we what we do at the national conference thank you madam chairman well and i i've been to uh three and and you know the the uh conference last spring since since i hit that hold it hit without a lot of warning just got cancelled uh flat out and so um the ones i've gone to in philadelphia on sites in san antonio in various situations i can speak about that and they they were extremely helpful um there's there are tons of things to look at a variety of sessions to attend that can um you know address your own particular interest or your own particular need of the board that you perceive and the professional development the information you learn not

096only from the presenters but also from the materials that they provide online and from the other uh trustees from around the nation um is truly you you really grow professionally i would have to say it's not just um you know a trip to philadelphia although philadelphia was a fun trip but um they you know there's just a lot of learning that really enhances your boards and chip and um there's a lot of tools when you come back that you share um and there are things involving you know again communicating with the public relationship with superintendent social emotional learning math and english a lot of music um uh um sessions on on music and how that fits into a curriculum into a district so um and it's just it just packed if you three days that

097are just packed so i recommend that anyone who wants who wants to do that if um even even seasoned board members always find something good to bring home from that it's it's a professional development i think as trustees we um we are invested in improvement and i would i would just suggest if you can i again i haven't done it virtually yet but i'll go into endorsement anyway endorse it because the in person was good okay mr bull yeah and i've attended seven of them and i would highly recommend it um we're gonna miss some of the things they're not gonna have as many breakout sessions as usual this year because the virtual one's a way to try to arrange that but they are gonna have some of those but they've always had super top

098notch guest speakers the keynote speakers and those are actually worth tuning into then they also start each day with a musical performance from some group from around the country we've actually had wyoming represented there a couple years ago so um those are those are also very good opportunities to listen to the music to start off the day um it's all recommended to everybody in that journal just we'll have to add one thing that mr boland and i have when we go we tend to really um take advantage of the visitation to various districts and programs and stuff and so that will be missed because that has been some of the best but uh i'm confident in another couple of years perhaps we'll be getting to be able to get back to that last week yes

099yeah trustee readers uh madam chair so i i had the opportunity to attend the conference in philadelphia and i think the most at that time i was a new board member and they had they do have sessions for new board members found them to be very valuable and so i would encourage you if you happen to attend the virtual one this year to take advantage of that i'm sure they will have sessions for new board members and then just the opportunity that i'm going to miss interacting with individual board members from different states it's just terrific to network with people and find out what's going on in other in other states and what individual board member experiences are and i think it's a great opportunity to save the district some money and i think it

100sounds really good you know 600 or 800 whatever it is is a is a bargain compared to what it costs to go there in person so i look forward to the opportunity and i think i'll do it so thank you very good thank you are there any other questions or comments to be made about participating in that it looks like just as a consensus are we are to get a consensus tonight are we looking at uh doing that okay yes mrs claussen are you just i don't know yes i don't know okay all right that's fine um we can decide that a little bit down the road i had some budgetary concerns on this so i shared a little bit of this with with at is definitely a bargain um but um if if it's

101something it's something i really want to do so um if there's some i'm going to go ahead and pay that and and out of my own money and and just reimburse the district for that because i think it's important um and i have i can i don't have a problem doing that so i'm gonna go ahead and do that if there's another board member that's kind of on the fence because of that um you know feel free but i fully support going i fully support the district um taking care of this this was just more of my own personal place where i am right now so i appreciate everyone and um i'll let darlene go ahead and give out the get the rest of the information here and mrs clausen if you'll let darlene know

102where you are on all of that that would be great so i'll let all my colleagues follow up with that so moving on and no other uh communications from the board no all right very good um the next item on our agenda is uh reports from the superintendent and staff yes madam chair we've got a few and then i've got a couple of extras that i'm going to throw in under miscellaneous um if i could have amy castle come up she's going to talk a little bit about some more curriculum that we're going to have on a 45 day review madam chair dr brown members of the board i'd like to request permission to have a 45 day review for our honors algebra one and our honors geometry curriculum the books will be on display

103at the public library as well as room 352 in admin any questions thank you is that 352 excuse me go ahead okay 352 yes thank you very good yes so these curriculum materials going to be different than the regular ones for algebra and geometry madam chair trustee bowlin um our team has selected three to put on review two of them um are different than the one we have um they've selected the lustry of mathematics from mcgraw-hill and big ideas mathematics from cengage and the current adoption as well for our regular algebra geometry algebra ii envisioned by sevis thank you any other questions all right thank you so much thank you appreciate all your work next i would uh ask dr kenny um patty paradis and uh michelle proctor to come up we'll talk a little

104bit about diversity and our title ix update as you guys are aware the federal title ix guidelines changed quite a bit at the beginning of the school year this year i just want to give you an update we are one of the leaders in the state i'm very fortunate to have kelly pearson um who is partners in our law firm um is leading some of that and they're doing some of that for other districts right now but i think we've been on top of it from the start so i thought i'll turn it over to dr king thank you um madam chairman and uh trustees i'll have with me tonight patty paredes and michelle proctor i know they've presented before on some of the sudden changes that we are implementing throughout the yesterday regarding title

105ix michelle practicers as our title 9 coordinator for the district and also a program administrator in human resources patty freda's is serving as our district diversity facilitator and coach and deputy title ix coordinator their world's crossed a lot where michelle may focus far more in the human resources side the adult side where patty paredes really focuses on a little bit more on the student side and so since the worlds have crossed so much in investigative processes and so forth they both received some certification in title ix coordinating coordination administration throughout this summer and have uh collaborated a lot with our legal counsel cali pearson working very hard in our personnel policies and also student policies as well as student handbooks and everything updating to the two the title nine regulations so with that i'm going

