001sure [Music] like for for what e for e you hey are um she has on Tuesday she so she watches SC no I'm no kidding every eight years or so I don't know iend all day never [Music] what did he [Music] and then that way I'll be back no now we are your problem good luck good luck to you hey F he hey [Music] EX [Music] on come quick consent to gend and stuff like that can I get rid of that [Music] I do my best thank you thank you for your vote of confidence I appreciate it come here just that's right it's going to be hey BR you're still say my name right here they didn't no you're unless you're sitting at Jessica wall Jessica Arch Place how's Seth doing I told and he's
002beening for paint and today we ran out of every especially when I start was really quiet first couple times came SC you I understand he been through some stuff disability yeah M that happen real fast thanks Co thanks for giving a spot you're in control huh got too much on real okay no not much we can I guess how's your daughter doing Brian she King yeah did she have any interest in Germany before taking German classes or this has just inspired a whole she was actually teaching herself she had she just found out about this program she said D just felt like I should apply for went for it 13,000 applicants good evening everyone um we're going to call the Enda County School District number one regular board meeting to order um can I have
003everyone join me in the Pledge of Allegiance i al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all all right I need a motion to approve the agenda uh Madame chairman I move that we approve the agenda as presented for this meeting second okay we have a first and a second any discussion all in favor I motion carries okay all right I need a motion to approve the consent agenda items so chairman I move that we approve the consent agenda I we have a second okay we have a first and a second any discussion Madam chair I need to recuse myself from check number 12732 okay what was the number again 12732 all right all in
004favor any opposed it here motion carries all right next we have school and Department [Music] reports Madam Vice chair members of the board uh' like to invite looks like the alternative school come on down or come on up later good evening Madam chairman members of School Board superintendent Thomas am I close up the mic you can hear me there okay can everyone hear him out there I usually don't have a problem being hurt any place so uh I'm I'm actually read privileged I'm super excited about the idea to come and talk to you tonight about our school I know um superintendent Rick talked to me he says come on can you keep it in 10 minutes and saw and I talked to superintendent Thomas he said if you beat 25 you'll beat all the rest
005of them so we'll be 25 how's that uh what I the reason I'm so excited because I think we do some great things at our school and I'm also excited for the opportunity to tell you guys thanks and our district thanks because our little school over there to Horizon meets a a little niche need that I really think's in our district that if we don't have our school it just doesn't happen I mean that we we've got we got 47 kids enrolled right now we some we hover somewhere between that number and about 60 and I'm convinced that there's not three or four of those kids that make it through a traditional school but we're going to get most of them through ours and that's because you guys support us so thanks so much they
006asked me to talk a little bit tonight about our goals at Horizon and we're currently driven by these two guiding beliefs I'm going to read to you and then our goals and then I've asked our teachers uh a different group of them to come up and present on each on what we're doing relating to each of those things number one uh we believe uh one goal we have or I'm sorry got principle we have is that it's essential to develop a strong supportive and caring relationship with individuals and that those relationship have long longterm positive impact on all aspects of their lives as you're aware a lot of the students that end up in our school there they just don't have that and and so when we when we talked about at the beginning of
007last year and this year as lots of you know this is just my second year there we said we really think that's key if our kids build a relationship with us they have they have someone that's a point of contact for them someone that they know is unconditionally going to care about somebody know has their back and that regardless of how that turns out that it impacts I'm like okay you like me so you did well in class well maybe but the fact that I care about you has a long-term positive impact number two we we really believe that it's believe that it's essential that we PR prepare our students for success in life after they leave us and to overcome any obstacles that might limit their potential success and happiness and as I was
008talking with uh board board member Woodward you know our our some of our kids have some sign ific hurdles to overcome and so one of our one of our jobs is to come up with a unique way to prepare him for success and that that sometimes looks like school but it sometimes looks like some other stuff to the end we have two other growth goals as well uh just so you know Horizon meets or exceeds all the state accountability measures in the last year uh alternative schools have their own measures and Horizon meets or exceeds in every category but despite that we have these these goals that we have at the bottom number one uh growth for every student or or growth in every student's ability to social emotionally navigate all aspects of their lives
009so some sort of an improvement we we believe that this is the key to our students res succeeding at Horizon that they find a way to deal with their social situations that they find themselves in we all we further believe that if they if they do that that the academic side will come now we do have a second academic goal and that's AC academic growth in both reading and math by building wide by minimum of 5% in addition to where we already met the goal so to that end I'm going to turn the time over to to Denise CH and she's going to come up and talk to you about our social emotional School gos you are you going to make it up here or what he's waiting for us to play the team music
010I had to I had to do walk up yeah thank you thank you very much good evening ladies and gentlemen of the board I want to talk about um some social and emotional stuff that we do at Horizon that I just think is absolutely outstanding um that we really have started this year um so it's a baby program that I'm really excited to watch grow and develop um and it really meets a lot of both of our guiding beliefs the strong and supportive caring relationships and also preparing these uh students for outside of school and one of those is every Friday during our intervention time we have a social emotional intervention and we really focus on um this what is holding each individual student back and that can be anything um and it's very individual
011and they tend to work in groups to begin and then start breaking up into individual and so not only are they working on their own personal things that hold them back but they're also seeing that everyone including the staff have things in their life that are inhibiting success and how we can overcome that and put it aside to be as successful as we possibly can the second thing that I'm really excited that we are doing at Horizon is in our Monday morning meetings as a staff we really Target three students um every Monday and so we break up into our uh smaller PLC teams and we look at what is holding that specific student back back and then we make a game plan of what are we going to do specifically for that student this
012week to help improve that um specific need for the student and it's really cool seeing that sometimes that student just needs a friend and so a seating chart move might be the best choice and sometimes we find that a schedule change might be the best choice or an opportunity to go into um our gym and work with some of our new weightlifting um technology and uh then we meet back you know we also have a time every Monday where we pull the students that we have talked about previously and kind of update and see is our intervention working do we need to change it um what are we seeing and how can we improve and I don't know how to end this we didn't get thank you so much thank you you don't get exit
013music no hello I'm candy decoit um I teach CTE classes at Horizon and also College and Career Readiness for the seniors um I came to talk to you about the internships that we have started at Horizon and we're really pushing for this year we're trying to get every one of our seniors into an internship where they complete at least 40 hours um externally in a business it gives them the opportunity to explore something they might be interested in um it also teaches them those soft skills you know time management keep your cell phone away um show up to work on time customer service skills that kind of a thing and we've had really good success this year in fact um two of the interns that we sent out they completed their 40 hours but they're
014going to finish the whole year because they're having so much fun and the people they intern want them to stay uh one of our seniors is interning with City Drug um she's decided she loves it so much she's going to school for pharmacy tech which is great um another one works at Clark Elementary in their library and has gotten fantastic uh reviews and she decided after her 40 hours They begged her to stay on and keep coming so we've added time in their schedules if they have it sometimes we have to be a little creative with that um to have the last part of the day available that they can leave school and go to their internship for an hour and a half and with our new schedule being hour and a half classes for
015a day that's really facilitated getting that to happen because they have more time than 54 minutes to go somewhere um some of them we have another one at the hospital we have some at Rocky Mountain care um Union tank the bus barn School District's been fantastic in helping us with this too last year we had an intern with uh sh and cental kitchen so um but we really hope that this not only helps them to discover and kind of look at what they might be interested in um we had one senior go uh no no I'm not doing that I'm going to do a different one you know so um we even have one in with the hospital working in Radiology which is great so um and we keep meetings we have an inter meeting
016with them to explain what we want to do they set goals and then we have the exit meeting where they fill out um the paperwork and stuff we had another senior at y County Herold too which was great and she had tons of pictures in the paper so if you see a picture with Charisma heart that's a horizon student so um anyway it's worked great and I'm I really want to continue with this I know that the high school is working on getting something more in place in all the legalities together so that they can do more just hope we don't saturate our people in town so anyway do you have any questions from that what is the um Insurance obligations of the school district for these students who do these internships at a business
017or off campus is there self-insured they insure themselves or they're not covered as regular students are too with okay it's part of their class workor than they're covered and it's a significant policy what has been the feedback from the companies that have taken your interns so far it's been great um we have honestly had one that said don't come back um because she couldn't keep her cell phone put away right so those are skills that we're trying to you know teach them okay so you got kicked out after day three because you're sitting on your phone okay so then she's going into another one kind of a thing after discussion on why so how many seniors you said we tried we're trying to get all of them is it we're trying to get all of
018them there's a couple that a handful yeah it's really hard to because they need so much credit recovery sometimes times when they come to Horizon there's just nowhere to put it in the schedule um so we try to work with other things on that and I know the the high school and Horizon in the past have always done like senior projects and we are replacing those senior projects this year with internships because we feel it's more valuable for them for future to not just build a lamp out of an elkorn but to actually get some Hands-On practical learning in a business or a place of work yeah definitely yeah and are the students responsible for transporting themselves or if they don't have access to Transportation most of the seniors do have vehicles and they transport
