001we'll call this meeting to order [Music] thank you and welcome everyone to be here tonight and also watching us on YouTube streaming live and we can also if you want to go back and watch again it'll be archived and be up there for a couple of years so welcome everyone in all their media and okay first yeah madam chair there are a couple of adjustments under C to the February 23rd meeting it will not be held the forum and the reception will not be held at the office it will be at cheyenne little america and then if you go over to d 3.7 we have filled in construction specialists incorporated for the approval of that bid so those are the two adjustments to be hanging around thank you so madam chair i move to adopt
002the agenda with the adjustments Oh second here is the motion all those in favor say aye all things opposed no the amended agenda has been adopted and now we go to the recognition of staff students for outstanding achievements and we'll start with the science fair winners mr. Brean will present those and Julie Calkins our our district science coordinator is coming up well he'll help explain and hand out good evening dr. Brown board of trustees administrators teachers parents students and community members tonight we are celebrating the accomplishments of our best of show winners from the 46th Laramie County science fair held Saturday January January 18-karat story Jim I would like to introduce our fourth-grade best of show winter ethany friend if you would come on down please fifth grade best of show winner Anja Harket our
003sixth grade best of show Emily Tatum and then I don't know if our junior division best of show Shelby who blurr was able to make it this evening just please can we have a round of applause all of these young men it is it is interesting to note that Emily and Shelby who wasn't here this evening they both got first place in their division at the South Eastern Regional Science Fair held it's the last Saturday in January so we're incredibly proud of them and I think they deserve a round of applause for that as well not to take up any more time but out of the at the regional Science Fair our our students they rocked it they really ruled the day out of ten categories our 6th 7th and 8th grade students to come
0046 first places and two third places that's most of the awards and they earned the honor of competing at the Sun at the state science fair at the first weekend in March our high school students most of them from East High School took home ten awards in seven categories I think it's outstanding and it wouldn't happen without the support of administrators teachers parents and students [Applause] with the parents of our best to show winners please stand so we can recognize you if your teacher is here this would you please rise if you're a teacher of one of these students so we can recognize you thank you and if you are a principal of one of our students please rise so we can recognize you as well thank you next we next will have a recognition
005of the Nurmi County Spelling Bee trainers this Clausen is good has those that hand out and come on up so good evening Madame chairs school board dr. Brown and visitors this year's spelling bee enjoyed three significant advance and before I share those I'm enough the winners come up Braden Porter Clayton and Ashley and then I'm going to talk about you guys individually in a second okay [Applause] so the first significant event due to some local adjustments participation doubled from last year and we were able to invite a 102 participants 12 of which advanced to the oral rounds 8 to the spell down which went 9 rounds so the second event on poder was able to compete for the first time and thirdly we saw a repeat winner Frigg Neville 4 McCormick won for the second
006year in a row Graydon's coach is Renee dryer and Justin Conroy the principal Prairie wind placed two students in second and third place Porter Carson Clayton fuller Thailand Maloney Kylee Melones the coach and Lisa widel the principal a district 2 student placed fourth and then placing 5th 5th was Ashley Smith of Meadowlark Kirstin reef is the coach and James Fraley the principal all five have the opportunity to compete at the state competition March 28th in Rock Springs I would like to fit thank the following groups for their support the Department of instruction the Laramie County School Board the Greater Laramie County Community the principal's coordinators and instructional coaches who help judge the written portion connie acts as the administrative assistant in my office and all the coaches students parents and principals who put in the
007time to make this event a success I would invite the parents of the winners to stand well they're finishing up I just want to read some Roberts they had they had haggis perspicacious surreptitious magnanimous herbaceous subcutaneous simultaneously oppo breeze and this is one you don't hear too much when you're in fifth grade fibromyalgia now we have a student of the week and mr. Boland is going to haul those up the one student of the week from triumph couldn't make it tonight so we'll hand out the other two we have a partner with this we start out just giving certificate but now we have Western Vista is involved and they also have a little monetary award to go in it's all leather a staff person from history yourself hi I'm Lisa from Western Vista and I
008just want to say congratulations on behalf of Western Missa our first recipient is Gerardo Mendez and principal come up with mr. Nissen I'll let you say a little bit why he was chosen all right it is my pleasure to introduce Kerry student of the week Gerardo Mendez as teachers consider students to be our student of the week we look at academics and involvement in in and out of Kerry but more importantly we look at students that inspire us as adults to be better human beings in all that we do G as her ardour likes to be called is a student we selected this week he is always positive and encouraging of other students he will not hesitate to step up and help he can always be counted on count you can always count on him
009to have a smile and to brighten your day in the hallway he consistently he is consistently good at giving high-fives and asking how you were doing we are proud to recognize G Mendez my name is my name is Herman my parents are already in Romania senior I am an 8th grader at Carey junior high speak in Spanish and a past student I want to be a mechanic someday and if Gerardo his parents would please stand in the back there to be great and all the board's work means they had a chance go tour the new Kari and it's coming along very very well time they have a very nice new pals room for these men like this that are there and it's not far away from the tech head room so he would have been
010very happy there I think our next one is from McCormack Sophie of mr. Conroy and Kendra Upton coming up good evening everybody I'd like to introduce you to Kendra Upton she's an eighth grader at McCormack junior high school she's an awesome student whenever we sent out get some feedback as far as who we like to represent McCormack can girls name was unanimous among her core and her colleague or her peers she is an outstanding young young lady she has she has perfect attendance she has straight A's and she loves the outdoors she loves working running and trapped cross-country and all of that and she does a fantastic job so I'd like to thank her parents as well Michael and Michelle they've done a fantastic job and I've enjoyed visiting with them as we've prepared for
011this evening just to give a little preface kendra has fight in the crud that's kind of been going around here so I she's not 100% right now but she's going to say a few words and but I thank her for coming through the weather tonight and being here when I know she needs some rest so can direct congratulations [Applause] I would like to say thank you to my teachers who nominated me and my peers also and what's funny is I had perfect attendance to last week and next is the smart VFW national citizenship education teacher award I do have a presenter for that yes mr. Khan mr. Cox is going to present mr. Cox is the principal of Johnson junior high school thank you so every year since 1999 the VFW seeks out some of
012our country's top educators specifically those that instill a sense of national pride in their students through the teaching of citizenship as well as American history the folks honored by this award at each state have the opportunity to participate in the national level competition where they will personally receive $1,000 for their own professional development and continued growth as well as $1,000 for their school they also get an all-expense-paid trip to the summer conference where they will be honored in this event to represent Johnson junior high school and one of my esteemed colleagues mr. Neil Hopkinson if you could please join me for this award I had the honour and joy of working alongside mr. Wilkinson now for four years and I can tell you that there is no other educator that I've worked alongside who quite
013frankly knows how to mold and coach and teach behavior junior-high is probably one of the the tougher age groups to teach simply because there's more than content you're mixing content with behavior and sometimes a lot more behavior with the content and things of that nature and so if you were to sit in mr. Wilkinson s class he goes above and beyond to engage students in the academics specifically by engrossing them in the material students often leave his classroom telling me that they didn't even realize that near hour-and-a-half has gone by in that time and I think it takes a profound educator and somebody who's well honed and skilled in his craft to be able to do that when our modern-day youth U is used to fifty second updates from their phone going off so nonetheless
014mr. Hogan said I wanna thank you it's been an honor and pleasure of mine to work alongside you sir [Applause] next we're going to recognize weiming Music Educators Association music teacher of the Year award and mr. Ambrose if you come on up mr. Ambrose is our district coordinator for music good evening everyone it's my pleasure to have Monica Huntington come up and be recognized the one who Music Educators Association is the professional organization for the music ed professionals within our state every year they select a music educator of the year Wyoming has six districts geographically organized around the state each district nominates a teacher and they all get recognized and this year we were very proud to have Monica be selected by the music educators of Wyoming as the music teacher of the year she
015received the award at our state conference this last month and tell you a little bit about Monica's background she started in our district at bags and Rossmann a number of years ago and then stayed home for a couple years they have these two delightful kiddos that are back here in the back and then came back to our district and has been a real leader in our elementary general music teachers very active in the development of our curriculum and assessments and really provides the leadership for that group of teachers so it's my pleasure to introduce you to Monica inning tonight ARP but has also been at sunrise and a floor BA and Anderson and Hebert I think I got them all you know the life of a k-12 or a k-6 music teacher you know changes
016in it's a it's a big job so thanks to her family that's back there as well but Monica congratulations to you all right so I'm being forced to say something so I'm gonna say something I just want to say I'm really fortunate to work in a district that supports music education the way that our district does I have friends around the country who are not so lucky and so we're really blessed here students in Cheyenne are learning all kinds of things by being involved in music they're being sensitive they're cooperative they're being critical thinkers and problem solvers and it's a really wonderful thing to see we have an incredible talented music staff in Cheyenne and that's all the way from pre-k all the way to 12th grade and I'm just really proud to be part
017of them their commitment and enthusiasm inspired me to be the best that I can be every day and I'm really thankful that I have supportive leaders like Shawn and like my principal Steve who's here thank you for being here and I wouldn't be able to pursue professional development and growth opportunities for the kids if I didn't have that leadership and support so thank you so much for having me and we're recognizing this achievement and Monica's family's back here why don't you stand up because we know that this doesn't take place by yourself I'm sure that our last award is going to be presented by the Miami Department of Education Nutrition Services I believe we've got their program administrator Amanda Anderson who's going to be here to talk a little bit about our summer program and
018then maybe even give us a little award for so Amanda hi everybody I'm Amanda Anderson I'm with the Department of Education and I am here today to give props to the nutrition section for doing an amazing job with the Summer Food Service Program for those of you who don't know what the Summer Food Service Program is what what it does is it picks up the slack for all the children that rely on free and reduced meals during the regular school year they kind of need a place to go during the summer months and so we can have Summer Food Service Program sites and then children can go and eat at these sites for free and it's a it's a program that's not a requirement and so all the districts that participate in this program you