106to turn it over to both michelle proctor and patty paredes to update you on progress in that development good evening dr brown madam chair and board of trustees um as dr kinney stated patty and i are here to give you an update on the department of education's updates and final rule for title ix we have about 10 minutes of slides and we did leave questions room for questions at the end the department of education did pass their final rule of title ix back in the spring of 2020 and it went into effect august 14th of 2020. patty and i are going to share some of the key changes in the regulations and how they're coming to life in our school district good evening everybody sorry i can i can ban it for you if you

107need me i've got venom right here uh so this slide here is giving you the definition of title ix and title nine is discrimination harassment on the basis of sex so you can see this um these are potential incidents or issues covered under title nine i think a lot of times when we think of title ix or we hear title ix um sometimes i think what comes to mind is sexual discrimination or sexual harassment those are kind of the first things that come come to mind um this is a slide just to show you that there are a lot of other things that fall under title ix athletics being one of them and sometimes we don't think about title ix and athletics and the idea around programming equity and programming and even access to sports

108so there we have that so this identifies the key changes um to title ix michelle and i are just going to go through a few of them we're not going to go through every single one of them but as you've seen number one all employees are mandatory reporters what typically happened in previous years is principals teachers um school designees or designees and offices supervisors uh were deemed as the mandatory reporters uh now that the law has changed and the definition of it is the fact that we all are mandatory reporters and so paraprofessionals secretaries custodial staff our cafeteria workers frankly everyone who works in our school district is considered a mandatory reporter and must report when they hear or when they see something that they believe may fall under title nine and they're not there

109to make the judgment about it but if they hear or see something that's not right they should be reporting it to their immediate supervisor to their principal or to our title nine coordinator which is michelle and when michelle's not available i'm the deputy it comes to me so number two on the changes here is the update on the definition of sexual harassment so there are three points that fall under the definition the first one is quit pro quo and there has been no change in that that is continuing that's one of the points the second point is honest on sexual assault that falls under that under the definition the definition of sexual assault has been expanded to include dating violence domestic violence and stalking the last point or change under title ix yes under sexual

110harassment i'm sorry is unwelcome conduct that a reasonable person would determine to be so severe pervasive and objectively offensive previously the language used was the word or and it's now and which means when determining the whether it is it falls under sexual harassment we need to determine is it severe and pervasive and objectively offensive offensive it has to apply it has to meet all three i'd like to point out number four required accessible reporting so one of the new requirements is being able to have the contact information for the title ix coordinator easily accessible and ways to file formal complaints so it is in all handbooks it's on our district website um it's on applica applications for employment um so it's available in multiple places also on our website you'll find uh our complaint form

111what the process looks like so it goes through step by step if you file a formal complaint what will happen um it'll have contact information for local law enforcement as well we just wanted to make sure that this information and forms are easily accessible and meets the department of education standards so a few changes to due process we are expected to provide supportive measures to all parties that includes the claimant and the respondent all parties are considered innocent until a determination is made so there is no disciplinary action can can be taken against the respondent that's a change all parties can present evidence witnesses and they can have an advisor of their choice throughout the investigation so those are some major changes under that appeals both parties can appeal and there are three three things

112that would have to raise to the level of an appeal one they would have to prove that there was a procedural irregularity meaning we did something wrong we didn't follow a step we didn't follow a timeline secondly new evidence that was not reasonably available at the time that a determination was made so something came up afterwards and they wanted to appeal and show their evidence and lastly the title ix coordinator investigator or the dis or the decision maker had a conflict of interest or a bias and so the idea that a person doesn't agree with the determination or the outcome that is not a basis for an appeal just the three previous points one of the other key changes to the regulations is regarding jurisdiction and the definition of an education program or activity and

113this really asks the question does the school district have substantial control over the respondent or the alleged perpetrator and the context in which the harassment occurs some things to think about would be did it happen on school premises on a school bus or other related vehicle at a school bus stop an activity or event sponsored by school whether or not it's held on school premises and any other program or function where the school is responsible for the student there are also new training requirements under the final rule so the all members of the title 19 must be trained specifically the title ix coordinators so patty and i both received 32 hours of training this last summer through the association of title ix administrators all of our investigators have to be trained and we identified 18

114administrators and specialized personnel trained by the timeline coordinators and our legal counsel and then the decision makers so patty and chris simny were trained for 16 hours under decision making training um also through a tixa the next couple slides go over a few forms and flow charts we put in place to help us make sure that we're following the new process this one specifically is a high level overview this is what we call our flowchart for a formal complaint this will over this is an overview of the process for the title ix coordinator investigators and also the decision makers all of our principals and supervisors have been provided this flowchart and our investigation investigators during their training also received another copy of this as well this is the checklist for the complainant interview it's used

115to ensure all required information is covered during the interview with the complainant so it's the person reporting it goes over specific information and definitions that need to be provided to them and so this helps the investigator ensure that they're covering all of those topics this next checklist is the investigation checklist this is a high-level overview for the investigator of what the process looks like and the requirements it goes through step by step what's required in policy but then it also talks about time frames so there's 10 days for a decision to be made 10 days for appeal that way it helps track for the investigator where we're at in that process this last form is the title nine coordinator checklist this is a high level overview for me as the title ix coordinator essentially i

116serve as the quarterback of the investigation so are we following due process are we following policy are we meeting the expectations that the department of education has put out there and this allows me to track and document what the process looks like to ensure that we don't have a procedural irregularity in the process we also have another form i don't have a slide for it but it's a bias questionnaire we work with kelly pearson on that as well to ensure we're asking every person in the title 19 that's assigned to a case to go over and ensure do you know of any bias or do you know someone or is there a conflict of interest with parties involved before we assign someone to a case so we're trying to put things in place ahead of