019themselves and it is you know kind of they're working for free right you know so it would be great in fact one of our students the one that was at City Drug is now working with for Force services and we try to do that a lot and they're paying her so to continue her internship through the rest of the school year she will get paid and they're going to help her with her College to be a pharmacy taxist it leads into opportunities for them that they might not get if we just say Okay build me a lamp and then here's your diploma right you know it gives them those skills they need to hopefully succeed after and that's what Horizon is really focusing on making sure these kids are ready for the next chapter in
020their life and I think it could be beneficial for businesses too right to have a pipeline of people who are interested in what they do for sure well on the back with all of them we've had so far has been you know will you do this again what did you like not like they like Absolutely I'll do this again except for one right it's been great thank you awesome thank you uh good evening Casey your I do PE in health and wood shop um at Horizon and I get to talk talk about our community outreach program um kind of new this year we we we experimented a little last year um but we're really kind of digging in uh this year uh and kind of going for it so uh what is our community outreach
021program so we have uh someone's going to talk about our schedule here in a little bit we have these eight octant so we have eight sort of purposeful opportunities to have a pause and then we transition to new classes so during that pause we take a day with our kids uh and try to serve the community so we have eight of these a year um and really the idea is we just want to serve others before ourselves uh or give something to the community um from us right uh leave an artifact in the community so um we usually take a half a day in the morning uh so like 8:30 to about 11:30 is our lunch and we try to go out and do this we split up into manageable groups so uh anywhere from
022like I don't know a small group would be like six or eight and a big group would be about 15 kids um and we head out in the community and and just do whatever I'll kind of give us some examples here in a little bit um and then the second half of the day uh we try to reward ourselves all right we we did some service we did some work let's have a little bit of fun so uh I'll explain some of those examples as well so why are we doing this um I think it just goes back to our sort of guiding beliefs right like if we can connect these kids up with something bigger than themselves right expose them to the the community give them some opportunities we believe that they are going
023to start to thrive um and I think we've seen some of that payoff um if you come in to Horizon uh there's going to be pictures kind of all over in these bulletin boards of kids just sort of being themselves and enjoying life right and we can't say that about Horizon kids all the time but on these days for sure they are so um that's kind of why we're doing it uh we believe in The Human Experience uh and and we really want them to be a part of the community right I think these kids kind of feel isolated and they don't belong often times but they are right there's 50 of them every year and they're a part of this community and we want them to feel that so um examples of what we've
024done so starting last year uh we really did kind of two things and I think probably some of you saw us on our kind of our first big one schoolwide one was our community cleanup day uh we just tackled what is that street yellow cre I think it's y six Street or Yellow Creek so we broke up into groups uh we sort of targeted different parts of that we cleaned up the the streets we held signs up people were honking for us uh we also kind of did um we I don't know if we put it on Facebook we tried to get like some Community like hey if you need help get a hold of us we'll come clean up your your junk your your blight your debris uh and we did that we had
025probably about a half a dozen people reach out to us we just buzzed around with a big dump trailer and helped them out got rid of their junk so that was kind of our first school wide one and then at the end of the year uh we went out to the RAC track and we volunteered we painted their bleachers uh we pulled up all their weeds we raak up kind of at the edges of their their racetrack just to make it safe and presentable and nice again um and with 50 of us they're doing that for 2 hours you know they got 200 hours worth of service uh from us in a real quick time uh and then we got to watch them race their their their their cars so it's pretty cool for us
026too so um this year that's what this is all about here uh this is sort of our tracking device we have this hung up in the hall kind of at our most popular corner where every kid has to go by every single day about three times a day so this is very visible to them um and I I cannot take any credit for this um someone else did all the the color coding and the colors kind of match the things that we've done uh throughout the year there's been some bonus items that some of these kids that are way up here you know uh they've obviously done some of these bonus items uh and I'll talk about some of those so um where gone uh this year so uh first one we did um we
027sent a group down to Rocky Mountain care um they actually just walked down there it was real nice in the fall uh and they they helped out with the uh the elderly I think they played games I saw some pool noodle I didn't go to that one so I can't speak to all the details in there um but they just got to interact and hang out and and they I think they did a craft and they played games um uh so that was one group I took a different group to Atley Park and we painted the basketball Port there we painted the the stripes on it so has a free throw Lane now has a free throw stripe and a three-point line uh so we did that and then we also sort of raked up
028all the debris under the trees and picked up all the garbage uh and just kind of made that's our park at Horizon like we walk down there all the time so we just kind of tried to Spruce that one up a little bit make that one nice um some other things uh we shucked corn um the school district in the state of Wyoming it was a new thing this year uh they got like 2,000 lb it was piles of corn from Riverton uh but it wasn't ready to cook so uh we as Horizon teamed up and we shucked all this corn uh it took us I don't know a half hour uh we got it all done we great teamwork we were AC cross from tables we were throwing the husk we were getting the
029corn and buckets uh so that was a great one um and we've been to ecdc a couple different times now uh working with the little kids there helping them out uh they're helping us out just as much uh Senior Center we've done the senior center a couple times one was right before Thanksgiving so that was great uh because they prepare a whole bunch of meals and we had a pile of kids jump back into the kitchen help prepare the meals with them um and then after that they were shocked we got done so fast with all the help uh they sent us out on Meals on Wheels so we buzzed through the community helped out with the Meals on Wheels for them uh and they've invited us back they love it um and we love
030it so that one's been great uh another Super good one uh we've had the Halloween Carnival uh we invited a couple elementary schools over it was North and Clark uh they brought was it first graders first graders uh they kind of bombed our building and we had different stations set up and we shuffled these kids through we had face painting and we had the Ooey G put your hand in here we had some cornhole we had uh craft station and we just got to hang hang out with them um and the kids got to be kids and our kids got to be men horse uh which is a pretty cool thing for for Horizon kids so that one worked out super cool uh we've been to lucda um and you can kind of see our
031theme here maybe we like to get our kids hooked up with young kids and we like to get our kids hooked up with our elderly individuals uh and how do you say no to to those two populations so it's worked out real great um this last one that we did uh we did some shoveling at Horizon we kind of teamed up and then we scattered out we did some shoveling at Davis we've done some shoveling at make the sidewalk safer for the little kids getting to the bus and from the bus to the playground back from the playground uh those sorts of things so um these bonus events uh these are like extra these are way outside of our school schedule but we've had a bunch of kids like heck yeah I'm in I'll do
032it so uh volunteer at the Lantern Festival this fall that was a great one I think we had three or four kids go do that one uh the jod food service so uh another one D I think I mentioned this one uh we cook some pies in our building and some food prep for the jodies community Thanksgiving dinner uh then we brought it to jodies and then I think it was the very next day we had a couple kids show up and help serve uh the community at jodies as well so that was super cool um we just had the uh High enta gymnastics um we had a morning group afternoon group go over and help with the gymnastics meet I think that's what they're called I don't know um but that was awes awesome
033we got rave reviews on that one uh kids running like a concession stand and things like that for them so that was really good um and then I don't know if we had any takers but the conference swim timers oh we didn't have any takers on no I put it on here anyways though we offered it up to them um guess no one showed them so um but yeah so we just been tracking it along uh hopefully uh we're incentivizing it enough we we want to uh get our big servers at the end of the year uh get go down to Salt Lake have them do something fun um we're not sure where that's going to take us yet but we're just going to draw a line on here somewhere and here's our our top
03420% of our uh community outreach kids um so yeah we have this all over the school we have pictures come on in walk our hallways I would say that's what's dominating our bulletin boards right now is is US highlighting our kids being in the moment and helping others serve others so um that's kind of my Spiel so any questions on our community outreach I don't have a question I would like to make a comment um I know you didn't see me but I saw you up at the senior Setter getting ready to deliver meals oh okay and they talked about it that whole day how impressive the kids were how polite they were they loved having them up there and it was even announced at lunch what you had done with the students um and
035then the time before you came up before Christmas and decorated and once again you made a big impression with the senior citizens and uh once again it was announced at lunch and you got an Applause and I know you weren't there so you talk about a difference I have seen the difference that you did at the senior center and I would like to thank you for doing that yeah yeah that's much appreciated absolutely yeah and that's Hest that's our goal right like we want to have these kids in front of people and maybe change their idea of a horizon kid right it's not kids in trouble it's kids that need a chance right and that's what we're there for so well I have comment as well you know being on the board of directors for
036the racetrack having you guys come out there and and help that day was awesome we loved having the kids out there it was a great experience and we're hoping we can do something like that again this summer that's good we're coming back I I did just a hair of quick math here before I came and I we're averaging about 15 hours per kid um so that's about 4 kids right and so that's about 600 hours uh Horizons given given back to the community which is pretty cool things so that's awesome thank you thank you thank you thank you very much all right uh thanks for this opportunity to kind of brag about what Horizon is doing I think we're doing awesome things um so at Horizon we like to kind of holistically addressed the student
037um and we've covered social emotional and Community I'm here to talk about academics a little bit um specifically our intervention so Horizon has 5 days a week 45 minute uh blocks for um specific targeted intervention meaning we find skills in math excuse me and um skills in English that we can address and give these kids maybe they've never seen it before or maybe they just need to reee it you know Co kind of took a lot of learning time from students and so we this week and in the previous last maybe three math intervention weeks we've targeted fractions and I know some of you are probably shaking in your boots at that word too and all of our kids seem to be afraid of fractions so we've been spending time with that um our intervention