019know do it all voluntarily and and it's a it's a test to try to staff during the summer months you know when people want to be on vacation and and to organize these sites and Laramie County has actually gone above and beyond and they have sponsored sites that aren't part of the school district but they also do sites such as the Parks and Rec so I just I had pulled some numbers and during the last five years for first shiny and during the summer months there was almost 82,000 breakfast served in 156,000 lunches served during the summer months so so I've seen firsthand the impact that this is made you know you see kids coming in with their younger brothers and sisters and it's just a need that has definitely been fulfilled in Laramie County
020so I would like the nutrition section to come up and receive award from the Department of Education it's just a certificate of excellence award so we appreciate your guys's dedication and you guys going above and beyond so madam chair may I say something very quickly yes please this being my 80 here on the board I've been tremendously proud of our nutrition services for the summer program and I just want to congratulate you guys because this is really a wonderful program you guys are involved in thank you so much [Applause] keep that - and that part of our meetings we're going to go into a public comment period where visitors can come up and address the board in three minutes to address anything on our agenda or even off the agenda having to do with their
021school so please come forward if you want to share something secret Darlene could you be there for just for a second so that so so mr. Osmond could you come forward and and I have to confess I am I invited Miss joslyn's teacher at a Handerson to use her a three minute period here to recognize a fine young man just to share with us so well first I want to thank the district and school board for their support of the lego program we started out three years ago Gavin was in my first group of Lego leaders and so he aged out last year or the year before last somewhere in there but this last year he has been a youth mentor for our other teams we started with the team of seven and now we
022are have one junior team and we just created a third regular Lego team and so Gavin has been around to help mentor those kids and he was also awarded first place as youth mentor at the state Lego competition so Gavin could you just say just a couple of words here and he does this on his own because he'd love to work with little kids so I started this because I like they said I love Legos and I like helping people with that I kept doing this because I kept a promise the very first year when we presented to the PTA I said when I when I aged out even when I'm gone I will come back and I will help the little kids that need it and I will work with everyone there so that's
023why I was nominated the award and it's really fun the things that we've been doing we've got so many awards just in three years and we've been filling up our trophy case more than the sports have so so thank you so yeah I'm sorry I did go ahead more to say I thought and so thank you give him a hand and then get several of our children his proudest proud parent who is now who's filming it on his phone but anyway thank you come on over and just shake our hands if you will thank you thank you so much and congratulations thank you and is there any anyone else that was a little air pocket recognition but is there anyone else who wishes to address the board on this project come on up and just
024let you know we have another period at the end of the meeting similarly for comments if you wanted to until then but please talk well please no not be good actually not everyone wants to wait to that mic there that the podium there go ahead and use that yeah not everyone wants to listen to the whole meeting so now's a good time here okay hello everyone my name is will I'm with a non-profit group called ringside sports we're addressing you today ringside sports as an organization comprised of coaches parents and teachers changing the future one kid in one sport at a time providing support and structure for our youth and their community and athletics and extracurricular programs as many of you know some of our goals are provide fundraising for scholarships develop community and build
025positive relationships with athletic programs and schools some facts children who are allowed to explore through play can learn new skills and overcome challenges which cause which can promote self confidence self advocacy all of which can help become better health and relationships come better leaders a lot of you know our community is full of kids that necessarily don't have strong structures at home so school and athletic programs are all they have their role models are at school or in sports programs they don't need any more negative structure in their lives whether it's a dance class band volleyball or a football team our youth should be provided safe positive and educating atmosphere to encourage in sports and activities coaches and in structures and instructors should be encouraging positive behavior and providing a structured program to learn according
026to a study of Interscholastic sports participation published in the NA a SSP National Association of secondary school principals athletes have higher grades than non-athletes even those socioeconomic status gender age and family compromise are taken into account provided any positive program for these kids will roll over to academic success holding these kids accountable for participation will encourage them to succeed in their studies in the same study a positive effect of participation and in eclectic sports at a middle-school level have been reported in multiple studies over the last several decades students participating in one or multiple Interscholastic sports have an average GPA of three point one five non athletes have an average of two point four we as a community need to re-engage our youth and official activities promote positive activities and tear down the walls that
027keep them from doing so and providing them with funds and avenues to make it possible for them so I have to say thank you for your time thank you very much is there anyone else who would like to dress the board seeing none will close that portion of the meeting and just move on to upcoming meetings February 5th at Wednesday on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. Parent Advisory Committee here in the boardroom wre eleventh six pm policy advisory subcommittee number three and this at the admin building room 152 be wary 12:00 at 5:00 p.m. policy advisory subcommittee number two admin building room number 132 February 17th Presidents Day there's no board meeting February 23rd at 1:30 p.m. they'll be the wining School Board Association legislative forum and agenda in little America and now we move on
028to individual award communications and reports well I guess we'll start down there work this way mr. readers bond thank you madam chair I just wanted to mention that last week I had the opportunity to attend the reconsideration meeting out at Laramie County Community College along with a number of my colleagues so for those of you that don't know what this is it's one of our parents had challenged a textbook in the school district that was not able to be resolved within the school so it was submitted to the reconsideration committee there was a public meeting held the committee answered questions from a large room full of members of the public I was really impressed by the number of people and attended that I was really surprised frankly that there would be that many people in
029attendance I had not observed this before but I found it to be a very deliberative process lots of patience was exhibited by the committee members many people signed the forms to have an opportunity to ask questions and express their views so you know really it was a good experience for me because now I know what that proud that process works and I think it's an excellent process I'm glad the district does that so thank you madam chair Thank You mr. Rowland it's been about a month since we had our meeting last night so I got a number of things that I've attended first of all I went to the tram platform graduation and I think or two or three other board members there as well we have four graduates and we started off with I
030believe one graduate from the first quarter now we're up to four so and the coring principle we should be seeing more and more as the year goes on so and I've been one of those young men is actually was going to start the military the next Monday after we were there so very good management in class there but I also I spent some time this volume VA I really enjoy going this phone beat and I got to be there for all of the written rounds and as I was listening to the words as they were being pronounced there were probably these one or two words in each of the three written rounds that are that I didn't even know recognizes the words I love know for sure how to spell so it's always interesting and
031informative to see that but as interesting as the written tests are I'm really impressed with the kids that get up and go through the walk around because as hard as it is to spell when you're writing it down and get kind of check it seeing nothing visually as you're saying about loud is really impressive unfortunately I can only see the first two rounds of that because we had a swimming pool update meeting following that so we had to leave to go there and that's next thing on the I want to talk about and that's very nice of the people that are doing the design that building to give us an opportunity once a month hear what the progress is and it's coming right along we the last meeting we got a chance to actually see
032a virtual tour of what the bill is going to look like and we didn't get to do another one of those this time because then now they're focusing on making sure that all of the mechanical stuff they seem to that design of the came up with so I believe they're between 20 and 30 percent complete at this point and we should still be able to make a spring construction good process for that and give it get started in late spring and hopefully would be done for next year I also went to the reception for Brodie crest and he's a graduate of East High School and his father is a principal at East High School and what a very nice young man he is and very humble I'm not sure he had any it was not
033his idea they had this reception for him I'm sure because he could see he wasn't very thoughtful there but I what a wonderful young man they represent Cheyenne and East High School very very well I went to the McCormack student a month luncheon first one I've got to go to our student of the quarter luncheon I'm sorry and first time I've got good this year to get always always very interesting to get back into the building where I used to teach still feels like home although certainly some changes have been made around there since I was there I was also at the book reconsideration committee meeting and I don't recall being onward forward now in my eighth year so we're having one of those before so it was interesting to see that and to see
034their wonderful Tenon's even though was a night like tonight with lots of snow on the ground very very cold big crowd came out and everybody was very respectful for everyone else and I was very good process then the last thing but second last thing I want to talk about is I went to the east central game on this last Friday and I was very impressed by several things first of all when they started the girls game before the game started they the two schools had gotten together and chosen an athlete from east and methylene from central to get up there and talk about sportsmanship and they did this through a video presentation on the board and having been on the wreck mill board that helped purchase that me a lot of discussion on whether we
035should spend that money and was a a very good use that video board they got and talked about the different aspects of sportsmanship and they have the two athletes with two different teams up there doing that was very very good they repeated that again right before this with two different athletes right before the start of the second half and then they also did it for the boys game both for the boys game and then half the boys game and the when you've got women to the game you didn't have to pay an entry fee what they had there was donations for cancer research again another good thing that they do with one of those east-central basketball games and they had a big crowd there so I'm sure they got a good amount of donations for
036there and then at halftime I was impressed East as a extravaganza at both girls team and the boys game and they're a little bit different but what impressed me at through the girls game is that the ROTC came out and did a marching demonstration which is hard enough but they did it blindfolded and I was very very impressed with that so and during the boys game boys impressed with the fact that a group came out it's the it's an all off City dance team and this came out of a camp that the three schools the cheerleaders and dance teams from three schools held a camp last summer together and then they together this kind of all-star team and I guess their doings competing together as a team but to see all three schools out there