117time to ensure we don't have one of those needs for appeals um that we could have prevented that's all we have for you on slides thank you for your time we do have time for questions if you guys have them as well very good um trustee readers fun uh madam chair thank you so well that was interesting uh i just have a couple of questions so who are the investigators can these these people this may be a principle or a social worker or some they have a different role of course they've been trained to investigate correct correct we have trained investigators that includes principals from every triad all secondary school principals as well as we have a school psychologist chris zimni is on there as well so we tried to make sure that we had

118a wide variety of people from different backgrounds as well and can i ask who provides the training uh the training was provided by patty myself and kelly pearson for this round of training for this first time okay so uh just one full final question so experience in human resources has told me that you know one of the biggest problems is people not reporting so let's say you become aware of someone who has knowledge of violation of title ix and they have not reported it somebody else indicated that and ended up reporting it what are the consequences for someone not reporting i would say that would go through a policy violation potentially for not mandatory reporting um we'd have to kind of work through that process but there would be follow-up if it came to light

119that someone knew and had not reported there'd have to be an investigation into that as well and what would that look like i would look i would take that personally from an hr perspective um i work with john weigle on what does that investigation in those interviews look like if it's separate from the actual incident unless it's related to the incident that might get pulled into the investigative process through the with the investigator if that person had a part in the potential claim and that's why they didn't come forward so potentially there could be disciplinary action taken against the individual is that correct or not correct okay okay thank you mr bond i didn't have a question just to comment mr wilson said that this was being discussed in subcommittee number three which involves students

120because it's applied to students it's also been discussed in subcommittee two because involves personnel so just want to mention that they pretty much mirror each other in both places very good trustee clauses i was just wondering madam chair are we going to hear about the diversity training too i i thought that was um part of the presentation excuse me trustee claussen after the um title ix presentation i will then do a presentation okay thank you very much thank you christy herman chairman thank you um and so i i was uh you know actually the question about uh mandatory reporting um came to mind that um you may get um it may come to the attention of the district because of a parent complaint or or something like that a non-employee you know a friend so

121um does everybody know um how to how to lodge a complaint and with whom to lodge it and and you you've got that great timeline so that they know when they'll be hearing from home so i just wonder what efforts are we making to let the public or the students him or herself know so all the information for reporting a claim contact information including physical address email address and phone number for the title ix coordinator is all available on our website so if you go to staff or students there's a link both for sexual harassment and discrimination you can go there um it will be it's in our administrative regulation that we're working on in the policy subcommittees it's also available in all the employee handbooks student handbooks and on frontline for our applicants for

122employment as well like madam chairman just it strikes me this might be something for the parent advisory committee just to to know because you know it a lot of redundancy is good nevertheless to know to look to know that it's there would be something that maybe parents should know we can talk to scott archer about that possible presentation they set their own agenda but we're happy to uh put that out to mr archer with the parent advisory committee great thank you are there any other questions no thank you i'd like to add one other thing though also is if we do get contacted by a parent um it is my responsibility as the title ix coordinator to reach out even if it's a principal that calls me to reach out to that parent regarding that

123potential claim tax them about title ix provide them my information what my role is and what the process looks like and provide them with a complaint form if they want to file a formal complaint so there is i do touch base with every single parent that i get contacted about for students very good thank you thank you for all that work i know it was uh it was tedious and and that's been something that's been in front of that committee i've been on that committee a long time so kelly pearson has worked with the district and dr kenny and and we've looked at that many many times in a lot of different ways so i'm glad very nice and the feds keep changing yes they do so we're on our toes and i'm glad you're

124ahead of it so thank you so much i would also just share with you that i think we're pretty fortunate in our district to have two of us yes uh it is a lonely job and so to have two of us it has really paid off really for both of us to as we're learning this to get confident and and feel like we're making the right decisions so thank you thank you thanks michelle so i'd just like to give the board um updates on my work that i've been doing i haven't seen you for quite a while and so here i am so what have i been doing so far a little bit on diversity uh in the fall in august uh i presented uh diversity professional development to the entire transportation team did that

125in person we had about 70 people in the morning 70 people in the afternoon transportation department they were wonderful set up the bus barn for me took all the buses out had it all set up went all the doors up for air everybody wore masks it was they were great they were great so uh the leaders in transportation really wanted the training in person versus online and i so agree with them i believe diversity training is uh just it's it it's better when we can do it in person i presented in october at the mayafa uh conference and i would tell you that that is the first time i've attended my topic was what does it mean to be anti-racist and so i presented i encourage all of us to attend in the future it

126was a great learning opportunity for me as a learner but also a great way for me to build some bridges with our community members and so i would encourage you and invite you every october second saturday of the month i also coordinate and meet monthly with a cultural diversity panel advisory panel there's about 20 people on the panel they were selected last year it's about 50 staff 50 community and last year i met every month with the large group about 20 people i also asked for feedback in the spring of course we were remote starting in in march so we were meeting online but i sent them an online survey just to give me feedback on how they felt the year went and what what would what could be better um and really what i

127heard from them was 20 was a lot of people to try to feel like we were making movement or to make decisions and so i have a relationship with the diversity and equity um chief diversity officer at uw and so i met with her over the summer and i just talked to her about how does she run her her committee she's got a team of 36. so i said oh gosh i better not be complaining about my team of 20. really what and so what what i decided to do and working with dr kinney was i actually created subcommittees so i have four subcommittees on the cultural diversity advisory panel this year and those those subcommittees are programs policies professional development and community engagement i have a team lead from the cultural diversity panel that