038is data driven so we look at stars data we look at data from the previous intervention cycle and we're on this twoe rotation right now we'll spend one week with English one week with math one week with English and we'll rotate back like that trying to meet our goals of 5% growth um with reading and math um it's been kind of a struggle again it's a new program that we're trying to to implement um but so far I think it's helping um and the kids know the routine and they're getting pretty good at it um are there any questions um uh you talked about 5% growth from what so our Baseline is our start um reading and math test and we assess them four times a year um once every quarter and so we'll take
039the data from the first and see the progress and hopefully by the end of the year all of our kids have met at least 5% on both reading and math anyone else I guess I was looking for hard data from what oh test um that's a good question so right now it's proficient not proficient below basic basic lot of our kids are in that basic or below basic range and with with that our um grade equivalent scores um there's numbers tied to that um and so that's what we would look at um did they grow 5% from Baseline to where we want them to be I can address that too thank you the our Baseline score is basically our white cop day in the fall or our white out data in the spring of last
040year and then our our act data and so what we're really looking at is is whole school we want to be 5% better than we were last year and I realize we don't have the same population at all right but each year we want that percentage proficient to be 5% higher than it was that's our goal they're both reading and math and as I said we're we're meeting exceeding in fact in in those cases the the state accountabil ability measures but that's still let's be clear we're not meteor and seaing in a traditional High School measure and our kids got to close that Gap somehow what's your turnover for students you say you have 47 or 50 taking away from the seniors because you know they're going to graduate graduate year and we'll probably turn
041over eight or 10 dozen in the year last year when I started it was half yeah how many do you lose that are might be freshman or sophomores just and kids that we get when we start us well if they start with us as a freshman we'll get 70% of those kids all the way through okay 65 70% we have all kinds of things that draw them uh we're in a very um Transit population so a lot of our kids will move basically every kit this year I we we've had two three drop mhm and we've had another what five move and move means out of our district right now of those five three of them have requested records from us they're in school someplace else we got high hopes that they're doing something or
042good there now the other two we didn't get anything okay okay thank you good questions anyone else thank you thank you hi everyone my name is Sam Johnson I'm the social studies teacher at Horizon so I'm just going to talk to you really quick about the schedule so we've done something different this year um what we've done is we've split it into octant as kind of mentioned previously and what that means is every month B basically we change from a A to B schedule and then back to A and B so like in high school you know sometimes it's like a b every other day instead of just doing that every other day it's we're going all a classes for a month and then it's all B classes for a month then all a classes
043for a month and so I want to address kind of two things why that's for me for what I've seen that's been super beneficial and one is academics at Horizon it is awesome to have 90 minutes to work with those kids in each class period we have four class periods in in the day and so with that 90 minutes that allows you time to do the lecture or whatever you need to do it gives them time to work on what they need to do and most importantly for my opinion is it gives you that one-on-one time I've been able to meet with every single kid and help them and assess them every single class period know where they're at and try to just help them you know I'm not perfect or anything like that but
044it's just I think it's been really beneficial um and then it's also been really good with social emotional learning um the the kids every single kid I've gotten to know and love just the kids are amazing and we all love them and we all really care about them all these staff members they're phenomenal they're outstanding I'm so I'm really lucky to be a horizon and um every single kid I think they really grow to I don't know if to say if they love us but they grow to trust us and they grow to really rely and they grow to just yeah like I said they TR they trust us and um so with those two things it it's been really good and one thing that um Miss Mrs V was saying about intervention I just
045wanted to add really quick it also allows us as teachers we're able to meet together for 45 minutes as a PLC in our own groups and we get to work on those three kids each week we get to work on um just something that we're trying to get better in our classroom we've been working on hey how can we take a big project and scaffold it and make it into pieces so the kids aren't overwhelmed by these big projects that we're giving them and I think overall we're just improving and we're just we're doing doing a great job again I I think they're all outstanding and Brand's amazing and so yeah that is our schedule thank you thank Youk you all right so I just have one little thing I don't know if you guys
046I don't know why our thing turned off there can somebody tell me what shut that off plug her back in take yeah just just unplug plug back in yeah see if that'll work that's always your first turn it off back on okay uh so what I wanted to show you just this last little piece of data before we go and I I really appreciate uh our chance to come here and brag on our school for a minute for you guys and I appreciate your time and attention on it so if you look at the the screen there what we've done is I've asked our secretary to call every parent and you can see there's blanks in here so this is this is a the record of what we've asked her to do I've redacted all
047the names off there and so what we see is we ask our parents okay so based on our three goals and what area do you see is one of those areas you think your kid is succeeding in or is there an area you'd like to say you've seen growth in your in your child and as we go down this social emotional side which again we say is our biggest hitter right you can see the the vast overwhelmed majority of our parents said my child is much stronger than they were when they started at the beginning of this year we surveyed those parents at the start of the year and now at midye and I would say about 80% from my daily not it's it's getting up dat daily cuz she's still track in some of
048them but when I checked it yesterday it was 81% 81% of our parents said my kid has grown a significant amount socially emotionally and this number represents that so that tells us that I think if we if we got a theory right that social emotional is the biggest payer that we're having we're definitely seeing social emotional growth from the people who see them most and and we can talk about some other daude but that's the one I really wanted to share with you all right thanks for your patience any questions about what's going on Horizon or what we're doing with that crazy thing or why you see us around town or any of that stuff um I just got one more and I'll shut up but uh you've got 47 50 students how many students
049do you think you may have that really just don't they really just don't have a traditional parent paral support of the 47 you're saying or 50 whatever it is okay well you know we we try and hover that number right at 50 in fact that's our that's our Mark number we try and keep to make our school solid right and we'll call that number 43 at anyin given time somewhere between 40 and 43 are those other five on average are are they in traditional homes you know that we call we have a a very small handful of kids and I'm I'm just trying to go over the list that I think okay that's a pretty traditional kid I don't don't know that's a small enough population think would be self identifying so I I won't
050specify that I just say that there's a lot of our kids have a lot of need okay okay any other questions I just want to thank you again for your support uh we'd love to see you anytime you want to come up and hang around at Horizon if you if you've got some little community service projects you got that's on the on the dock you're like hey we got this idea we would love it because we're looking for some more we'd love to see you Friday when we're having our Winter Carnival because the fall was such a success in Halloween that we're like Hey we're going to invite the other two schools up for our winter wi this Friday anytime the year around we'd love to see you thanks awesome well thanks Mr pay thank
051you to all the staff from Horizon we appreciate everything that you dok you yep thank you you guys welcome to stay thanks guys all right moving on to our operational budget presentations we'll hear from Transportation Madam Vice chair members of the board this is part of our budget process and these two departments always get to go first um typically Transportation because of the need to get oute of ordering buses um and so I'll explain more about the budgetary process but appreciate transportation and food service for going first every year so Mr ferel floor is yours he's G that's not what I see on your screen two nice bucks there go good evening members of the board I'm going to try to keep this short sweet simple not too much data I could go on for
052hours and hours with as much stuff as we do in transportation um so let's get into it some highlights from last year we had no avoidable accidents and so we consider avoidable accident anything that's like any that involves another vehicle something the driver could have done to change a situation so our team seems great we had no avoidable accidents last year which is a huge a huge step for safety um we do reunification drills with the students at the different schools last year we had approximately 600 students we participated in those drills with it's just part of our uh helping the schools practice their crisis pliance kind of stuff um the next one down I kind of had my timelines mixed up so it's kind of a mistake we didn't order any buses last year
053there was a manufacturing problem from the buses we ordered from the year before and we were put in a position where we were afraid if we ordered two last year that we'd actually get four during this fiscal year and that's just a budgetary issue we didn't want to run into so ignore that one if you would and then with your approval we have purchased a new staff vehicle last year everybody that's taken it seems to love it and we really appreciate it so what vehicle was that it's a Jeep Cherokee so a couple of quick comparisons for threeyear averages just to let you know like how many students we have normally our averages are gathered we do what we call a snapshot with periodically throughout the year we have the drivers count students on am
054route PM route um Mid day shuttles after school enrichment and then we just kind of average that out for the year because any given day we could have way less students we could have a lot more it's just so we try to average it just by doing these snapshots you can see it stays pretty consistent um the route mileage you can notice on the 23 24 year there was a huge dip what that is is we sat down and looked at our routes and figured out out where we could consolidate and get some efficiencies so we actually removed approximately four routes and that's the dip and mileage there so with four less routes we're able to transport the same amount of students to the same job and that all goes to I can't take credit
055for that at all that's our route coordinator Sunny she does an excellent job and I couldn't do it without her this is the same thing just a three-year comparison for activities and field trips just to show you what we do every year it seems like it's training up I can look back in the years previous we're pretty much Beyond where we were before covid and I think it's going to continue to keep growing every year um this is just comparisons of age of the fleet and cost our bus fleet stays about the same age range within a half a year of Life the mpvs are what we consider the student Suburbans um those are going to continue to go up in age as an average every year because we can't replace those until wde says