037and their individual uniforms working together was very very nice they also included one young lady from East High School who appeared to be have a Down syndrome and she was up there just been with him just like the rest of so it was very hard for me to see that last item I have is part of our Marion County retired educators we gave assistantship reward to two kids from East High School the Sun and it's Kiki Miller and Nathan was astir pool and those two kids on their own organized a getting beds for kids that don't have beds in our district and what a fine project they have and they put together 75 of them not by themselves by putting a team of you please sizable together and what a great project that is and
038what two fine young people we have there so thank you yes I just have a few things madam chair first just a reminder the board because we will not be meeting again until March is the State Board of Education will be meeting here in Cheyenne February 27th and 28th we haven't nailed down a spot yet I've been talking to dr. Brown regarding making use of Laramie County School District number one facilities on request of Miss su Bella SH because we're going to be honoring educators at that meeting and so we'd like to make use of district facilities and dr. Brown is looking closely into that secondly I once again have been named as chairman of the National Association of State Boards of Education pep committee that's professional education positions and we had our most recent
039meeting this past Friday and they came out with the six areas of concern for educationist next year that we're going to be investigating and the top of that list is teacher shortages and in terms of looking at teacher shortages the investigation is going to be looking at not simply the fact that we've got too many kids and not enough teachers but we need to be looking at what what's driving teachers out of Education and what is driving them people away from going into colleges of education aligned with that is a real concern nationwide and I've seen it in the papers here is the problem teacher diversity in the classrooms real concern nationwide thirdly is reciprocity among between states was teacher certification that is holding things back so dealer was potential shortages that was a big
040one moving on equity as always number three how are we going to deal with the federal funds and and shrinking state funds with the continued move our turfs and vouchers I received a text message from Mr Bryan farmer this evening while we were at carried he is in Washington DC right now and he's being addressed by the Undersecretary of Education Zionist Zionist made it very clear that the push from the department education is going to encourage more use of income tax credits for for kids going to using vouchers and charter schools in other words it's more pressure on public schools in terms of public funding and that's a very big one on our list and next was just a collection of college and career education and charter so that that's what my committee will be
041doing this coming a year third thing is I passed on to each one of you peoples in front of your desk is the foundations of democracy from Plato to Madison and Beyond out an ill Triple C in March there will be three retired teachers involved but formerly from Laramie County involved with that in addition to his Aaron Freeman who was a teacher South High high school working on another civic education lastly I want to piggyback on off of mister we respond mr. Baldwin regarding the reconsideration hearing last and mister we respond really really hit it well they talked about the process and that process to me was absolutely spectacular I want to take a special moment to to recognize dr. Tiffany Rabine for the organization of that panel it was so well organized so well
042done and by opening up and speaking to the district goals the district policies district norms it laid the foundation down for the conversation and dr. Ravin did an incredible job of chairing that and keeping the conversations directed we had an incredibly large group that showed up I took notes there are at least 25 different people giving testimony everyone was civil everyone talked to the point and that speaks volumes to dr. Rabine and her group next i want i had a statement prepared for that in the event that things would have led to me needing to do it i didn't have to because of what was already done but prior to coming into that meeting like my members of the board here who had a copy of the book drama I went ahead and read the
043book but then I went online and I looked at the American Library Association to see what the conversations were regarding that book over the last eight years what was what were the debate issues what was going on is this a banning or this is a or is this a challenge and then I went to Amazon reviews to see what people wrote and as I was going through it I realized the book was published by Scholastic Books bingo I all of a sudden remembered I have a former student she went to McCormick she went to central who was with publication distribution is Scholastic I got ahold of Nikki much I said Nikki talked to me talk to me about this because we're having a little bit of controversy about it and so Nikki wrote me and
044I'm going to just take a couple minutes summing up and I wouldn't apply I wouldn't be bringing this up except that this is a Cheyenne person this is an individual who went to school here in Cheyenne understand Cheyenne and treasurers the education you got in Cheyenne and so in part she wrote there appears to be an effort to shame lbgtq children the message seems clear to me it tells straight kids that be an LGBTQ is naughty nasty and not okay yet does anyone consider the fact that when LBGT LGBTQ kids see themselves in books they grow as humans and gained the confidence to be themselves when straight kids read about LGBTQ kids they see their friends relatives and the world around them as open full and beautiful Nikki finished with this my passion and career
045in books was founded by being allowed to read whatever I liked and teachers like you fostering critical thinking skills to examine everything I took in that's how you build humans and I was going to read this last week except I didn't think it needed to be read after all that testimony but I wanted to share this because again as I noted this is a Cheyenne student and she's working for a Maybrick major publication and she's been in the so to speak the weeds with this so thank you very much madam chair Oh so um thank you madam chair I had the opportunity to attend two schools that mr. Wagle set up for me and representatives who Wilson from the legislature later to go into her and that was a really good experience it's it's really
046nice when we can partner with the legislature and to help them to see our struggles it's one thing for us to have meetings and to tell them what our struggles are but it really is another thing to actually see it in in real life and so it was very great that we got to do that we went to two schools we first went to Alta Vista and then we went to HAARP which are two very different schools but they have their own challenges and their own needs and some of the takeaways that I took from that one of the some things that we really looked at and she was able to really process and look at we talked about early childhood education the program at ARP has a great need with those families out there
047those kiddos are not coming to school even ready to be sitting in a classroom of kindergarteners so they have done some really creative things and they have an early childhood program they need more they need a lot more in there talking also about some different levels of what they can do as well we talked about buildings we looked at the buildings we looked at their sizes we looked in a closet at our elementary school that used to be a closet probably had brooms and pails and buckets it's being used for a reading intervention classroom it's a closet there's no windows but it's really small that's what the legislature needs to see when we're talking about our our issues we talked a lot about behaviors and kiddos and we've talked a lot as a board kids
048we have to treat the whole kid and kids are coming to school with behaviors and we have to address those and we have because we can't get them to learn if we can't get those behaviors addressed kids are in homes where there's domestic violence and they're watching mom get beat up the night before I'm not ready to read to learn the next day we have to address those behaviors we talked about safety and we talked about the new things that we're doing for safety we talked about modular sport our elementary school has a lot of modulars they're doing a great job but we were in one of the classrooms and it was so tight we walked in the door and it was just desks it was just desks and there was a very small area
049where we stood those are concerns we can get kids in there we can we can house them with desks but is that the best learning environment when you're so crowded so we did a lot of things we observed classrooms we walked the hallways we watched kids eat lunch we we talked to people that were in the building it was a great experience and I would hope that maybe as we move further we can have more of our legislators do those kinds of things so I was really proud that mr. waggle set that up so thank you very much thank you and and I'm just to append on to what others have said about the book reconsideration meeting again kudos to the people who set it up and they made sure we all knew what the
050policy was and in how their consideration had to adhere to our district policy so I have praised our district policy I guess it's been a while since I'd read it and it's a very thoughtful in valuing of diversity but also critical reading and critical judgment of what we try to teach our students but again talking about the the the tenor and the group of Kania was a full group and you know that is civic participation at its most fundamental she was come and express your view there were a range of views it wasn't by any means unanimous but there was in that diversity of opinion was respect for the other there was no one getting personal everyone spoke to the to the issue and and you know as an example of respectful discourse in public
051it was just it was a perfectly perfect example of how it should be done and and then finally to the comment that at the end of the day the discussion and the decision in our policy and very proud that it underscores deference to a parent to decide when their children are ready for certain level of subjects or shouldn't or they don't want you to read them at all and some you know that are there reflect different ways of teaching their kids so the district tries to respect that and defer to it whenever possible and I just underscored that and just to assure the public if you you know communicate with your principal communicate with your teacher and let them know and if at all possible with the the district will certainly try to accommodate a
052parent of discretion so it once again the first time I had seen it because I think most of these maybe are resolved at the school level this was this was raised at the district level and our process works thank you okay so done with that session that part of our agenda so we move into reports from the superintendent dr. Brown now chairman board members I'd like to have John kondou-san president he come up they're going to give us a little report on the Olweus program and share with us how things have how things have been going over the last year and possibly a little bit longer good evening madam chair members of the board dr. Brown again I'm John cantos I'm the district health physical education is safe drug-free schools coordinator I'd like to introduce
053again mr. Chris Jimmy chris is our violence prevention coordinator through safe and drug-free schools in our district our in our local district and state Olweus expert chris is part of the national Olweus state leaders committee representing not only our district but our state as you know we brought Olweus into our district in 2012 as a systemic approach to bullying prevention training all and I repeat all district staff including new staff substitute teachers and student teachers yearly and we continue to do so as part of the program we administer the Olweus bullying questionnaire to our three through eighth grade students every year in October please remember that that questionnaire is student based with responses by students we have seen yearly declines in student reported bullying incidents and as always we that work to do but our
054data shows that we continue to head in the right direction at this time I'm going to turn it over to mr. Jimmy to share results with you good evening as we go through this I just wanted to start off and just point out the strategic plan and that we are applying these programs in all of our schools to begin with I just wanted to show you overall where we are we began the program in 2012 across the entire school district as you can see the blue line is the national average for bullying and the red line is our district for that national number that is representative of over 250,000 students across the nation so pretty accurate as you can see we continue to head down and as Minister cantos talked about this is students report
055of being bullied two to three times or more in a month period so that's a student that says it happens to me every day up to a kid that says it happens two to three times in a month we further wanted to break it down and show you trends within the different age groups our elementary we have seen a little bit of an increase but we are addressing that at a building by building level and I'll talk a little bit later about what we are doing to help those individuals for our junior High's and our sixth grade we have seen a lot of good work I wanted to recognize mr. Cox mr. Nissen and dr. Conroy their staffs have done amazing work they should be commended for this specifically for our junior High's from the