128was on it last year who's the facilitator one person for each of those i meet with those team leads every month me meet with the larger group two or three times during the year during the school year feedback i've gotten from the team leads and from there and i meet with them monthly and feedback i get from them and their notes and their minutes from their meetings is so much nicer to have a small group right we it's three to five people on a team and they really can dig into the work and start asking some hard questions about what should we be doing what are we doing what can we do in terms of programs policies professional development and community engagement so we're just in the thick of it right now with that i

129shared with you i have a relationship with dr emily manago who is a chief diversity officer at university of uw and i also participate on their community engagement panel so i meet twice a month with their team as a community member from here from cheyenne it's been a good opportunity for me to get to know some of the people over in laramie albany county from the college as well as from the school district so i participate on that hoping i'm working with dr kinney i'm hoping to put out a student climate survey in april and that was something that was part of the action plan from last year and we're working with weak and we act is the western educational equity assistance center out of metropolitan state university they're the organization that supported us last

130year with training of all our certified staff members dr darlene samson who i had a previous relationship i knew her um from denver public schools has been a great support to me they have we has given the student climate survey throughout the country for many years so they have data from across the country they give it in grades three tr grades three through 12. we have not made that decision yet but i'm really encouraging us uh to use the survey as it stands to not make any changes to it because the minute we make changes to it the data they have from the surveys they've given across the country becomes invalid and so working on that we're hoping to send that out electronically in april and parents would have the option to opt out they

131don't have to take it they don't have to let their their student take it the other thing i've been doing is i respond to school outreach so i have principals assistant principals i've had teachers reach out to me as a support and a resource and i'm starting to work on i created diversity modules last spring because we were remote and i couldn't do anything in person so i created them online sorry if i turned that on i'll take care of it thank you and so i'm starting with but you did not turn that on it's not on the screen i'm getting ready for the next you're good sorry for the interruption no worries no worries so i'm starting on diversity modules 2.0 and so i'm open to questions very good trust ebola um are you

132planning on giving the climate survey to the entire district or system of government the entire district so you're past working with just requirement at this point we're in the entire district correct thank you thank you trustee readers thank you madam chair so if just to help me understand so if i were to attend a diversity training session that you would conduct let's say in the transportation department what kinds of topics would you cover just as a general matter of do that sure do that so the topics i covered are the topics i covered in the diversity modules that i created um which i i believe were sent to all of you and i'll make sure our new board members receive it thank you murdery uh so microaggressions cultural competence and what that means and bias

133that was really what i spent my time on in first year does that help that does help thank you very good trustee ashby um so as a new board member i missed when you came on board so could you just articulate for us or for me what are the what are the key goals of your position what are you what are your what are you mainly trying to accomplish you bet you bet so i came on august 21st of 2019. uh wait is that right yeah 2019. that's my first day on the job and that was my and our first day with we act providing uh diversity training for an equity training for all of our staff so the about the first three or four months i was here i was housed at mccormick junior

134high and i was there as a support to the staff not so much students but to the staff and i worked a lot with the principal assistant principals and working with staff so i spent my time almost till thanksgiving there and transitioned to the ad building so i've been at the ad building since although right now i'm at eastridge facility on also supporting cvs and so in terms of my goals you know our goals are really that we provide and build an equitable equitable system um for all of our kids and and really for all of our staff regardless of what you look like where you come from what language you speak and that everyone's welcome here everyone's educated here and so when you walk through our doors nothing else matters but providing you the

135absolute best education we can possibly provide for you and so my job really is with the adults in our system in terms of providing resources providing professional development working with them on problem solving i've worked with school administrators really kind of talking through incidents that have happened in their school and so how do you know how should we handle this and we've got an irate parent or upset parent i talk to those parents i have conversations with them and so i think i i would just say that my big goal is that we have an equitable environment for all okay thank you trustee clawson okay thank you madam chair and thank you for the update i was um hoping that we'd hear from you because i do have a question and it's an it's a

136it's related to um kind of the environment of our country and talking about some of these issues yes so i appreciate that you and we as a district are promoting um equal opportunity and and fair treatment of all people in our district that's really an important goal but having said that um some are promoting the idea that america is irreverent irrevocably racist and sexist and that they argue that entire groups um based on race and sex are oppressors and that racial and sexual uh identities are more important than our common status as human beings and even as individuals so i think that it's important that we acknowledge that um there's not universal acceptance of that notion and that we're very careful as a district to to recognize that people have reasonable disagreement over the merits

137of those arguments so i'm hopeful as a district that we're very careful how we are framing these issues and um i'm interested in what resources we're using to talk about these issues or to refer people to them uh to learn more on the issues um because we do serve such a diverse community we need to be careful that we're not taking one side or the other so my questions for you are what efforts have you made to ensure balance of views when discussing these issues and training on these issues that are so sensitive that's question one and then do you um do any of the resources that you use or maybe reference or send people to look up books online resources websites are any of them that you're using include the idea of critical race

138theory which i touched on earlier in my comments thank you so a little bit about ensuring balance really important to me really important to our school district and the fact that we live in cheyenne wyoming in this beautiful state and we have lots of diversity of thought which we should welcome and so when i present i do for example when i talk about microaggressions i did get some feedback at the transportation training in august that they were offended that i um presumed that when people say something that it's taken the wrong way and so we had a great conversation about it and i said to them i appreciate that you're willing to um confront me on something that is bothering you so i would just say to you that i do believe in balance i