056okay we'll let you replace them cuz they're a reimbursed vehicle they're a 15-year life cycle so we won't even be able to get into that for another 2 years but I'm going to talk about that a little bit more a little bit further on staff Vehicles the age has gone down we surplused one that was in an accident and we got the new one so it brought the age down um Fleet repairs just kind of a total that's just you know Parts fluids pieces tires kinds of stuff like that and then it gives you a cost per mile breakdown you can see at the bottom it says not including salaries fuel or facility costs once you add that stuff in if I use the WD calculation for that for buses alone it goes up to
057$335 a mile so there's quite a bit a difference there operating cost this is one of those things I can go on for hours and hours and hours with everything we spend throughout year to just run a facility just a quick breakdown to show you of this is a pretty consistent thing these items that we spend every year um the average cost for the drivers about that if we have a new trainee that takes longer that cost can go way up if we get somebody that picks up real quick or we get lucky and we get somebody that's already been a school bus driver I mean that cost goes down to pretty much zero we do lots of training to keep everybody up to date keep everything safe uh FMC compliance is just our drug
058and alcohol testing uh Clearing House kind of stuff software I could list 15 different softwares we use of transportation and our big tick items like Fuel and deaf that number fluctuates year to year just based on the cost of what it is at the moment it's gone up in recent years I don't foresee it coming down very much so that's going to be something that's going to be that high up usually every year there's some other big ticket items you know that we pay but they're more like facility costs like power uh gas sewer Mr Williams could tell you a whole list of all that stuff but I can spend forever talking about it um the upcoming costs so we've ordered two buses they should be here July August so hopefully they'll be next year's
059budget we've already had two buses come in this year um our second one just barely came in last week and you can see the cost of buses is just astronomical compared to what they used to be five to 8 10 years ago that's another cost that's never going to come back down they're just going to be that cost forever or more the new staff vehicle I approached the board in October and said hey you know we need to do this it's still kind of in process and that's what I have built into my budget at this time is $4 to $50,000 for that vehicle so when I get all my prices and quotes put together I'll come back to you and say hey this is what we're looking at this is what it's going to
060cost camera systems are for buses we currently have six systems that are of a different manufacturer than all the rest of the buses is something that they wanted to try out in the years past it's not working out for us we fight them all the time we can't get the videos that we need and that's a huge thing for the buses we need those videos so that's going to be something I'm going to be looking at replacing in the future you can see they're not cheap 7,000 bucks per each system we've got four buses that are running older systems that just need newer cameras more cameras and then the five new installs would be um our student Suburbans we've currently got one student Suburban that's got a dash cam SL inside camera in it we
061just feel as though where we're for transporting students it's a good Safeguard to put one in each student Suburban so that's something we're going to be looking at doing those are fortunately a lot cheaper than the $7,000 um building need right now Mr Dennis has been taking pretty good care of us um one thing that we do have coming up is our wash bay floor it's like an epoxy coating and it's it's done it's to the point now where pieces of it are peeling up and people are tripping on it the concrete's kind of getting washed off how old is it how old I'm going to say that probably last somewhere 15 years ago so we got our money's worth yes do we have better products to put on it now than we had then
062so we can anticipate that kind of life or more again yeah the the quote we have right now for the 25,000 is a better product it's more suited for the wet environment it's thicker and that's why that cost is a little bit higher than it would be just the differences in product and it would be an anti-slip floor and all that good stuff have you have you gotten more than one bid no we just have one bid for right now it was a the the company that we used to redo the floors after the lifts were installed and since they were there we just said hey you know look at this do some measurements give us a big bit kind of a thing another thing we would like to move forward with is Route software
063a lot of the companies out there now you buy the software but it comes with add-ons so we would use the software to look at our current routes see if there's any efficiencies the systems can tell us where to move stops what would be better ways to do things but along with that we would get bus telematics so we would know where the buses are at all times if something's wrong with the bus it sends us this information and another cool little add-on that I would like to do is called the parent app what it does is we can reach out to certain parents and we can give them an invite to say hey you can look at the information for your student's bus and it would tell them like how far away the bus
064is from their stop like the bus would be at your stop in 4 minutes if there is something wrong where a bus is delayed we can send a text out to that bus route and say the bus is stuck in some snow it's going to be delayed and the parents of that bus would get that notification so they know and it seems the districts that do use it love it so that's something that I think would be beneficial for us to move with in the future would that be an ongoing cost every year yes cuz you have to renew it you know The Upfront cost is a little more expensive cuz you're buying uh devices but then after that it is just like a renewal subscription every year so it's not 30 to 50,000 every
065year no okay it can get up there if you buy every little add-on they have with it it could definitely that much but there's some stuff that our district I wouldn't think we would benefit from it's just the core pieces the routing software the parent app and then bus automatics would be start do you think having a parent app would increase ridership it definitely could where parents would be more comfortable with knowing more information about their students bus yeah right where they are yeah do we do you have a sense of what percentage of our students are writing a bus morning or evening are we at like a 40% participation rate or 60 or yeah well we're currently if you look at our average so last year we averaged 1180 and that's with our snapshot
066right oh daily writers okay out of 2600 students 2600 yeah things that we're doing for potential savings every year when we apply for buses we apply for Dera Grant um we just got funded for Dera Grant on one of our last two buses that we got it was a little over 48,000 so that's a big chunk of money to get so we apply for that Grant every time um with training I know it is a cost upfront but in the long run it SA saves us a bunch of time it saves US money and it just keeps everything safe and in the long run that's what it's all about is the safety it's number one and then parts and supplies we're always shopping multiple vendors we're looking at different things that we can do a
067lot of what we've started changing is instead of replacing a lot of parts we're trying to look at the manufacturer of that part to see if they make pieces for that part so we can fix some and put them back on the bus and that has saved us a ton of money the last couple years it's a little bit more effort on the guys in the shop to make all the phone calls to go through all the Hoops but in the long run it's helping out a lot and then just our plan you know we're going to continue to work on retention and recruiting that's a huge thing for us is keeping our drivers here we're already invested in them trained them we've spent the time our drivers are good drivers I mean to have
068no avoidable accidents is a huge thing so we like to keep them here and then recruiting we do you've seen the signs out and about we've worked with uh all kinds of businesses putting up papers just trying to get people IND door right now we're doing pretty good for fully stack we've got a pretty good list of Subs so we're doing pretty good on that front bus referrals they're pretty low right now we're working on keeping them low we do a lot of work with the schools and helping them they help us keep the referrals low and we're looking at adding more bus aids to a lot of the buses to help the driver can only do so much that you know only got to drive focus on the road with an extra set of
069eyes on that bus it helps keep everything under control how many buses have an e or is it Case by case right now we're up to I want to say five buses with AIDS out of 16 we could probably use beneficially you would be another five we're working on that part and then like I mentioned ago in the future future within the next couple years we'll need to start looking at replacing some of those student Suburbans but yet we still have another year or two to go but that's just part of our plan is to start looking now start working at wde to figure out that cost that's all I got for you any questions for me those new buses that that come obviously come with a warranty how long is that warranty years miles
070it is years and miles it depends on the component they don't just do like a you know your regular they gave you bumper bumper It's paint warranty is this many years or this many miles uh and they're made by Bluebird or we're buying Thomas buses right at the moment so when you have a warranty issue who does that warranty work they come from Salt Lake yeah it's uh Lewis bus Group in Salt Lake you have to take it to them or unfortunately if it's an engine problem they all have Cummins engines in them and so that warranty is dealt through Rocky Mountain and they'll usually send somebody out to our location take care it depends year to year who gets the state bid for buses so like if next year um if it was the
071bluebird dealer and Casper that would be a conversation I'd have with Mr Williams to see do we buy the Bluebirds for them or do we just keep going with Thomas the key to that is it if you go with the state bid we don't have to go through the bidding process makes a lot sck and the process itself is easier because they'll approve the purchase of those buses quickly yeah if we go without the state bid we're on the hook for whatever extra overstate B is anything else thank you appreciate your time thank you thank you Mr faell Food Service come on down or is it come on up come on now come on over there all right good evening Madame chairman and members of the board tonight I would like to take the opportunity
072to share with you what's cooking and nutrition services last year I shared with you some goals that we set forth for our department those goals were to implement new menu items offer more scratch cooked meals increase grab and go grab and go options enhance our solid bar and offer local beef and produce let's take a little food inspired field trip to recap what we did to meet our goals the staff is the lifeblood of our department the old saying you're only as good as your team Rings true for me my staff members have worked hard to implement the changes needed to increase student meal participation by providing high quality meals in schools we've faced many challenges including constantly changing federal guidelines Staffing shortages as well as adapting mini menu items due to price increases to
073direct food cost we work hard to bring awareness to school meals on the first Friday of may we celebrate our staff with National School Lunch hero day I encourage each of you to stop by your cafeterias to watch School nutrition professionals prepare healthy meals for students all the way all the while adhering to strict nutritional standards navigating food allergies and offering service with a smile the tagline not all Hero not all heroes wear capes is evident as our heroes serve students each and every day this year we celebrated national school lunch week on October 14th through the 18th with a find your treasure pirate theme in 1962 President John F Kennedy created national school lunch week to promote the importance of healthy school lunch inside and outside of the classroom Farm to school has been