056beginning of implementation of this program to today there has never been a junior high that has been even close to the national average they have remained below it significantly so I wanted to share that they're doing amazing work out there we are having some schools that are not experiencing the same decreases and what we do within my committee we have several nationally certified Olweus trainers we meet monthly to discuss each of our schools that we are specifically tasked with being consultants for them and addressing any needs that they have we try to stay in contact with them at least once a month to see what we can do to help them several things that we put in place for those schools that have been struggling for more than a year we offer any sort of
057retraining refresher trainings that those staffs may need we also talk to them about the importance of making sure that that weekly community meeting occurs in their classrooms that's where the teacher takes time out of the day to talk about social-emotional skills with second step they also talk about bullying prevention with little bias and just have a time where they can sit down and talk with the kids and ask them specifically how is school going are they facing any struggles and as an adult how can I help you overcome that and learn how to deal with it we also talked with each of the buildings has a Coordinating Committee we meet with that chairperson two to three times a year to get them updated on any developments nationally with Ulvaeus but also any developments within the
058school district and brainstorm different ways of helping the schools and the teachers also I as mr. canto stated I'm the state leader for Olweus and I talked with the national directors of Olweus three to four times a year with other state leaders and also attend conferences where we sit down and we talk about what's going on nationally and what we can do to address it state-by-state at this time if you have any questions we're more than happy to answer I'll probably tell mr. cantos ah Stan's room so any questions yes thank you for your presentation and giving us this update I was just curious I noticed that the junior High's were down below 10% this year and I I also would like to join you in commending our principals for for that good work many
059of you have heard me talk about cell phones and their impact on our students and also on bullying and I was curious if you knew bullying was down in all three of our junior High's because I know they have implemented more stringent rules about having your cell phone out during the school time madam chair miss Clawson yes all of our schools at the junior high level heavy either remained where they're at with a decline so statistically plus or minus 1% but they are down on the 1% or they have gone farther down than that we have not seen any of them increase this year do you know if that's related to all types of bullying or if it's had any impact on cyberbullying are you able to just see which the between the between the
060different ways of both people will bully the various forms that bullying take the major forms are rumors exclusions and verbal forms that are person-to-person according to our students cyber bullying only accounts for about 5 to 6 percent of overall but we do have the ability to break down school by school I can get you that information I just don't have it with me today but yes we can break that down and see specific interventions if they're working ok Thank You Barriss well that's you I have a couple questions first one is how are the plans coming forward the changes we're gonna make in the middle school program for next year we were even told as a board that you were going to provide more support for the teachers that are doing that can you talk
061a little bit about that I would actually invite dr. Newton you may have pulled the bunny out of the Hat a little soon but he's got the information for you madam chair mr. Bullen the next mid-level report which will be in March we will show you the package that we're putting together to compile all the resources that teachers lab at their disposal to make sure that that Advisory period is research resource rich for all of our teachers so that we'll be ready for you to view at my next presentation in March thank you my second question is since you were comparing our district to the National question do you give the same survey is that same survey given same theory given here is nationally so you can compare the two yes it is the exact
062same just thank you madam chair just one brief comment I you know thinking from the perspective of the public you know this is the kind of good news that I think the public really needs to know about our school districts these are the kinds of things that parents are concerned about when they send their children to school is my child gonna be bullied and what does the school district doing about it well and I think the school district is doing some really great things so I'm really you know I compliment you and all the staff that are involved in this process it's obviously working and I think it's a real compliment to our school district that we take bullying seriously and we don't tolerate it and the numbers are continuing to go down and if
063it's down relative to national numbers I think we're in a place where we want to be obviously it's not perfect and we like it to be lower you know I share miss Claussen's concerns about some of the cyber bullying issues and cell phone social media kinds of things that our kids are exposed to every day but certainly from this board remember compliments to you all and all the hard work you do so thank you thank you thank you he's really mine somewhere along the same way I just want to thank you you came um Chris at the very early when we started with the obvious program and John to Parent Advisory and we got everything kicked off and the district has come a long ways in that since that 2012 and I know that being
064an ombudsman is not always the easiest job at all like maybe never an easy job but you do a great job and I want to thank both of you for working so hard to help our kids and and educate our parents as well as our community in how we can all be better and treat each other with respect and kindness so thank you very much thank you thank you and I had one quick question have you found a shifting over the past few years of the kinds of bullying is no more one than another it hasn't changed have you seen that shift madam chair the three highest have always remained the highest you'll see shifts within the other forms but never have they gotten to the levels of verbal rumors and exclusion those have always
065remained the highest okay and there is an attempt to usually deal with those however you resolve it on a school level correct yes okay thank you very much I remember the year when I think other surveys got chewed up in the mail or something that was that was an unfortunate analog now that we're digital I'm thinking where everything secure yes for any members to the board that don't know about that instant if you saw in our slides 2016 was omitted we were using paper pencil at the time and somewhere around Denver about half of the surveys disappeared we've no idea where they went so we can't use that data that year because some of the schools got intermingled very good well thank you very much thank you I'm sure next I'd like to ask Mary
066Drummond come up that she's going to talk a little bit about a 45-day review for some of our French language materials Madame chair dr. Brown members of the board our French teachers are currently reviewing four series of textbooks for new textbook series and curriculum work they are on their 45-day review period right now through March and and the public has 45 days to look at them yes they've been out for two weeks okay and there's a there's a format at the site to write down comments Chris thank you very much madam chair next I would like to Nicole George and Laura Fowler come up they are our new parent engagement and educational partnerships with schools folks around here we call them peeps they're right next door and they've done a great job of kicking the
067this off this year for us and starting to organize things trying to do a lot of things with a lot of different people out there so I'll kick it over to them thank you dr. Brown madam chair and the school board thank you so much for having us today we've been so excited to go and present to the board but we've been waiting to have some stories and some examples to share so tonight we have that for you we prepared a PowerPoint I am Laura Fowler so parent engagement educational and basically our job is to build capacity in parents making assisting them in supporting their students in whatever capacity that they need and we and I'm not gonna read this off to you but the benefits are huge in terms of supporting our parents and
068we know that the the most influential teachers of our kids are the parents and that family engagement and parent involvement it's really not an option in public schools it it's there and the benefits are huge and so how can we do it and how did we do it how do we do it well in terms of supporting our families we have done a lot of research and of course there are a lot of barriers with many of our families we have learned thus far that one barrier sometimes leads to another barrier and it's there's been a few issues with this so along with this I'll tell actually I think you're gonna tell the story here sorry well just you know when we meet with families the situations are so varied and and no one situation
069is alike and we might deal with a family that you know struggling with finding a job but they have no transportation they live and I'm speaking of a specific family and a hotel they're paying $350 a week and so they're kind of stuck there and so you know tying in with like our homeless coordinator as well as supporting them with our you know capabilities you know checking in with them helping them fill out paperwork making sure that they're connected to food resources that they have access to and the you know they live in this hotel on the second floor with a student that has physical needs and so how do we move them from point A to B then they've been there for four or five months but but helping this family get to a
070place where they're they're gonna be more productive and they're gonna help you keep their kid more successful and keep their child in the same school so we've been working with the school as well as with this family they haven't even have been able to we actually connected them to needs to get them some food support and they haven't even been able to transport themselves to mean so we did hit them bust but it's pretty hard to carry two big boxes of food back to your hotel room and up the stairs so Nicole and I have taken their food to them for the last several months we've realized I'm in this job that we can't transport people but we can transport things to people so we've been doing some of that and through this partnership with
071the family they're working on their you know they're working on saving up money for a vehicle and saving up for you know putting a down payment on on a rental so they have deposit money so they're working on there and while we support them one of our biggest stories was a couple months ago we got a phone call from and most of our referrals are coming from of course staff or principals or counselors support staff we got a phone call from one of our counselors on secondary that said hey you need to check in with this family their water is not working at their house so we called the family called naath and we said hey can we meet you and she said yes I'm glad to meet you and talk about this but I
072have no transportation so we asked her where she lived and we agreed to meet at a donut shop so we had scheduled that and we the morning of our meeting was much like today and we knew that she wasn't we knew where she lived and we didn't want her to walk that far so we reached out to one of our local elementary schools and the principal was phenomenal let us come in to the building and found a safe space for us to meet with this mom and we sat down with her to talk about her lack of water and we were kind of processing it was really one day after another really she needed her wyoming ID so she could get a job and she didn't have her ID but in order to get her
073ID she had to get a paper notarized saying that she was who she was so we started all these processes then in order to get that paper saying who she was notarized then it had to go to vital records to get her birth certificate then to vital records also which was $20 by the way and then a divorce certificate because she had a name change also $20 and then from there to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get a ID so she could get a job so we went through some steps to schedule this needless today to say she didn't show up because she didn't have transportation and we can't transport her so we've tried a couple times we ended up taking her a bike so we're hoping that she's using that maybe not today