139do believe um in giving as much the idea that all of our kids here are sacred to all of us and there is no student or family that comes through our doors that should be fearful that should be worried about being hurt harassed not educated and so that's really the point i come from we're a public institution and we have a responsibility to all and that's not easy to do it's not and you can see that across the nation in public education it's not easy to do and so i try my best i don't insert my personal opinions my personal values because that is not part of my job my job is is to present as much information that i have and that that i've learned through this new task of mine uh to presenting

140a balanced view i'm not going to make assumptions about who who people are in my audience because i don't know them well enough and so i would never do that so i would tell you that i got really positive feedback from the transportation department um because we had a hard conversation about white privilege and i had some members in the in the community there um upset because they felt like um white men are under attack and we had a great conversation about it and i feel really good they were able to bring it up and we justin um from the transportation department and i had a great honest conversation with the entire group about it so i don't know if that answers your question but i just come from i hope i believe i come

141from a place of balance in terms of resources i will tell you um i have been very limited in what i have shared with people i did create the modules i don't know if you've had a chance to look at them a lot of what's in the modules i took from resources from denver public schools resources from we act resources from uw resources from um some training that i've been to so it's not like there's any one particular uh resource that i go to uh i just try to be open about what i'm presenting to people and just what the definitions are and what it means and go from there but i i have been careful about what i share with people i really have not shared anything outside of the modules when i did

142have a teacher that called me uh i shared an article about the use of the n-word and i shared an article with her about that just kindergarten wanting to know how can i talk to my little five-year-olds about this very different than talking to 15 year olds about it so i don't know if that helps thank you you bet very good trustee wienerson all right so you know this whole issue of diversity and i think you know i've read a lot on the topic and certainly no expert in the area but it seems to come down to [Music] the fact that we ought to be celebrating our diversity absolutely and i think that's what i think we don't say that enough to our students because really that's where we get our strength i think as

143a district as a state as a country that wouldn't it be a boring world if everybody was the same you know it's almost it just sounds like a bad movie yeah really but but if we could just celebrate our diversity and people would be happy with that and we're not going to agree always and we certainly shouldn't always agree but right celebrating diversity for me that's that's really what it's all about it means different things to different people but for me it means just celebrating our differences and respecting those differences so thank you for all your hard work thank you thank you thank you trustee herman thank you madam chairman and just responding real briefly to ms claussen's um concerns that she brought forward i did take that module um and and i have to

144say that it did focus on just looking um at attitudes that drove behavior and really it was about behavior not that the fact that you were you're coming from a certain class or color or whatever um it was very um it was very clear that regardless of any of the demographic information about you it was it was about activities and treatment of others and and and and you know asking some hard questions about looking at why why you were thinking certain ways but it was it was really it was uh on the demonstration of it so i think i think it did a good job in that respect um just you know to keep clear of making assumptions about people which you know is always dangerous thank you thank you um just to clarify about

145the student climate survey yes you said that would go to parents right it will be sent to a permission slip permission to take the survey would go to all families and then it will go directly to the students correctly have permission yeah okay okay thank you you bet very good any other questions very good oh thank you so much thank you president thank you thank you so much for your time we'll have um john white will come up next and talk a little bit about the people that have taken that or have been for them [Music] um all right uh dr brown madam chair school board trustees you all have a handout that you can take some notes on if you choose to along with what's presented on the screen um i wanted to share

146some information with you in terms of the numbers uh the the deadline was friday january 8th to turn in to the district that we had staff members who want to take advantage of the health insurance incentive so from fridays and numbers we had 76 total staff members who wanted to take advantage of that we broke that down by certified staff as you can see we had 51 certified staff and 28 of those were secondary 23 were elementary in terms of classified staff we had 17 classified staff three at the secondary level seven at the elementary and then seven other areas and i'll talk a little bit about that and then in terms of administrators and supervisors we had eight turn in that request we had two school administrators four coordinators and two other supervisors at

147the classified level so that gives you kind of the numbers remember this is hot off the press from friday we didn't have a lot of time to work through it i don't see us going down from 76 but we could have some people that don't qualify maybe they thought they met the rule of 85 and they didn't there's some work to be done between now and march 1st and march march 1st is the time they can resend their retirement request just so you're aware of that and i think i will update i think uh each month to say where we're at with that number but just do do remember there's these are pretty tentative at the time so looking within those numbers if we look at the certified staff out of the 51 certified members

148nine are funded out of special education okay and one of those staff members is funded out of our title four funds so really we have about 41 uh ftes in terms of general funds when we're looking at reductions and budget reasons those that's the number we have to consider because of course special education is funded at 100 percent and then title fund also doesn't hit our general fund so really we have about 41 certified staff members that we can look at in terms of some of our reductions moving forward in terms of the classified staff uh out of the other area box containing seven staff uh four work out of the admin building two from transportation and one from facilities uh in addition to in the very last uh part of this document that i

149showed you we do have staff that have already notified us they're resigning but they might not qualify for the incentive so we do have nine other staff members so i think along with the number of staff who are looking at this incentive we also have to keep in mind how many other people have resigned to our district because that'll affect some of the decisions we make kind of moving forward so like i said hot off the press this is just some documents that we wanted to share in numbers so you have an idea about that it will impact jen in the budget some of the decisions we have to make in terms of reductions of staff some staff i'm sure some of these positions we might have to replace other ones we might be able

150to collapse and save money in terms of that personnel area so pretty short and sweet just to give you a heads up that's kind of where we're at all right trusty ashby can i get some context um madam chair what what is the incentive and what are we incentivizing and i apologize yes um which one of you would like to take that or i'll let john yeah so if you remember there are certain criteria if you work in the district for over 10 years and you meet the rule of 85 you could qualify to pay you up to 565 dollars towards your health insurance up to the age of 65. you can't go more than 10 years with that incentive if you want to have a family a family membership it still only goes to