074a big focus of mine this year not only do I come from a ranting background but I believe it is important to teach kids where their food comes from Governor Mark Gordon signed a proclamation declaring that October 2nd is is Wyoming's official Farm to school day we jumped on board and planned a homegrown Feast our menu consisted of sloppy Cowboy Joe's made with locally sourced beef homemade buns made with Wyoming Heritage grains fresh hand shut corn on the cob from 1890 farms and a peach custard dessert made with fresh Utah peaches and oats from Wyoming Heritage grains we enlisted students and staff to help in the preparation of the meal students from Horizon and the FFA from the high school came to help shuck 1500 years of corn I was surprised how many kids did
075not know how to shut corn um The Horizon culinary class helped in preparing the peach dessert together we peeled and sliced approximately 200 lbs of peaches the feedback was so positive from students and staff we cannot wait to see what's in store for next year a farm to school crunch off contest between the mountain Plains region is hosted each October it is a competition between states to log the most bites into locally grown food for the first time ever we beat up Nebraska for the top spot as a state we log close to 40,000 crunches I am happy to report that nearly 30% of those crunches came from our very own Evanston schools the local items we served in addition to the beef and Grains were fruits vegetables and sauces from Wyoming sauce company so
076now that I've shared some of the activities going on let me sh you the let me show you the results of current meal sered as you can see our breakfast participation has gone up significantly last year I dove deep into our breakfast menu I talked to Kitchen staff students parents healthc care providers and chefs I quickly realized that we needed to rework the menu and put a priority on offering balanced meals proteins such as eggs cheese and breakfast meats were added and new items were introduced to the students we took advantage of the Department of Defense fresh fruit and vegetable program this allowed us to purchase fresh fruit and vegetables many of which were local with um with commodity funds the students have loved the new items such as the honeybee apples fresh pears and
077the very favorite strawberries and we included the new apples in your guys' salads tonight those are lemonade apples and the kids get those tomorrow so we'll see how well they look our mission statement is feed the future we take this role very seriously school lunch is critical to student health and well-being especially for children in low-income households it ensures that students have the nutrition that they need throughout the day school lunches are designed to meet specific nutrition guidelines ensuring students receive a variety of food groups necessary for healthy growth and development eating lunch together with peers can foster a sense of community and social interaction in addition to providing breakfast and lunch we also provide Afterschool snacks as well as our summer meal program that provides meals throughout the summer free of charge to Children
078this slide is a current snapshot of our free and reduced meal percentages as a district 47.97 of our students receive free meals we've seen a slight one 1. 1.6% increase over last year the economic downturn rising cost of living and lack of employment have all contributed to this Factor research shows that receiving free and reduced price school lunch reduces food insecurity obesity rates and poor health in addition to receiving Federal funding we offer catering to help close the financial gap while our main focus is feeding students we have hosted Bak sales catered the Women's Conference and catered many events around the district including the salb that you enjoyed tonight our goals for this year are as follow improve nut nutritional quality and meal participation by ensuring meals meet or exceed USDA nutritional standards increase the
079variety of fresh locally sourced food offer diverse and appealing menu options to encourage participation number two promote nutritional education and wellness by updating the wellness policy partnering with teachers parents and local health professionals to promote healthy eating habits and encourage students engagement through taste tests and the farm to school program number three strengthen Financial sustainability by optimizing cost management by reducing food waste and improving procurement practices increase meal participation rates to maximize the federal reimbursements number four improve operational efficiency by investing in staff training and professional development upgrade kitchen equipment and facilities for better meal preparation and Implement Technology Solutions for menu planning ordering and inventory management and number five enhance stakeholder engagement and communication by strengthening relationships with parents students and staff through feedback and involvement use the school website to promote the program's
080benefits and have readily available information and lastly to build Partnerships with local producers to grow our farm to school program thank you do you guys have any questions how do you budget year to year I mean you had an increase of a lot of meals Ian how do you budget for next year as an example I mean do you just kind of say well we're going to probably have a 2% growth or how do you how do you do that it's a very tricky thing because of the cost of food cost of food has been um as you guys know if you've been grocery shopping you know that there's really no way to to judge that my personal goal is to continue building the percentages and building participation I said that a lot in here
081so that we can maximize our federal reimbursement money any other questions just as a point of curiosity you're from from Farm to to table deal all that was locally sourced yes where where was your sloppy Gill stuff sourced so the the meat came from Merryweather farms and then we prepared rivert yes okay so locally meaning Wyoming b i app I appreci that's I'm I'm a local producer so I'm just curious as to where you were able to get us a grade beef cuz my goal is to stay within 100 miles Riverton has been a great option where the corn glad they are there they they do a great job um and they're actually working to be able to um use some of our commodity money to use their local beef so we're hoping that hasn't
082quite happened yet but fingers crossed that'll be in the near future thank you any other questions okay thank you guys thank you Madame Vice chair members of the board if I may just add um one of the components of the lawsuit W Department of Ed the wiing Education Association lawsuit that we joined dealt with uh reimburse launch prices and uh the amount of money that we have to supplement the budget uh from the general fund and that was one of the areas just watching the judge I think it made a big impact he was actually shocked that uh the state has nothing to do with pre-introduced lunches it's federal government and so hopefully we'll get some relief with that large transfer that we make to food service and again just Express appreciation to our transportation
083department and food service department they are excellent again um a reflection of the quality employees we have in all our departments um so that's just what I wanted to add all right on to our discussion items a is the Bowen Young Musicians Festival um Madam Vice chair members of the board uh we have according to our policy uh when the facility is request to use we charge a fee to anyone who comes in um there are I think only three organizations that the board has provided in the past that we don't charge for and those are typically the community choir um is one example of the one that I can think of uh everyone else basically and I'll say the Women's Conference we participate as a sponsor so they still pay but we sponsor some
084of that uh in the past we've had music programs that have come into our schools and provide services to our students and then provide a concert at night um and this is one of those examples where uh in the past we've waved the fee uh for these musical groups because they provide service to our students kind of as an alternative to the cost of using our facility this is another one that as I supplied the facility use and the rental fee if you want to call it that um they reached out and requested that the fee be waved since it is a board policy that we have a user fee only the board can wave that fee my recommendation is for this group since our students benefit I think greatly this would be one that
085I would suggest we wave the fee for their two days is roughly $2,000 so you will have an opportunity and the action items to wave this fee if you so choose we've done that in the past um this may be again I'll continue to bring these before the board typically we don't wave the fees unless we became a sponsor with them I think the Women's Conference has been a good example of that and the Community Choir they're basically our teachers using their own rooms and so they keep them clean we don't charge them a fee so that my recommendation will be at the time is to wave this fee okay it's all we had there all right next up is the budget process and timeline let me see if I can put this on the
086screen I hope you can appreciate at this time I'm not going to go through all this document but I kind of want to hit some high points if I can uh we do this every year when we talk about the de budget development process and that we're starting this early um can everyone see that uh we do get a head start on the budget sometime and I think last year may been the first year we John and I just kind of decided to slow down um we may have got too far into the budget too fast and um there are things we just can't do because we don't find out our new money until after the legislative session after the 100 is presented to John um and 10 of the last 12 years we've had
087to make reductions to the budget and that is wearing on an organization to continue to look at way to cut the budget and we'll continue to do that but we follow these principles and that's probably the most important part of this document not the timeline that we follow our budget process involves all stakehold holders um specifically our schools our principal uh you realize that we're really tied to what the legislators do and the funds that come in um part of the budget process is that you will hear from every Department um like you saw tonight they're positives they're negatives and potential needs in the future um and that's really time for them to say look budget probably needs to be a little bit more these are things I need and we need so you can
088be aware of that why if the budget Chang es up to one of the Departments it it's understandable um so that's part of your education in terms of the budget and why the budgets look the way they do so in term in terms of our principles and priorities uh we're required to have a balanced budget um kind of makes sense meet the legal requirements of fatee which is a free and appropriate appropriate public education uh protet core programs K12 uh language arts mathematics social studies and science scrutinize all expenditures for possible savings that is probably done by John and I and then pushed down to our directors and our principles in the future but we we focus on ways that we can save money in everything that we do and we've done that like I
089said 10 out of the last 12 years uh we've been required to do that uh reduce Staffing un necessary through attrition we're to the point now and and you can see we've lost 19 students this month we have really cut our staff to the point where um there's not many more places to cut if you look at K5 numbers our K5 numbers classroom sizes student to teacher ratio are excellent and that's been a commitment of the board and a commitment of administration to keep those as low as possible um I think that's probably where the money needs to be spent uh because it's those classroom teachers that make the impact so our class sizes are excellent is it possible in the future and we have to look at that um we can with our middle
090schools the way we structure those schedules it's hard to reduce Staffing beyond what we've reduced in the years because you have three English teachers well I won't go to English English is a little different you have three Math teachers um one for each grade level how do you do two and a half and still do what we want to do with our Middle School schedule so we're pretty tight in terms of the budgeting process there so really K5 and 9912 are the place places we can make changes to uh Staffing based on the number of students we have in those programs the number of offerings that are offered at the high school and so we stay close to those numbers work with our principles um it's not always the most a positive thing when you