074but when we sat at the table and we you know just bottom line which is processing about water and this ID and we just said what do you need and she pulled this paper out of her pocket so we thought it was powerful to put here she needs food she needed food that they can cook with no running water paper plates plastic silverware with what she needed for the holidays so of course we put up them Maslow's hierarchy of basic needs because this is survival mode and a lot of our families are functioning in the orange and red they need food and water and shelter they need to feel safe and so when we work with some of our individual families we're working with them in that area because we know that students when they
075feel successful they're moving up that and they're gonna have higher test scores and better grades and better attendance and in the same goes with our family when you look at this this is how our families are moving up and so if we can make them feel secure with the school setting and educate them on what our you know how we function and and help support them then they will to be able to move up that and help support their kids because it is the trickle down intact which leads us to the next side of why some of our families stay away from schools I think of that mom in particular and when I was a music teacher prior to this position at Cole elementary for many many years and I happen to have this parent
076as one of my families and how does she feel welcome in school when she can't even function at home and so I've been thinking about a lot of the families I had over the years and just that fear of coming to school and being involved in your own child's education and a lot of our even middle class our and and educators are afraid to go into their own buildings and so we've been kind of looking at what that what that's like and why how is it like that so we're having some next discussions about you know family involvement with their children's education so when we hit the ground running in August we focused on three main goals and that was parent education resource locating and then partnering with schools and community resources and that's what
077we've really focused on the past five months so in terms of parent education we did a six-week one night a week love and logic class in the fall where we provided childcare and meals we did that up in the training center we are currently holding a six week tomorrow night will be the third of the six week session and we're having it here in the boardroom we're doing it on Tuesday nights with childcare over in the art room our office by the way is next door in 151 scene and and then we're gonna run a spring parent love and logic parenting class as well we did a breakout class at bags Elementary which was awesome during noon a noon hour we did it on a Tuesday and Thursday for three weeks in the fall and
078we're not opposed to looking at doing more of that it's just been a blast for parents we have had attendance that's off the charts we had to cap it because we hey we can't hold them be we can't feed that many and mostly see the childcare it's an arm and we've hired some some paraprofessionals that I used to work with and they're doing a great job with the kiddos but it is it's it's opposed a few challenges but we like to provide that for the appearance at the end of the day you know to go home and cook first it's too hard and then dragged yourself back to a class so we've got it all here food child care and great attendance this last pass we showed a picture of it that we took last
079week huge attendance it's just been outstanding discussions so we're going to continue love and logic we're also doing some some one-time education classes partnered with safe and drug-free schools Chris simony and Lori Latchford and triumph high school and South High School and Johnson junior high so thank you principals for helping with all that we partnered last week and we did a big presentation with the dua and talking about java wareness and the kids and that was for parents and we had some professionals in the community that are tended that as well we'd like to do more of those and we'd like to maybe provide workshops for parents with children that are on ie PS how to navigate their IEP some things of that nature maybe some workshops on financing those sorts of things as we
080keep going so the second role that we have is just connecting families to resources and one of those we have a Welcome Center next door with an amazing amount of resources we have in our community so we have fliers when we have we have people stop in sometimes that want to find out about sports is it well we might be talking afterwards because you know we always tap into what is available in our community and how can we filter our families there for whatever need they want and that is a lot of times one of the areas is what what sports activities are available but also helping families fill out paperwork and not to do it for them but you know building that capacity and you know bringing the paperwork what does that look like
081what do they need to bring to the table so that they're prepared do they need assistance with that we do have computers in our office so that you know they can come in we have Wi-Fi they need to take time to fill it out if they need help we can plug in with them that is one of the biggest things we do is just help organize families like like Laura said you know people will come in and and we have our own ideas of what their needs are but then they'll say you know no this is but my need is and so identifying that with them listening to them what they need and then and then providing that that assistance to them and a big thing too is just knowing who to call you know
082will have families in our office and at that split moment you know it's like we had a mom who said I'm struggling with social anxiety and I need to get this but I haven't done it because I'm afraid to do so like I just can't move forward so helping them do that process maybe making a call with them and setting up that appointment making sure that their probably not but the big thing we do is we follow up with our families and hey how's it going where are you at what do you need from us what can we do to support you and so that's a big thing on paperwork it we just had somebody in today we meets the developmental disability waiver for their their child and just who do they who do they
083contact and what does that look like it's a huge process and it can be overwhelming so just reassuring them that were there to support them in conjunction with that too we are we are really striving to communicate back to our school family as well so we have a really great chain of if somebody refers a family to us after we work with the family to let them know what's going on with the child too so you have that continuity piece in the school as well so that you don't have to read through all of this this is just kind of a quick summary of what we've been doing and then we have hit the community hard in terms of meeting people knowing who to talk to what it is available and what might be best
084for our parents when they come in we tie into the Laramie County County Community Partnership team meetings which have been amazing we go to the healthy one I you know that you've attended one that I visited with us and and then access to care mental health is a huge concern in our community and so just talking to people having a pulse on what's going on so how we know how to better support our families what are those needs and how can we maybe direct our services to meet those needs you know our hope is after this year we met with about a hundred and love and logic and help support them with some parent education when you look at individual family engagement the specific families we work with um you know we get a lot
085from south triad but then you know we're slowly building up our client helped part of the dis marketing letting people know we are and we're out there we're here to support and then just utilizing our in-house resources we have amazing in-house resources so if we have a homeless family we get a role Denise right even if we have a family we have a lot of parents looking for jobs so we'll get a hold of Lindsay with work force and just see what's out there this is an area that they need and so we have really good services in-house this is kind of to date what we have determined based on the families that we've worked with kind of the priority and I'll share a story regarding this we we also got a phone call from
086a counselor regarding a student secondary school who the counselor said I really think their family could just use some support with food so we called the mom and there was a language barrier and neither one of us speak another language so we tried and kind of couldn't communicate on the phone we eventually had to use the language link to translate and that's not a fun process but it kind of works so we got the mom in to our office and then we got a human body that could translate for us and there were a lot of things the mom it had a stroke the dad had gotten hurt on a construction job and they just could not navigate the system of the Department of Family Services and getting medical help and food and so we
087said okay listen okay she was at least driving so we actually met her over at the Department of Family Services helped her fill out the paperwork and we said do you know where it needs is no she had no ideas follow us so she followed us and we've made big connections that needs and walked in and we said what can we do to get this family some food well indeed since you've ever been in there and asked their amazing so Nicole helped fill out the paperwork so that she could get qualified and I went in the back and they ended up getting two huge boxes of food and we took him out on the side of the street the woman just absolutely melted for the fact that she was getting all this food she had
088no idea that this was gonna happen she was standing there sobbing on the street and couldn't lift him because of her stroke and Nicole and I are like okay waitress let's go we gotta get get your food in the car so you can get it home and put it in the freezer and feed your family and since then we have followed up with her every week we call her we're at the point where we can understand her now on the phone and she can understand she's so excited when we call and just to check in make sure she's getting what she needs until they can get their family back on their feet again so one thing after another it could be just as simple as food and no one situation is more important than the
089other that is when we look at our data that's kind of the high Mead was mental health and it's gonna trickle down from there but a lot of those are overlap as well we we our positions are funded by the title for funding they are not administrators this was a parallel shift for us in terms of our salary we have learned as we've navigated the community and we know what resources are out there we're also aware of what's not out there and so we set up through dr. Newton and our financial friend Jed Ciccarelli we set up a discretionary fund so then we've been sending out letters Taco John's actually just gave us a thousand dollars and element' Church gave us a thousand dollars for our discretionary funds so that we can have some funds
090available for those last-minute things that we can't access our community one night we got a phone call at 4:30 on Friday and we both happened to be here and there a gal was getting evicted from her apartment and she had no place to go she was threatening to sleep under the bed bridge with her child and so we made a million phone calls and we couldn't find a place for her to go and so eventually through all the connections of the community and former students we went hotel shopping and I have a bunch of Hotel vouchers now for emergency situations but we wanted that discretionary fund also for our friend who if we can get her ID which we're still bound and determined to do you know we might have to help her pay for
091the birth certificate and help her pay for the divorce certificate just so we can get her through those steps so that's what that discretionary fund is designed for for those hard things like a floor heater or somebody because you don't have or bike tires for the bike that we had donated and then the Peep Center were right next door you know we go meet as we shared we'll go to wherever is most comfortable for the families ideally they come to our office if they have transportation because it is a comfortable setting we have a kids section so a lot of times kids will play and we can visit will bring people in you know we're working with families of violence and so we'll bring in domestic violence advocates and to support them and so they
092can have those conversations in a safe quiet place we've had group meetings we've have people you know a shared space for like you know all kinds of different community partnerships that we've made and so it's it's been nice and you all are very welcome to stop in whenever you want so just call before that sometimes we're on visiting days but we forgot our fliers we would like to thank dr. Newton and the board of trustees for having these positions and this family engagement come to fruition because this is amazing we're doing big P good things for people and it's it's just a great program for our district we see nothing but but growth in this program is your day any questions please miss we respond well don't a question I just what a wonderful program
093I mean I bet the school social workers just love to have you ladies around because you really function as an extension of their role as well you know I appreciate that as a school social worker out there be left part until this year and you know I had always worked with the kids and I always wanted to get my hands on the parents reports and you know there's not enough time in the day sometimes to do it all and so you know is easy to give them a number and say hey you know this might this might help you but now we can make sure and see it through thank you um do we have and I'm sorry having done my homework do we have a link on our school district website for ps3 and