151565. you'd have to pay the difference and that's about dollars for a family membership so they would get the incentive from the school district at 565 they'd pay the difference of that of that total so it is an incentive for staff members to to have some health insurance it helps us because sometimes we replace that staff member with a high salary with someone with a lower salary this year coming up i think it's going to help us because we're going to have high salaries and maybe not replace those folks in terms of our our budget reductions if you've worked with us for for 20 years and meet the rule of 85 that also is a way you could qualify for this incentive this part lives within the policy number two subcommittee we are looking at

152modifying that just a little bit in terms of the board every year has the opportunity to to approve this we've approved for about 25 years this year we we approved it so this is the number i'm talking about next year it's been put on hold so it won't be available to staff the following year between now and then we are going to work on the policy we do see maybe reducing some of those areas uh mr ciccarelli did some studies and out of three years one year we saved money one year was kind of equal and another year it kind of cost us money so we're reviewing that as a policy but it's a great benefit to our staff who have met those requirements that are struggling because they're worried about insurance they happy actually

153have that up to age 65. thank you any other questions it looks like i'm going to start down at that end if you don't mind just real briefly thank you madam chairman just wondering um do you think the um the specter of not you know if you wait a year you're going to go get into that gap that we put into place the um suspension of the program so so do you think this is kind of not artificially high but kind of in a way because people who might have been planning to retire next year are doing it this year i think they're worried about the program in general i think because it was paused the following year it forced people to make a decision um it's hard to estimate how many people pull we

154send you know their their name from this but i think a lot of people felt like it's going to be paused and extra might go away forever i'm going to take advantage of it now that's what i've heard from several employees so thank you okay mr bull do you have a breakdown on the nine that um we're not taking this on where they're from i would be one of those yeah so i do have that i do have that for you so we have three secondary certified staff one elementary certified staff one rotc person two special services one superintendent and one paraprofessional a partridge in a pear tree trustee classic i just have a quick question how did these numbers compare to let's say last year's numbers i think these are higher than last year

155i believe a lot or just quite a bit judge you know he might judd might have that in terms of some of the financial piece so i don't have that my head started madam chair um uh mr wales correct uh this was a significantly higher the year than we've seen in recent uh history uh last year was uh about 23 individuals took advantage of the uh option uh before that there was another low 20 count we haven't seen um retirees take advantage of the health incentive excuse me the retirement incentive at this level since the additional separation pay around 2017 and even at that point it was about 50 to 60 individuals very good thank you mr ciccarelli any further questions no very good thank you thank you mr weigel thank you mr weigle uh

156madam chair next um just want to give you a little update um on some of the things that are happening out in our lives for uh kobe um we had a great start after christmas we had four staff members and i think we had about 15 students that had tested positive we're not going to be able to return right away but most of them are going to return fairly quickly we know that we've got up until probably well um probably the end of this week to see if we have a spike or anything we are not seeing that right now the entire county is not seeing that it seems like things are kind of tapering off a little bit compared to where they were feel very comfortable with our staff coming back and following the

157protocols and us being safe there we have worked with county health they have set up times for our staff to get vaccinations we are 1b for all of our staff to get vaccinations county health has made it fairly easy they are allowing us to sign up electronically for appointments to get the vaccination for anybody that wants to it's all voluntary nobody's forced to do that um and so all they will do is click on a link we are sending that information out i think they sent it out at four o'clock today so it did go out at four o'clock today um we'll get that information to everyone out there and allow them to sign up um we're happy that that's something that's happening but it and so the first round will be the week of

158february 8th for our staff and then it's a two-part um vaccination so the second one will be the first week of march so you will when you go through and get your first one you'll have to sign up for your time to come in and get your vaccination the second time so i feel very fortunate that we have that opportunity um feel very fortunate about our partnership that we have with county health again we'll be on the phone with them again this wednesday um knocking out details it became so much easier whenever they just had an online signup because at one point we were going to have to do a survey and prioritize people but they decided to go away from that and everything so uh excited about that i feel very fortunate about where

159we're at with the number of positives right now and we'll just kind of continue to move forward and if things change you'll know because you got every one of the press releases that we send out so i'd answer or try to answer any questions on that if you have something um is there going to be any costs associated i know the vaccines must be free but sometimes there's a cost to actually give the vaccination so since they're doing city health does that mean we're getting completely for free yeah it will not cost any of our employees anything um we are um looking at if it does an administrative charge if we can charge that back to the cares act and if uh our um health insurance would ch would um bill the uh the district

160or not and we're not we have not gotten approval for that yet but we are working on that approval i think that will affect whether they may want to take it a little bit maybe especially for some of our employees like that and again it will not cost employees anything right any other questions mr uh dr brown do you have any sense for how many of our employees might be interested in taking the shot as opposed to not taking the top um you know i think um there's gonna the the out there with people currently being offered the shot it's somewhere between 50 to 80 percent of the people that they've offered it to in different areas have done that um i can tell you that we had a discussion at our cabinet meeting today

161and the the first four shots will be to myself to mr weigel to dr kenny and to mr bartlett so we signed up and said we'll try to role model and be good role models so we'll get those done and i know that mary quast will have her camera up there never never misses an opportunity to get photoshoot of people getting stuck with needles you know no so we're gonna do that but um i would guess that we'll probably be somewhere around 65 percent of our staff members would want to do that we are not going to um this is not their only opportunity i know some people may want to wait for a little while and so if that happens we'll have opportunities for them down the road um to be able to sign