091go to a principal and say this year you're going to lose a teacher because they've resigned you're not going to be able to replace that teacher um three sections of fifth grade instead of four and that's how we make those changes you can have six science teachers at the high school instead of seven same kind of approach um and that's how you reduce theot attrition is one they leave we don't hire those back and we've been successful at that for a long time but we're pretty lean right now um last year we were able and we've talked about this at U Meadows they lost a position instead of replacing that teaching position we're able to put into an administrative position um and that has been I believe supportive of you metals and kept that Staffing
092roughly the same so those are things we'll continue to look at continue to support but uh attrition is necessary but at some point you just can't keep cutting your staff and that's what I'm concerned and that's why we sued the state so hopefully we'll see some relief when that that lawsuit goes through um one of the reasons why we reduced through attrition is so we could do the next point which is provide a salary increase for all employees which we have done and uh in years where we received no additional funding from the state we were able to continue to fund our salary schedule which isn't a landslide of money you're talking about a step which is 25 cents an hour for support staff and $750 for a teacher but at least we're able to
093honor the salary schedule um through reducing through attrition transpar parent and what we do and how we do it data to stakeholders and decision makers uh board Reserve our goal and the board is always kind of kept this goal maintained between 7 and 12% I can tell you John would rather go 12 to 15% um and that's a healthy carryover and that's what you want from your uh CFO um I still think we'll probably be around 12 10 to 12 so which is which is good and healthy depending on what we choose to do with these onetime purchases that potentially come through our departments Lobby for legislation to protect funding ECA and Capital Construction I don't think we could have done any more lobbying than we did with the lawsuit because it's obvious we're not
094getting that support from our legislatures at this time it's actually the opposite we are fighting for an ECA um we're potentially going to lose funding to maintain our facilities and Capital Construction thank goodness we're not looking end up building a new building right now because it wouldn't happen so we need to keep on that I need to be maybe a little more positive about that but still uh focus on there is money in Wyoming and it needs to go toward what's intended according to our Constitution which is Education First so anyway so I do have on this document and you guys have a copy of it the process that we follow um and the timeline that we follow Again by the time you guys are responsible to approve the budget in July you'll have seen
095it at least three or four different times in different forms um you'll he hear from every Department um and we'll continue to to talk to you about Staffing as we go along um it has worked well for us um and again it's nice to be able to count on a CFO that understands the budget and Wyoming finances as well as Johan does so this is the procedures we follow um if you can see probably the fifth or sixth bullet down where it says develop strategies PRI prioritize expenditures um that is done with Central Administration as we work through the budget Staffing operational budgets addenda subs and extra pays so staffing has always been our number one priority and will continue and so when we talk about Staffing we are talking about salaries and benefits and
096uh again how we fill our classrooms but it will always be our priority still 85% of our budget uh will be salaries and benefits and we try to improve that we try to listen to our staff on how to improve that but that will be our uh like I said our priority just the other thing I want to show you there is timelines that we follow you can take a look at those um and then this is the strategic planning part of this is you can see that March looks like we have March twice um because of this initial budget timeline you'll see excuse me February twice March you'll hear from activities in special education next month April is maintenance and Technology um and then in May is K5 and 612 curriculum and that's the
097procedure we follow they'll follow roughly the same kind of pattern that you saw with transportation and Food Service um and so you'll get a chance to question where the money goes and how it goes the way it does so and then we try to keep track of what we do as we go along the years and this part of it you'll see this will expand each year so what actions have we taken um if we have made decisions or we'll make decisions not to replace with positions you'll see that on Staffing uh if there are operational areas that we can expend or and potentially save money we'll do that but you'll also see there are things that we have put off for years that we need to spend money on so that's the other part
098of it is is uh um as departments come forward and they talk about their needs you'll find like last year if you recall we had shorted the activities budget we didn't have enough money to recondition our helmets we put $25,000 extra into that budget so we could get that equipment that has been kind of put on the sideline for years and that was done in these meetings that you see here so we'll keep track of that um addenda subs and extra pays typically we get to toward the end of the budget cycle but operations and staff you know come first so again um this document kind of is a living document as we move forward so any questions about our budget process and priorities and how we do what we do all right if there
099aren't any questions we'll move on to just real fast um updating or we're looking at staff salary schedules in terms of if we want to update it when with that happen in the process um typically that's a negotiated item um and so we can we can talk about it at any time um so that usually goes the end of April beginning of May if we have an idea of new funds coming in it is hard to go to a new salary schedule if there are no new funds coming in it's easy to go to a new salary schedule if you're funded at an appropriate level 82% would allow us to look at some changes to to both salary schedules but if you recall we made significant changes to support staff salary schedules last year um
100I'm already looking at new salary schedules for certified staff for this year but we need funds to do that and there's there's some hills to get over with a new salary schedule but it's time we get over those and honestly to move to a new salary schedule will be a huge commitment from this community because we need to get away from our highest paid teacher $72,000 we need to get above $100,000 for our most experienced teacher and that is a commitment it's a commitment this year to fund it but it's a commitment for the next 25 years to continue to support that but without that we are going to continue to lose teachers to Utah and Utah um and you know what it's going to be hard to blame them as an administrator to move
10180 miles and pick up another $25,000 on your Salary thank goodness they like it here I'll just say that and we can do the best we can but I think that's a commitment that has to be made sooner or later is it this year or is it next year our salary schedule needs to top out above $100,000 for a highest PID teacher that's kind of my commitment so if we can do that great yeah if we can't we may have to do it in chunks phase one phase two but uh that's the salary schedule I developed now puts us above 100,000 for the highest paid teacher when's that lawsuit expected to come to final November going on for two three years it was supposed to be November is it in the judge's hand right now
102or it is I mean so let's just for the sake of conversation I mean what kind of an impact if if it goes through and and the districts win what kind of an impact would that have on the salaries and my opinion I know it would might be just a little bit but I don't know it really depends kind of how the ruling comes down but it's already had an impact uh the jaac approved an 8.5% ECA this year of course the house cut it in half already but I think that was only because of the lawsuit if if we win all categories it'll make a significant change because the number one thing is the model salary base salaries for teachers will have to go to the average mhm that'll be extremely expensive but the
103money's there and we're talking $200 million mhm to get them to where our salaries already at base salaries are already at Capital Construction Capital Construction was almost 100% paid for by coal royalties they went away hopefully they'll come back a little bit there'll be more funding for schools but schools have been put off I don't know how many years Rock Springs has been put off at least 10 on their building um so if funny doesn't if we win that part of it they need to find another funding source to how to provide Capital Construction because the state according to our Constitution and um the Campbell ruling is responsible for facilities their construction their maintenance and frankly this year we're going to take a beating on maintenance if the legislation goes through as written right now
104so anyway if we win those two parts that's huge if we win the part about food service that's 500,000 a year for us that's quite significant um trying to think of the other components um I only worried about salary and Capital Construction but there are a lot of other components that are in there those are the big ones if we win partial even that will be a plus if we won the base salary component only that is a huge Plus for us we would not be claiming poverty anymore we'd be able to fund our teachers at a much higher level if we win the Capital Construction that's a positive um and just watching the judge for that part totally the idea that we have raw sewage running through one of our high schools in Wyoming
105and they can't get it fixed because there's no no replacement just offended the judge to no end and basically put it to the state that way this should have been taken care of years ago and and that's one I think be positive so it's hard to say even if the judge ruled today you're still talking a year out cuz it's got to go to the Supreme Court eventually yeah but even that will impact if we came out and one all the areas that will impact funding in the future guarantee you so it's it's uh I think it's tough to put your hopes on a lawsuit but uh we will still continue to budget according to this process and do the best we can with the funds we receive all right on to our legislative session
106update Madam Vice chair members of the board I hope you're okay with going through this really quickly cuz it is right now we're right in the middle of the legislative session what you have in front of you is you have a packet like this um John or excuse me Dan wheeler brought this back from the legislative for and he also wanted you to have this so you have a little flyer like this this is uh how to read a bill um what's nice about the packet he gave you is there's some good information in here about the priorities of WW School boards which we are a member of but also I think the important thing that uh I think is useful they the bills that are of interest to the to us um they talk
107about the legislative process in terms of lobbying if you want to lobby as a board member uh there is some what I think is interesting is how the state legislature Works how bill becomes law um it is very complicated so you can follow the process uh the important thing one of the important things and I'm glad they included it in the packet is the back page which is the Memo from the jaac that shows the totals for the ECA so you can see that the original ECA was set at uh it's the paragraph that's in Dan and down in the bottom the for forward a recommendation to JC that schools for 2526 the funing models categories reflect the following sustained cumulative external cost adjust adjustments 8.5 for professional staff 8 .5 for nonprofessional staff 1.68%
108for Education materials and a 6285 negative for energy cost which is interesting but that was what was recommended and approved by the jaac that is really what we need to fight for that that's maintained in the legislative session and that's going to be an ongoing battle so just quickly if you're okay I'm going to do a quick run through of some of the bills these are basically the same bills that we talked about last month that concerned me so I can kind of tell you where they are uh number one is House Bill one that is the budget bill so that is the one that we need to see those numbers of 8.5% back in there um I've seen at least three different amendments that have failed that have manipulated that and the irony is