094all of your again Meadows you're not going run yeah he's ready yes we do we have a if you go into the parents and students tab and scroll down you'll find peeps you can't visit and then you open up peeps and it's informational about us we have a flier as well in business cards but that's kind of the synopsis on there and I think our contact information is on there as well very good I should have known they'd be on it thank you yeah we were on that question I I also want to come in the work that you're doing it's it's very valuable in our district to him we have lots of families in need from what you said and what I've observed and conversations I've been privy to so thank you for your
095enthusiasm and your hard work my one question is are you finding that that families are willing I mean I you did give some examples and they were pretty one this is what I need what are you finding that to be that they're cooperating or that they are able to articulate what they most need are you having some success in I know you've had success you shared those tonight but is that your typical engagement with families that are at so madam chair and mrs. class and I'll I'll address that we did share the big stories tonight we do have a lot of other stories and files that we're keeping on them of those parents that we just continue to call because we won't give up and so some are struggling some it's hard for them to
096either come in or make that commitment to say I need help and and we're pretty persistent and I mean we're pretty mellow about it we both come at we're both moms we don't want to be blocked on its own bone but you know we are I think you're also asking us you don't win when we get referrals and we reach out to them are they are they open to that and and we found that yeah they are and then sometimes it's hard to get them through the door and that's where that persistence is really important to hey we're here to support you let us know and then we wait maybe a week sometimes we'll wait a couple weeks but then families in Mother's times four will have families that you know that they don't they
097don't want that support and then that way we kind of work through the schools sometimes will show up at IEP meetings if we're invited sometimes just seeing a face to the name makes it a little more comfortable like these aren't the scary women like I can visit with them and so we just tried different approaches to reach some of the parents that we get calls on also we've realized it's more effective if the counselor is referring if the counselor asks the family if it's okay for us to call them as opposed to them calling us because it might not get done so we make the phone call and we've done some hospices it's done plenty of house visits we're not afraid to go out oh I just um I you guys get in front of
098us I'm just always jazzed I you know some people would say that education or schools there's only about educating people and it's not it's it's it's about treating families as holistic as we can and you guys are doing a great job I have to command you I was in the Department of Family Services today in the director's office and your pamphlets were right there so you guys are making you are making connections you are your where you need to be my question for you are there's only two of you this is a big district with a lot of children in it do you do see the future that you would need more support like more staff it builds not only our families but our students rates and their attendance and all the things we want
099graduation rates it affects all those areas and so right now we're gonna Center you know we're not a community school like you see in some districts we're a center and so you know right now we're full every day you know we're making calls we're connecting people were gonna do it it'll be interesting to see where this goes and kind of what we've been talking about is what is the the holistic picture what how are we going to systematically systemically may change in our districts so that that we are reaching all our families and and you know it's commit to way communication and it's engagement empowerment and and how do we build that in all of our schools you know right now we're doing the work with the three main goals but what will it look
100like in the future you know we would love to hear your input thank you thank you thank you mr. breem madam chair thank you my question might directed you Nicole because you've been a social worker your program is wonderful as I'm listening to it while while but I keep running back to me to me that the big question is going on and I'm sorry it's a political question this country but how many of your parents are afraid to come forward for fear of customs Border Protection and ice do we have people who are denying themselves the opportunity because they're fearful that you guys are seen as the government and they're going to get turned in that's a good question we've had a few families of protests that are tops to this top hit and we
101get some things we need to be very cognizant of there are families that like our spanish-speaking family that we work with we'll take some of the food that she has and share it with other people because she doesn't want to expose herself yes I want to go to the school she doesn't want to go to agencies and so I think that's a very real concern in my experience it was a concern in some of the schools I worked with in so I really can't answer that except it's an awareness that we need to you know there are those families and as we move forward we one of our families early on was undocumented and he was at his wits end and we had to tell him as middle-class white women that you're safe with us
102it's okay and just to get him help for his kids at that time so we did some homework and research on what's available in our city to to protect and it's it's that was one true case and then this is this other case like Nicole said she is documented but she does take some of her food to help some of the undocumented people so we we are very aware of it and we are learning as we go how to address that just follow-up Betty's here you don't have individuals from homeland security or border patrol checking in with you asking you questions about clientele no okay thank you nationwide it is something or it's an assurance that we that you can give to your potential clients yes yes that's like make one comment I appreciate that
103you said you slid across from your own position in the district I think that's fantastic that we hired people who are already in the district so I'm sure that helped you hit the ground running do you already had connections made so I appreciate the fact that we hired people from the district I also appreciate dr. Brennan scheduling this because I saw the sign up there sometime in the last few weeks and whatever that was so thank you thank you and we appreciate as you say when you help the parents you help the child so appreciate all you're doing for our students so thank you thank you thank you very much madam chair next I'd like to give a little update on our action plan we've been doing quite a few things that we've updated you
104a few different times but wanted to give you one more update one of the things and I think in January we had both Patti and Justin come and talk a little bit about implementing the networks of support mrs. dr. Conroy is very familiar with the program that he's used it to be successful in other schools that he's been in so I was going to ask Justin to come forward and talk a little bit about how he plans to implement that program that it would be easier for you to start and so one of the things I'm asked is Patti to give you a little update on what she's been doing and everything that she's been doing so I think she's put together a little PowerPoint and I didn't go in order so Patti you can
105go first no worries and just to explain so Patti Prentiss is our district diversity coordinator facilitator sorry about that that's all I got Justin dr. Conroy is the principal Democratic do you mind yes so first thing I want to share with you Dei diversity equity and inclusion which is what I'm calling my office the work that I do I'll be presenting these roles to the cultural diversity advisory panel on Tuesday next week so these are draft goals but I thought I would share them with you I also will send you this PowerPoint so that you haven't so you can see they're the biggest part of my job is to facilitate a word with adults in our system next you can see creating the safe and inclusive climate establishing the cultural diversity advisory panel which we
106have and have been in operation since September and the biggest one for me is empowering all all of us to act against any form of intolerance bigotry and or discrimination I shared with you at the last update that I have was that I have met with community members as well as staff and so I had 62 one-on-one interviews with staff and community this just gives you an idea this is just a world and it's in response to this is in response to the question of what do you hope from my role that was a question that I asked the 62 people that I met with what did they vote for my role this is just a Wordle on what I've heard from people and so you can see the largest words diversity so that that
107was like a big one well we expect you to teach us to give us some awareness you can see awareness in here communication was a big one you know we want to be communicated with want to know what's happening people support understand the differences open minds just gives you an idea of why I heard from this two people that I talk to then I'm gonna have dr. Conroy talk about updates Corner good evening miss peretta said ask me and dr. Brown and ask we just provided a little update since our last discussion we have a few weeks ago that's at our last board meeting I mean I presented networks of support and the peer-to-peer mentoring program that I'd be implementing at McCormick Junior High School well since then we've been busy going out to the
108elementary the sixth grade and visiting with them not only about the middle school concept the philosophy and the transition piece but also discussing the word of networks of support our peer to peer mentoring as today one students at OU students working with students I said hey I like it that's exactly what that's exactly what we're doing so we're very busy going after those Elementary's like I had stated last week we had our back meeting on Thursday where I shared information as it pertained to networks of support and that evening as well we had a 7th grade information night to discuss not only again networks of support but the middle school concept and the transition into a middle school philosophy and so on so we met with the pack with metal seventh-grade parents and students and
109again we're meeting with those sixth graders as well it's a continued process as we implement this program as I stated before there will be training that will take place on February 24th and 25th we will have a faculty staff training on those two days and so very positive I'm feeling really good about it I have a faculty meeting this week so I'll be providing more information on there as well other parts of the action plan myself along with miss prentace we met with the lead wig wig I'm sorry I always forget the second see in there but we are we did meet with Rick a couple of weeks ago on January 21st and I reviewed the networks of support with them I had a good conversation with them with with the organization and stated just
110the overall the need for the program but the benefits to the program in that of this Student Center and it's sustainable as well so very similar to the information that I shared with you last time as far as Olweus myself and miss readers mr. out we are continuously going into our base class our classrooms storing tutorial on we are observing obey assessing plans and the lessons in place like what I'm another piece that we're implementing is the principal advisor II counsel which I stated at one time and we are just now finalizing that we are in so this February 25th 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. correct questions for them I've got a few more things that I wanted to talk about but and I'll let you guys stay up there it may ask me questions that
111you still have more so just a few so these are the district-wide action plans I went back through the May 23rd action plan to really make sure and update on all the parts of it this wasn't one of them but I haven't been there I just wanted you to know what the diversity training we would like to extend a memorandum of understanding with react through the twenty twenty twenty-one school year so I've talked to dr. Brown about that but I wanted for trustees to be aware of that we are implementing a trainer of trainers model which I believe I've shared with you and that will be what four twelve to fifteen trainers from within our district that we will be trained through we act so that we can start providing our own facilitation mentoring for