162up if they so chose and again it is voluntary totally so if people do not want to do that i mean there's a lot of reasons why somebody might not want to do that but i think it makes sure that everybody's as uh safe as they can be very good trustee that's a question jeremy just wondering didn't the school nurses have all received their first inoculation right haven't they the nurses have so last week they were part of the 1a tier the people that were getting them so any nurse that wanted to receive their first inoculation last week and then i think it's 21 days before you can get your second injection so that's kind of where that's at thank you mr pulling on another number of different vaccinations the two of them have been

163approved so far so will they know which one they're going to get or will they have a choice yeah they they know exactly which one they're gonna get i think i believe it's pfizer and i'm gonna yep it's pfizer and um they um well they have all that information for them it talks about any of the side effects that you might get um yeah so we've got a pretty detailed uh piece of information that went out in the email and i'll make sure that you guys get that as well but you guys we got it i think did you get it yeah and i don't think you guys can sign up on the link trustee hermann thank you just to clarify also that um once everybody gets their vaccinations the district is still going to

164employ the mask distance and cleaning it that that's going to be going on for quite a while for the at least the duration correct absolutely until um you know the governor's orders are going to require us to do that until um they're not and we do not see that changing for the current year one of the issues well one of the things that we've talked with county health about is that students will not be vaccinated unless they're 16 or older and they don't believe that they will get to that group until school is out so it looks like we're probably stuck with most of the protocols that we have in place at least through the end of this school year thank you thank you any other questions thank you what else do you have um

165chair i want to give you a little update on um on legislature did receive some information today regarding how the legislature might look so i wanted to pull that up let's see if i can do that there we go um it looks like the legislature is going to start out tomorrow and then um it looks like they will do all of the uh things that they're required to do for the first meeting um they'll elect a leadership they'll adopt their temporary reviews receive the governor's address and then they're gonna assign some bills to committees it looks like the standing committees meet january 19th 20th and 21st to work and report out bills and i it sounds like all of this is going to be electronically or virtually done and then that they will reconvene virtually

166on january 27th for eight days to consider the consider around 30 committee bills and then additionally refer more bills to committee on that eighth day and then the committees will meet again for three days the week of february 26 to work bills that are signed to them and then it looks like they're going to reconvene the session march first in person if health allows and then this the session will adjourn on april 2nd so that that is not even on the website i could not find it there today but did have the opportunity to have somebody mail that to me and so i thought i would share that with you i thought jed did a really nice job of updating us on the recalibration there was a education committee meeting the 30th of july and

167it did not talk about k-12 it was all pre-k information and was talking about getting all of the pre-k underneath one organization currently it's under three different organizations at the state level so they're looking at doing that so that's kind of a little update on where we're at with legislature any questions on any of that and then the last thing i want to inform you about is i'm gonna have um dave come up and talk a little bit about a little accident that happened over christmas break and uh and uh inform you on kind of where we're at i don't think we've come to resolution on a solution yet but i'll let dave talk about that so madam chair members of the board um december 24th we had a fire suppression sprinkler head uh burst

168in the in the northern uh storeroom at east high uh that caused several thousand gallons of water to flat out into the the gym floor for about 30 minutes when those those sprinkler heads go off it does send an alarm to our folks our staff were on site about 30 minutes after it ruptured did get it shut off got it cleaned up and now we are just in the process of waiting for the floor to dry out it's probably gonna be another five to six weeks before the moisture contents down far enough that we can assess the damage um the north half of the floor has has experienced some warping and some cupping and so we've got to keep our eye on that and what that's done is it's pretty much deemed the floor unplayable

169for basketball great timing obviously um so uh what we've done is we have moved east varsity and jv over here to story gym we've relocated central sub varsity to um easter eggs they're they're practicing after building is done uh and to be honest with you this has actually impacted everybody from the fifth grade on up to the varsity level just because of the you know the number of jams number of programs number of teams we have this time of year so as i said we'll we'll wait another four to five weeks before we can make a determination but i can tell you our options are going to be uh one of three um if it if it uh the cupping levels out enough we may be able to re-sand uh refinish and paint um the

170floor uh we may have to tear out part of that that's been damaged replace it then still go back and sand paint refinish the floor or we may be in a situation where we're doing a complete replacement so our remedies are going to range anywhere from fifty thousand to about two hundred thousand dollars um so uh as we move forward i will keep you guys surprised it does look like you know unfortunately when you look at replacing a gym floor that is a very specialized um thing that that occurs we have two companies that we we rely on um that travel around the country so i can tell you they've already booked out their summer projects so chances are for us to get this done in a timely manner we most likely would be doing

171the repairs during the school year right now what i would tell you is east tai has they are conducting pe in the south half of the gym they're just making sure it's not you know basketball related they can still hit their curriculum marks but if we do determine that we have to do a full replacement we may have to look to just do some some shifting of curriculum or move some folks around or we can hope for a really warm spring um it's it's unfortunate because i can't even put them in the swimming pool right now but anyway that's where we are there uh i will tell you i would like to give huge accolades to all of our our other schools out there because uh you know we we may compete against one another

172on the court but they have all chipped in and helped they've all adjusted their schedules they've moved their teams uh and they've been very accommodating so i'm very proud of our ads and and our folks for for being open and willing to do that any questions for me yes mr bullin is this the main gym yes it was the main gym did the other gym get in the end the other gym did not and that's fortunate because we are able to keep our sub varsity teams practicing in in the auxiliary gym there um and you know this this we're still investigating it we've got the insurance companies both ours and the pool contractor looking into this uh because we do believe this is related to having the vestibule shut down and and you know cold