109the last one that failed raised it to 9.5 for professional staff 9 five for classified staff and 2% for administration so a little mean-spirited I think but uh it failed for whatever reason so is it potential that the last minute an amendment will come that brings it back to eight we're hopeful that's really what we're pushing for those who are education friendly um so keep an eye on that I will plan if I see that that's coming to a vote that is one bill is one position that I will reflect as the district's position that those ECA should be at the state the stated amount from the jic and uh hope that's okay to everybody so one of the ones we talked about last month was House Bill 172 which is repealed of the gun-free
110zones that is now um has passed the house and is on the senate floor um the Amendments have not significantly changed that it still does a way does a away with gun-free zones including Schools elementary and secondary um I guess the only good news with that piece of legislation is a companion piece of legislation which increased decreased the age to concealed carry from 21 to 18 failed so 21 uh by law is the concealed carry age which means we don't have to worry about our high school students carrying a weapon in school legally um do we do we need to look at our our policy matter if it passes and retweaked yeah if if 172 passes there is a section in there that is reflective of R cka basically it allows a school district to
111um determine if it's okay for employees to select employees to concealed carry based on basically the same law we have now but to me and again this is my opinion I think that's not fair anyone that has a concealed carry permit can carry a gun into a school except our own employees um I think that's violating their rights at that point so I think what we would do as we tweak it um change it maybe do away with it but focus on the training still offer the kind of training that we offer now on an annual basis to all staff that want to cons concealed carry um if we're going to do it let's do it safely and that would be my message to the staff if you want a concealed carry if you want
112to put a gun in a biometric lock box according to the law let us pay for your training annually and uh work with the local law enforcement train with other individuals in terms of techniques um that's probably the direction we would go I just don't understand why anyone would think you would limit one group and allow anyone else to carry makes no sense you guys have already heard my opinion that's one that uh schools are sensitive areas I don't care what anyone says um and they need to be maintained as sensitive areas uh we took we we took the challenge when we passed cka I truly believe that we invited more weapons into our schools but those were weapons of individuals that we know we train we work with every day the police department know
113who they are they train with them they work with them every day that was a reach but it was something that we were allowed to do and it's something this community wanted we did it but to let anyone who has a concealed carry bring a gun into an ele School makes no sense my opinion so uh I'm still in opposition to sen Senate file 172 and we'll continue I don't know if we have a chance to have this one defeated just kind of reading the tea leaves so that's one that's still out there um House Bill 200 is a unique one um I think we talked about it briefly what this house bill 200 is parental rights amendments if you recall last year a parental right legislation was approved um it required us to develop
114a policy we already had policies in place but we devel a policy that supported that piece of legislation this adds to that statute and that law my opinion again this is not something that we need we already have board policies about protecting parental rights now we have additional policies protect parental rights this is not truly about parental rights it's about gender identity and sexual orientation this is the piece of legislation that in some states is called don't say gay the added portions of this deal with pronouns um that employees cannot be forced to use another pronoun by the way we've never done that and never would do that it doesn't allow diversity equity and inclusion training to staff and students which we haven't done and will not do matter of fact that was part of
115last year's legislation that if you are going to mention those topics you better communicate with the parents of your students before that is done and it better be related to the standards that are approved for what you teach and we spent a whole whole day I get the staff once all the staff at the same time and I spent my time talking about parental rights to protect our teachers from doing stupid things so are we 100% for parental rights yes we are um parents are our partners but what this does it puts parents as enemies and the legal components of complaints it I think that first of all you guys and the courts potentially will be um pretty busy with some of the the legal aspects of this but I guess the other part of
116that that may be a fear statement guess how many complaints we've had this year about our curriculum from parents none zero the law this new law also requires that our curriculum is found on our website guess what it's already there and it has been for years one of the things that requires that I don't know how you could pull it off is everything that a teacher uses in their classroom has to be online before the school year starts it takes away academic freedom from our teachers because they're not going to even the documents that we they'd love and support they're not going to be able to put those on the website before the school year starts it just hamstrings our teachers to what they do parents have a right to everything we do in the
117classroom and we've opened our classrooms up to them this is overreached by our state government my opinion so I'm definitely in opposition to House Bill 200 where is it in the process it has gone to the Senate so it's been approved by the house uh just a couple others quickly Senate file one is their budget Bill same thing was one of those budget bills need to have the 8.5% in there Senate file 72 um is now in the house that summer vacation preservation act which I think will be a blow to public education and a blow to our community because of the poverty level you already heard tonight four of our know half of our schools are tile one schools which means we have high poverty rates um those kids don't need less time in
118school they need more time in school our teachers don't need less time to train they need more time to train and to prepare and this takes that away um so this is one we need to keep an eye on I believe uh cenil 90 which has been received in the house is Youth Organization in schools sounds like a positive thing but what this does is it change changes our status from a limited open Forum to an open Forum in other words right now we control who can use our buildings when and when they can't and if there's a fee Associated this opens it up in the name of something positive let's open it up to um uh patriotism we already have some of the best assemblies on patriotism our uh Veterans Day assemblies are unbelievable
119um but this allows anyone in the name of patriotism which we would not control access to our kids and I've seen some of the things that are claimed to be patriotic that I would not see as patriotic have nothing to do with our country and our flag and our wonderful Nation it's the opposite and yet they claim to be patriotic so it's it's it's a little bit scary so we want to maintain unlimited open Forum we control who has access to our kids and I think that's what parents want too just not open to anyone who wants to come in and have access to our kids captive audience so I don't think it's good legislation um Senate file 98 uh that is has not left the Senate yet it's General file School Board trustees party
120affiliation what that means is you'd have to identify if you're um Republican or a Democrat before you're elected um typically in the past uh school boards are nonpartisan my opinion is that's the way it should be but this one seems to continue on hopefully it won't make it but anyway um cile 156 expenditure of State funds on K12 Public Schools sounds positive but what this one does is it takes our major maintenance money and makes it more restrictive best example I can give high school has over 300,000 Square ft but we're only paid about 280,000 Square ft for major maintenance they consider the other space non-allowable but remember the high school was built and paid for by bonds from this community the community decided to build an auditorium the size that it is so every
121student can fit in our Auditorium which makes sense we have a gym no auxiliary gym but our gym also has a pool so some of that space is not allowable but what we can do is use 10% of our major maintenance money to continue to maintain those Extra Spaces this legislation deals does away with that and that extra space is considered a enhancement and no public funds can be used to maintain those facilities so another good example example Davis 170% of Davis is our pool that means if this legislation go through there is no funding to maintain 177% of that building so who decides which 177% gets maintained it's it makes no sense and again it's a it's an attack at some school districts that legislators believe are misusing those funds but it's what I've
122learned and jiren could probably stand up and say this too it is hard to misuse major maintenance funds because everything has to be approved ahead of time and uh it has to be based on your needs so if you have a one and it's a safety issue that's where your money has to go first so it's overreach again I believe um Senate file 178 fixing reading failure the good news on that is that one I believe did not come out of committee so this would have been definitely overreached by the legislature to tell us how to teach reading um and just C of your heads up Senate file 187 which is still on the senate floor increases our retirement so if you remember last year this legislation went through and Governor Gordon vetoed it and
123basically he said we can't keep giving the teachers less and making them pay more into retirement it's back again in our employees would have to pay 25% more the district would have to pay .25% more into Wan retirement which is an increase of half a percent um which necessarily isn't a bad thing but if you're going to do that fund us at 88.5% then our teachers I think would be glad to support while in retirement at a higher level so anyway those those are the Bills sorry it probably took more time than I originally planned but I've tried to stay on top of this stuff and it is challenging it just goes so fast and things pop up so quickly and it's hard to hold anyone's feet to the fire because most of the amendments
124are Voice vote so you don't know who voted for what and that's hard and frustrating so like I said the plan for me is if I can get ahead of house bill one Senate file one I'll encourage our staff and our community to encourage our legislator Senate to support the 8.5% sent back into the model as was like I said recommended by the JC joint Appropriations Committee and I think the governor supported that too so that's a lot sorry any questions no thanks Ryan um next is our administrative contracts March approval Madam Vice chair members of the board you have a list of the administrators that will be approved next month by vote of the board just wanted you to be aware of that all right and lastly the HRS Summit report well I was
125hoping our board members that attended would make some comments and anyone out there that attended but what I want to show you is this you recognize any of those faces that is the elementary team that was recognized at the HRS Summit for being certified level 1 2 3 and four pretty impressive uh it's an impressive group that represent a even more impressive group with which was our teachers so the Summit is uh an excellent U place we're hoping that we'll uh have a district uh certification of level 1 two and three uh by next year and we just hope we continue to get better at providing um those enabling skills that are there so this is our elementary group and this is our high school group that went our excuse me our secondary group so