112all new employees classified and certified every year collaboration continues between old base and title nine that was in the action plan discipline matrix has been reviewed I'm on that committee one of the updates is that we have made a decision to add hate language as part as a form of discrimination and that is in there now in our discipline matrix it was not in there before I believe it reads with abusive language or hate language because they are different I also just wanted to share with you what training looks like as it's coming up March we have training we act we'll be here with them for our secondary secretaries and pepper Jim you can see who we have August we've got training coming up October of next fall we will be on our own and
113so you can see where I have district trainers we will be training our own staff starting in October I also wanted to share with you committee work that I am doing I collaborate with the peeps on a weekly basis we we do see some crossover in our work and so we spent once a week we have an update meeting on what are they doing what am i doing how can we collaborate with parents so looking forward to that counselors quarterly I attend those meetings the cultural diversity advisory panel we meet monthly second Tuesday of every month discipline matrix committee I am on that monthly instructional Leadership Council of a headscarf supervision just I just wanted you to have an idea of where I'm spending some of my time dr. Brown okay perfect thank you a
114couple of other areas that I want to give you an update on district-wide we talked about making sure that all of our administrators were using the McGrath method of Investigation and documentation so we did have a training for all of our new administrators and read in a refresher course for all of our returning administrators in October that went really well we are as we are checking that they are following that the McGrath training as supervisors of principals going in and asking them to show us where they've gone through the process once or twice so we're working with them on that let's see I'm not going to hit on anything that Patti talked about our student clubs and policies may be sure that we are having those outside of school and following our own policy we
115met frequently dr. Kenny has had it on the Activities Council agenda they talked about it just in January asked about how while it's going with moving those to the appropriate areas it seems like we've not had a whole lot of problems or a few people that would have liked to stay within the school day but did not reviewing and updating regularly on the implementation of the action plan this is probably the sixth time that we've talked about it August 5th we gave you a full review September 16th we talked quite a bit about Patty's position November 4th you had a small update December 16th I think patty gave us another update January 13th we had an update on the networks of support and then tonight as well working with you as far as working with
116the community on January 9th patty and I both met with the Wyoming independent Citizens Coalition we did answer some questions about the action plan we were informed that some of the people we've asked to serve on some of our committees are no longer on their committee so we did ask mr. Steve Latham who was part of the cultural part of the Wyoming independent Citizens Coalition if he would be on the cultural diversity advisory panel and he agreed to do that so we do have a member of their committee on there and then I know that our Wyoming equality summit is preparing to meet and prepare for next fall's summon so again we're continuing to work and move forward with all of those areas that we would take questions okay thank you for your presentation and
117keeping us updated you mentioned that you're going to be coming to us I believe I asked for an extension on their train okay that's clarified so we're doing some of that training for you okay and you mentioned that you've added to our district policy language I believe that's defined abusive language or hate language was added and boy I ask you a lot of questions about this area but you can go any direction with that kind of broad scope and so I was wondering not how who is going to decide what constitutes abusive language or hate language is there this is part of your discussion with the adversity panel you know can you give me more information on that in their buildings there's an elementary matrix as well as a secondary matrix my advice are there's
118three matrix can somebody help me but do you believe there are three and so each matrix outlines four schools what the infraction is what are potential the range of consequences so that we can try to be as consistent as we and on most schools and so we added that we already had abusive language as a misbehavior and at our last meeting I really asked for us and part of our action plan from the community was to have some something in there that addressed discriminatory language racism bigotry and so I I asked for the hate language and so yeah we had a very rigorous conversation with the discipline matrix committee there are elementary principles on it jr. my principles as well as high school and so we will be doing an update with all principals so
119we can talk about what's abusive language talk to us because we would hear from them what does hate language me and then we would have that conversation so that we all get rounded to follow up on that I'm curious and I don't know the answer I'm not leading you anywhere I'm curious if there is definitions for those terms especially hate language like legal definitions do you know anything about that I don't know if there were legal definitions but I do think one of the conversations we had at the last meeting was we need to be clear about what we need I hate language and so we will be defining that with our group so that we can share with principals so that we're all on the same page yeah I appreciate that so much mr.
120Otis because you know we've talked before this is this can be a Pandora's box we don't want to hurt anyone I know that we certainly don't want people to do unsafe at school regardless of where they are coming from and some this gets into morals and values and constitutional First Amendment rights and I think that I would like to see our district be as neutral as possible in that area because good people can disagree about what constitutes their values and what they consider is is right and wrong and so I would like to see our district respect to all points of view and it sounds like you're trying to do that so thank you very much for your work what do we mean by hate language because I think the context in which the word
121is used can very much be hate and we're not going to talk yes I'll be back I guess thank you I do have two miscellaneous to work with one you guys have talked quite a bit about I also would like to thank Tiffany Rabine and dr. Kenny for the work that they did with the reconsideration committee I am here tonight to give you a little information about that and tell you where is a superintendent I'm at on that because it comes to me for final approval or whatever to tonight so there were 109 people that signed in at the reconsideration committee meeting 26 of those people completed comment cards I did not attend because I knew that if there was an appeal I was the one that was gonna have to deal with that so
122I tried not to it looks like we did a great job of following our policy and procedures for that I too would like to thank everybody that attended and everything that they talked about because my understanding was that it was very civil and it worked out really well the committee I do want to talk about the district reconsiderations committee and their recommendation they voted 7-0 unanimously to make the recommendation and their recommendation is to retain drama and all school libraries and classrooms with no restrictions for the following reasons so one was the original selection of drama was in accordance with Laramie County School District number one school board district our school board policy chapter 7 section 21 next point drama is not required reading parents and students can opt in or opt out as they
123see fit without punishment and then the last point the material that students are able to access and libraries should be diverse so as superintendent I want to inform the board that I am accepting the committee's recommendation to retain drama in all school libraries and classrooms with no restrictions so that's where I came down thank you the last thing I want to visit with you about is last week myself and John Abrams were selected by the 48th superintendents to represent them in visiting with this the school recalibration consultants dr. larry Pikus and dr. Allen Aden were here dr. Aden was working with special ed people and then dr. pikas was running those meetings and he had dr. Donald Roman who was helping him as well as myself JP Denning was selected as one of the special
124ed directors to meet with the special ed folks and Jensen rally was selected as one of the business managers to meet with dr. PICUs as well so we were well represented there but I did want to share with you the feedback that I received from the 48 superintendents of what we shared with dr. PICUs about the the upcoming recalibration number one we talked about the basket of basket of goods is increased without increasing funding or removing any requirements we talk specifically about computer science the k2 foreign language and the Elementary we talked about having and having to have it this dyslexia screener for k2 and interventions there with no funding support and testing for our English language learners where we don't have any support they're adding Native American and civics curriculum without any adding any
125money for those as well they have a good conversation with us and understood where we were coming from on that next we talked about Safe Schools and just talking about addressing facility security social-emotional learning through etiquette at the state funding the last time my cousin Aden did their recalibration they supported that we talked about trained staff such as school resource officers being a need and not being funded we had a really robust conversation about that they asked our preference as to whether we would want that funding in the school funding model or whether we would want that to go to homeland security and I think where we wound up as school people as the where it's funded was not as big an issue as having the funding and what they might do with it I
126did suggest and it gave them my personal view that if they put it under law enforcement or Homeland Security as a grant that that money would be spent in specifically for school resource officers and that a school district had to have an MoU with their local law enforcement agency to receive some of that money then it would be spent the way they wanted it so that was a personal thing that I talked to him about then we talked about social emotional and mental health needs of students and and where we're at as a state and the the needs that we see there we know that we have a lot of students that are have been raised and lived in trauma and we know that they need some help there we talked about the last time
127they were recommended their recalibration that they did talk about increasing the number of counselors and social workers and also nurses so again I think they're looking at doing that we did have a conversation about the ruralness of Wyoming and that it may not only be a school issue because some of our communities are unable to have the mental health services that they need in their communities and we may need to prop that up as well so that was a great conversation our Scott small school coalition they show that they gave me some information to pass on they did want to have the hold harmless for small school districts at 2.5% and keep that in place until its recount there's recalibration and we would like to see that put into the funding model we wanted to
128keep the small school and small district adjustments in the funding model the other thing that our small schools talked about was needing a minimum of one FTE and funding for all model categories in the basket of goods and they gave me a little pushback on that about well how come how can we need a full person at each one of those I said well I'll give you a couple of examples Sheridan three the business teacher is also the runs the nutrition services for them so there are a part-time teacher part-time Nutrition Service boss so and then they talked about the need whether we needed to have a in all of our districts whether we needed to have a full-time business official and I talked about you know again that business official is not only doing
129business in some of our smaller schools they also run the transportation department they may be either Dave Bartlett of that school district so we had a good conversation about that and then we talked about some of the cliff to cliff effects for small schools and they talked about being able to try to get those out and how they worked on that the last time they recalibrated but it was not accepted so they're very familiar with those issues I think that they were glad that we brought them up and they'll address those as they move through the recalibration process as all as well we talked to about some of the model issues we talked about adjusting model salaries to bring them up to speed and up to date with where we're at currently across what not
130only Wyoming but national averages we did talk about asking them to put all of the retirement into the model currently we have to fill out a report on a monthly basis to get reimbursed for some of the retirement that we have which it's not very efficient or effective for us we talked about increasing the number of computer technology technologists that are in the model dr. pike has said yeah probably 20 years ago we didn't have nearly the number of computers that you have and that may be an area that we need to work on we also talked about Nutrition Services is not funded in the model but almost every district supplements their nutritional services well we have a fairly robust conversation about that that currently it's about 11 million dollars across the state that is