173weather and some of that so um we'll just have to see whose insurance company is going to end up carrying the lion's share of us certainly great we have both those facilities both east ridge and here yeah to be able to expand into and i will tell you we've also managed to uh use kerry junior high the new gym there after carrie's out we have some teams going down there in the evening so um you're right it's it's uh with our new covered restrictions with fewer kids on the courts we've needed more gyms and then of course you lose one of your biggest ones um but the fact that we did have eastridge and and stories really helped the remedy well that's great well wreck mill did you lose much equipment and will rarely be

174involved in possibly looking at some replacements there we did not lose any equipment um it's just primarily the floor and and that would be um as i said it could be insurance could be the contractor uh and and ultimately we we may do a combination of insurance contractor insurance and potentially major maintenance okay any other questions thank you thank you mr burton the jed's not the only one that brings bad news to it mediterra that's the end of my reports tonight very good moving on to our agenda um we are uh ready for our consent agenda so all 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

175the consent agenda will be considered in its normal sequence on the agenda does any board member request to remove an item a motion from the consent agenda no ma'am chair i move to approve all motions listed as consent agenda second any no there's no discussion on that correct right okay um all in favor say aye aye opposed hearing man motion passes all right new business yes sir madam chair i moved to grant permission to contract for multimedia equipment and supplies for projectors and projector lamps for an amount not to exceed 150 thousand dollars for document cameras for an additional amount not to exceed forty thousand dollars and for cables sound systems and other miscellaneous audio visual items for an amount not to exceed two hundred thousand dollars second any discussion hearing none all in favor

176say aye all right can you post motion passes that brings us to our future business the next regular board meeting will be held on monday february 1st 2021 at 6 00 pm a work session will begin at 5 pm meetings are virtual for the public and in person for our district staff and trustees public comment um it's time for our public comment do we have anyone show of hands dr brown yes it looks like mr wilson would like to speak this ma'am mr wilson if you'll unmute yourself you can speak thank you i have uh four comments or requests or questions uh relating to the title ix policy and diversity presentations uh first would be a request the presentation on title ix the key changes uh document that was uh on on your screen and

177i believe the trustees have in their packets on that page number two roman numeral two says that the definition of sexual harassment is to include unwelcomed conducts conduct that a reasonable person would determine is severe pervasive and objectionably offensive which is great that's that should be there uh however the policy that was presented to the committee on september 14th was structured so this provision does not apply to all of the subcategories under sexual harassment in particular the provision on stalking is not bound by the severe pervasive objectionable requirement as it's written so i have not been influential to get this readdressed in committee due to the timing and the need for coordination between the other with the other committee and with legal and i understand that there is there is time concerns and that the

178requirement to have this in place already is is already passed but i would request that the board of trustees look at this concern closely and ensure that the final approved policy makes that binding on all cases of sexual harassment my second point my second thing is is another uh item in regard to the diversity and title ix presentation and that would be i would ask the board to ensure that a mechanism is provided for the public to view the student climate survey questions before parents need to decide whether to opt out it'll give a lot more confidence to parents if they can look at the survey in advance and see this is what my child's going to be answering uh number 3 it would be a request and i would say that in regard to

179the diversity presentation can the training materials that were mentioned during during the presentation about uh microaggression and bias for example be posted as part of the committee i looked into the training that the title ix coordinator the investigators and the like at the higher level that's posted on the website but the information that is actually used to train on microaggression bias and such that was spoken about at the lectern in your meeting that was not available on the on the website and finally i just have a very general uh observation and that is in my experience the provisions that these uh regulations put in place uh to to discipline uh employees or students give extraordinary power to the title ix decision maker the expulsion of a student or termination of an employee's career appears to

180be based on the least rigorous of all the evidentiary standards and a highly subjective reasonableness test the policy should you you you on the board put yourself in the shoes of some of these folks who may inadvertently commit a faux pas and and risk losing their career over it because it gets blown up and the decision is solely on the title ix decision makers head to make that decision it's one person making that decision and the appeal as it's as the policies written right now uh does not allow any appeal because of uh an understanding that the reasonable person finding is is not appropriate so this is is one person making this decision i know there's a lot of good folks there on the on the uh on the board and i would just ask

181you to take a a closer look at that issue one one possibility is this is under the federal rules uh you are allowed to uh instead of having the the uh legal standard of a um let's see here i think right now it's i think right now the definition in the training slides that are posted on the website say that it's 50 likely plus a feather would find a person guilty of the charge you're getting close to the end of your time seeking to wrap it up and we do have to follow the federal regulations as well yeah right the federal regulations allow you to make that decision whether it's a clear convincing standard or i believe it's substantial evidentiary standard that would be my last point thank you mr chairman thank you chair we

182do have another hand uh lindstrom heiler lynn if you are meeting yourself i think you can talk welcome members of the board madam chair um thank you very much for allowing me to speak can you hear me yes thank you thank you um my comments are also relating to the title ix changes um i just want to make sure that there is an understanding that the new changes to the sexual assault really um impact more on the college and university uh levels um so i also want it to be known that um i hope you have a policy that that dictates um how those infractions will be handled because all of those are crimes and they are handled very specifically by law enforcement and should not be being investigated by the district and so i

183hope in the policy it talks about how those are directly referred to law enforcement because anything relating to sexual assault um of a minor uh child um is a crime um so i those are just some general comments that i have thank you thank you mrs hyler and no one else has their hands on him very good thank you for that public comment um i appreciate that it's good that we have that opportunity twice in our um our board meeting so our next item on the agenda is executive session madam chair i move to go into executive session at this time prior to adjournment for the purpose of possible student long-term suspension expulsion and personnel second thank you we don't have to vote on this do we it's not yet or do we we do

184we both thank you all in favor to go into the executive session thank you all right i'll oppose thank you sorry about i that she said you