131surplus that is that we put into the model from general funds but we also had the conversation with them that that's not all of the money that comes from the general fund because there's a lot of workers and people that are custodians are not considered nutrition services some of our clerical folks who help with making sure our kids can our all their stuff so we said that there are there are more in kind things that we do as well so that one went very well about the model issues and then we talked about some things that we supported we supported continuing the Block Grant funding we wanted we wanted to support the external cost which is the inflation adjustment in the model as recommended by statute we wanted to remove the special education funding cap
132and return to 100% reimbursement and I'll get back to talking a little bit about special ed here in a moment we wanted to talk about appropriate safety and security funding like we talked about earlier sustainable funding source for our k-12 school facilities and fully funding major maintenance which currently they don't do if you're if you do not have enough students for your building and your building is oversized even if you law students they don't fund you 100 percent one of the things that I shared with them is when when the Campbell case came down to say that schools were the facilities where the requirement of the state as well prior to that we were allowed as a local school district to levy six Mills up to six Mills to be able to take care of
133major maintenance capital facilities capital needs whatever we had there and we have not reinstituted those at the state level to help fund that when we first came out and the state was responsible we used Coley's bone bonus money to fund all of the capital facilities and that is just dried up and so now they're we're looking for different ways to fund them we didn't talk about efficiencies in statewide education system and using those trying to make it as efficient and not compromise the education of our public students we did talk a little bit about the superintendent's group and business officials who are looking at possibly using the same software for their student information system the same software for their business operation system the same software for special ed so there's some push out there to
134do that we talked about needing the regional cost adjustment that reflects the cost of providing education and Wyoming communities they were a little hesitant to talk about that because that was one of the contracts that was not approved by management council so of my my guess from the conversation that we had is that they're not going to adjust or they're not going to work much on the regional cost adjustment but we did talk about possibly updating it a little bit then we talked about the need for early childhood education and they reminded us that they in the last recalibration and they supported early childhood education and dr. pike has shared with me that we are the only state that they have built the funding formula for that does not fund early childhood education so I
135think they support us with that a little information about special ed I'm a little concerned about what they might what they're going to do here they are looking at taking a one week or two weeks snapshot where they're going to ask every one of our special ed employees to log what they're doing and what their work is my concern is is they're going to tie that back from my understanding to students names so I've got to call into the Wyoming Department of Education and we're going to have some conversation about that just because I don't I want to try to keep that as confidential as we can so we'll have some conversations about that and try to make sure that we keep that updated but I wanted to tell you that that's what the superintendent's
136shared with our recalibration consultants and I'll be happy to send that out to you if you want a copy of it I'm happy to answer any questions on them Sharon just very quickly dr. Brown we did a recalibration with two years ago or three years ago dr. Brown 2017 that was what about a half a million dollars are you a quarter to a half million dollars that the state paid Frogger and hog and lip and harden I believe that it was more than million dollars but I can't remember exactly what it was and so we're going through another recalibration and a state picking up the tab for this one yes we have any idea how much I do not believe they finalized the contract yet I think pikas are not and are still working on
137an old contract but as soon as I know that I'll let you guys know I'm only leading in with this because I'm just curious about who's going to define efficiencies when we do this every two years yeah when a PA did the recalibration in 2017 I believe the price tag was about 90 million dollars more than what our current funding model is so if you if you visit with legislators they would say that they didn't even accept that as a recalibration when is their report due to the legislature their report will be due at the last meeting of the Joint Education Committee and that is usually the end of October so that would be when they would be doing that they're getting a little bit of a jump start because they had a contract that
138was open already to do some of this work my guess is that they will not start moving forward real hard until after the legislative session so my guess would be sometime in April they will start having meetings they're gonna have professional judgment panels again again they're there they're making a large effort to try to look at where special that is and where we're at with all of that so it'll be it'll keep Jen myself and and Dave very busy this summer trying to make sure that we get to all the meetings and keep things updated with you and also with the legislature and the consultants okay thank you madam chair that that's the end of my report for tonight okay thank you and now we move to the consent agenda routine matters all agenda items
139listed with the designation of CA are considered to be routine items by the governing body and will be enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussion on these items any item removed from the consent agenda will be considered in its normal sequence on the agenda so at this point does anyone on the board want to remove an item from the consent agenda seeing none madam chair I move to prove approve all motions listed as consent agenda second for the motion all those in favor say aye no it's into gender that's been adopted moving on to new business then madam chair I move to declare Bane elementary school modular unit for building number 409 surplus and have the building demolished and removed from the districts in inventory in accordance with board policy and winding
140state statutes second through the motion any discussion seeing none all those in favor of a motion for permission to surplus modular classroom unit fort Bane say aye aye opposed no that motion passes madam chair I move to approve medical leave of absence for Sam I've astir for the remainder of 2019 2020 contract year second for the motion any discussion on that item seeing none all those in favor of the motion to approve medical leave of absence for stent investors say aye aye opposed no that motion is adopted madam chair I moved to grant permission to contract for professional services for an amount not to exceed $24,000 second for the motion any disk yeah that was missed that's 40 2014 oh yes should I say 24 today madam chair I will reread the motion I grew
141I moved to grant permission the contract for professional services for an amount not to exceed 42,000 second thank you now you've heard that motion but are there's any discussion on this particular item seeing none all those in favor of the motion for permission to contract professional services please say aye all right opposed no motion passes madam chair I moved to grant permission to contract for a printer hardware software and related services for an amount not to exceed three hundred and fifty thousand dollars second you print the motion any discussion seeing none all those in favor of permission to contract for printer hardware software and related services say aye aye opposed no motion passes madam chair I moved to grant permission to contract for information technology advisory services over a three-year period for an amount not
142to exceed a hundred and forty thousand dollars second for the motion any discussion of this item seeing none all those in favor of the motion for permission to contract for information technology advisory services say hi I know that madam chair I move to approve the purchase agreement with the city of Cheyenne for the land and building located at 610 West 7th Street also known as the neighborhood facility as a future site for the Cole elementary replacement school second for the motion any discussion seeing none all those in favor of the motion to approve purchase agreement for 610 West 7th Street say aye aye opposed no the motion is adopted madam chair I prove I move to approve a contract with construction spouses incorporated for a point of entry security accurate upgrades to East High School
143and Johnson junior high school second you've heard the motion and discussions seeing none all those in favor of the motion to approve a contract for point-of-entry security upgrades at East High School and Johnson junior high school say I host no that motion is adopted and that is the end of the new business future business the next regular board meeting will be Monday March 2nd at 6 p.m. a work session will precede it at 5:00 p.m. in the executive boardroom and this is the time a second you're opening for public comment if someone wants to address the board oh yes you have three minutes could you could you speak into the market can pick it up recording okay you garlic Vittorio I'm a resident at McCormick and also a member of the Wyoming independent citizen correlation
144that we spoke up it's the old Community Coalition that was formed in April when the hate fliers were posted at McCormick so this group has kind of morphed into this we wanted to thank dr. Brown dr. Conroy and patty for meeting with us we appreciate you taking the time also all the updates that you have done in regards to the initial concerns that were displayed on May 25th last year it was very positive to hear from dr. Conroy that they're gonna have a principal kind of Advisory Council that he's gonna meet with students and those students would be able to share concerns about the school and I think that's necessary I think having that communication line of communication is important also the committee's concerned or our priority is to have the line of communication for
145community members and parents and I think as a principal former principal getting community involvement was a hard task to do our our committee really wants to to be involved lower level so we don't have like 200 people angry about an issue that happens in this we'd like to be more proactive so I appreciate all the steps that you have done on the McCormick's action plan and signals to the three of you including Patti we appreciate that the network of support is a care to peer assistant program and we did talk to dr. Khatri about that he did a reassurance that maybe the community piece can be kind of molded in there however we were told that we can't attend the February trainings or parents can't do that because of some issues with the consultant so
146we were hoping that maybe the Western equity Education Association Center when that comes through I believe there is a piece for equity with community equity in regards to parents at schools so maybe that's a time that parents and community members can be involved in that training and Patti's that are really good about being our liaison letting us know what can and cannot happen so in terms of your concern mrs. Paulson about the hate speech hate when we defined it is let me just read this real quick so I get it right take definition of speech speech that is intended to insult offend or terminate a person because of some trait as race religion sexual orientation national origin or disabilities are our committee is made up of subgroups that are on the margins of society and
147so this definition rings true to us we understand what hate language is and how it affects us so it's not kind of a first right it's it's it's hate speech so if you're offending me because of my ethnicity or like sexual orientation then it's a sort of thing you can work out there that's it so I just kind of wanted to clarify that's kind of where we're coming from on that and I appreciated the school district bringing it up in the matrix not a policy but in the matrix so thank you and thank you thank you mama appreciate you thanks a lot Carl I appreciate it is there anyone else who wishes to address the board seeing none we will close that portion of the meeting and madam chair I move to go into executive
148session at this time prior to adjournment for the purpose of possible student long term suspension expulsion litigation and personnel second through the motion all those in favor going to the second extension say I close note we are now in Sec the accession and thank you everyone for attending