126nice group nice uh nice Summit uh you get to spend time with the best and the brightest and relatively small groups and uh again I do think the HRS um work that we do is the right work at the right time and it uh guides our school Improvement efforts uh provides us some uh choice in what we do and how we do it and it's just the right work and uh like I said I appreciate so much the hard work of our staff uh all of at all levels pretty impressive group so that's all I wanted to say board members chime in if you'd like anyone out there you guys want to go home crickets I'll just keep it brief Ryan but I I 100% agree with you and it was um it was neat
127it was neat to see a lot of you in a county W small town Wyoming on a national stage being recognized at the level they were because that's not that's the other thing I mean there's a lot of people there there's a lot of different schools and districts there that have achieved some great things but to be a small District in Wyoming and achieving what we've done it was impressive it was hugely impressive to see and to be a part of so congratulations you guys are phenomenal I concur yeah I I came away with a great feeling towards this this uh this entire program and what it what it does for us what it allows us to do and uh so I'm fully supported by the poting all right thank you all we have all
128right next we are opening it up to public comments okay as we have none we'll move on to our action items uh Personnel Madame Vice chair members of the board we do have some Personnel we have some resignations um and then some contracts to offer uh so it looks like three contracts to offer and 1 2 3 4 five resignations our recommended recommendation is that you approve uh the Personnel that you see on the sheet before you all right I need a motion to approve the Personnel that we show before all of us Madame Vice chairman I move that we approve the personnel as presented okay do I have a second I'll second all right we have a motion and a second any discussion all in favor those opposed motion carries all right next up
129we have discipline of a student uh Madam Vice chair members of the board recommend that you approve the discipline of a student as discussed in executive session okay I need a motion to approve the discipline that we discussed in executive session so moved I seconded all right we have a first and a second any discussion all in favor I and those opposed okay motion passes all right The copier bid recommendation and approval so Madame Vice chair uh I present to you um my proposal um for the bid of copier services for 3 years with mountain lest um we went out for bid uh we advertised in the paper um sent it out we got on bid wires I know that um uh Across the Nation um in this analysis this first page gives you copy
130counts and it's kind of extrapolated onto an average basis um per pupil it's it's kind of interesting you know to see how many uh copies we do um we had the bid opening on January 17th and there were two bids that came in uh one was with Mountain West which is a local company um we've had them for years um they do a good job and we also had zerox uh I could not get Xerox to tell me where their um service rep would come from and that's a big thing uh they they said we'll we'll tell you when you get the bid so it's like okay well that's that's not what I asked for so um so this right here is it should be in your packet it basically gives the analysis of all
131the the copy um uh bids that they' that have been given on the various sizes and then as you take this sh right here it merged the the two so it basically says okay based on the information what do we expect over a 3year time time frame and uh I'm looking at about a $2,000 increase from the last bid with Mountain West but about $66,000 less um than the Xerox bid so I you know obviously my thought is is go with Mountain West so that's my recommendation all right so we're approving this then tonight okay so I need a motion to approve the copier bid recommendation for Mountain West I will approve the copy bid from this motion okay motion and a second any discussion all in favor say I those opposed thanks okay motion
132passes all right next up is the Bowen Young musicians Festival request to wave the facility use fee Madam Vice chair members of the board I'd recommend that you wave the fee all right I need a motion for the Bowen Young Musicians Festival to wave the facility use Fe so okay I have a first a second second any discussion yes I have I have some questions I was kind kind of surprised that the organization was not here to answer the questions because my questions are did they do this last year yes where did they do it at Evon Middle School I didn't see in any of the agendas from last year where it was approved by the board did they did the school district waved the fees last year I didn't see it in any agendas
133from January all the way through the end of 24 where it was approved by the board to wave I can't remember where it was waved if it was done ahead of time just because of the student participation or if it was done they're a 5013c and I've went on to their website and I've noticed they've if their website is updated they've gotten about 8% of their goal for for donations I don't see any active sponsors for this year I saw them for last year and I only saw 8% of their goal of $1,200 met so my question is is what are they doing you know to raise funds you know for expenses such as this that's my only question and obviously they're not here to answer that question so until that's answered I'm not I
134personally will not approve it good vote okay anyway that's why all right all in favor I okay those opposed I I okay motion carries all right first reading approval for the ef- R-1 meal charge policy regulation efca health and well wellness policy Madam Vice chair members of the board um part of our our uh Food Service program this year was audited by Wii Department of Ed and during that audit audit there was recommended policy changes and this is what our team and their team came up with so this is a change to policy I think you can see it at the top um efca on first reading um we will recommend as again as a partner with wde and uh Our Food Service uh that we approve this at first reading you'll get a chance
135to see it again next month at second reading um but uh this is just updating the policy as according to what the state requires all right you let to get that right I need a motion to approve first reading ef- R-1 meal charge policy regulation do I have a motion so Mo second second that motion okay any discussion all in favor say I I I those opposed all right motion carries and then lastly the bus excess request there's one more we're going to I there's two policies there there's uh EF R1 so Madam Vice chair members of the board this is a regulation typically regulations don't need to come before the board it allows us to kind of flip them and and uh more of a procedural than a policy but we felt this was
136important again because this was put together with uh support from WD and our local for food service group what this deals with is Mill charge policy what we allow and what do we do if someone doesn't pay their bill and um a lot of these requirements that see in here State requires so we do have a very generous is probably better way to say liberal a generous policy in terms of how we deal with our students when they don't have money to pay for their meals we never deny a student from eating and we work very hard to uh work with parents to work out uh payment and we've had some uh very nice donors that have helped us with some of those balances in the past but the expectation is if you eat a
137lunch you pay for a lunch and we account for it that way this policy is what we follow in terms of how do we deal with students who have a balance okay how much goes into how much is the general fund Fork out every year on average 4 500,000 well the general fund that the parents don't wi the parents don't pay our general fund doesn't pay for that so it goes into a negative there a again we don't pay for that it stays as a negative balance until they graduate or it disappears um but uh paragraph eight does say it says bad debts are unallowable cost for d d d da the bad SFA must repay the school for we do everything we can so we don't have that balance so it's it is problematic
138we we chase some accounts for a lot of years the only recourse is when you graduate from high school if you haven't paid your balance you don't get a diploma you get a graduate but you don't get the diploma which is a gift from us that doesn't say that in the policy no but that's what we do at the high school in terms of that so it is it is a very challenging thing when you have individuals that don't pay and remember this is outside of free and reduced launch if they can't afford to pay they can fill out the application and get free introduced launch right so all right so I need a motion to approve the efca health and wellness policy Mo to approve the fr1 okay do I have a second second
139that motion okay I have a first and a second any discussion Madam chair if I may is it okay John do you know how much we've had to pay in the past not not off but there's been something from the general fund not paid out have but again I go back to the policy specifically States it comes from the general funds in the end well I know that but the policy probably ought to be written if we don't take it from the general funds if we take it from somewhere else I have a feeling that if we can't find another source that's the only place it can come the bottom line is if we're paying up front we're going to take the hit unless we can find ways to get it paid for so no
140I understand all of that it's how the policy is written is what my point is and I think it has to be written that way because if we did put in there that no General funds could be allocated we may not be able to solve some of these hard cases again our uh schools take great pride in keeping those debts as low as possible but even that we're not going to let a student not eat if they don't have money in their I I understand all that I I agree with that I agree with that so all right those in favor and any opposed okay the motion carries all right and then lastly bus excess request Madam Vice chair members of the board um I think you could read the uh Memo from Travis they
141recommend that you access those buses all right I need a motion to access the buses so mov second second okay I have a first and a second any discussion I have questions so where these buses do they get towed to the scrapyard you know what's the cost associated with that um I mean there's obviously cost involved in that is it part of the in included in your budget you know do you budget for I mean cuz clearly it take a bus to the you know where do you scrap at gy service or whyoming Fab or I mean what what do you do with it and how much does it cost the market so the two that I have on here currently the first one the Dera Grant one we took to Wyoming fat mhm the
142way it must be destroyed is we have to cut a hole in the engine block we have to cut the frame so it has to be determined to be completely disabled so do we pay y only have to do that nope you do that they did it for us it's kind of like a mutual deal you take our bus and cut it up for us cuz they have to sign a federal document saying as a dismantler okay that they've dismantled that bus they have to submit photos so they so they scrap it and they get the money for the metal and all that stuff yeah and they don't charge us okay that bus was running when we took it down there it's part of the D grant that it had to be running to qualify
143okay so we basically drove it down to him and said so there's no cost got it the non-running ones if we take it to scrap we'll just tow it down ourselves there'll be no cost in that if we get anything for metal weight we don't really get to capture that money andan John could correct me we don't goes right to the state so with that one that's why I have it on there is we could either use it in our district as a training aid some of the other districts have started doing things where they took them over on their side they invite the fire department to come over cut them up a little bit do some training we can let drivers do training climing out windows doing things like that okay but normally if
144the bus runs we can Surplus it we put it out people can bid on them but we don't get a capture any of those the money goes to the state but you can sell them we can sell them there is an obligation that we have to go and get as much as we can I mean whether it's a taxpayer is local or is state is is irrelevant so we do have to go after that so it's not like we you just hey take our bus off our please but okay stay captured for where like that one's non running we can't really capture much money off well for us it's grater is a training aid and then in the long run we would end up just taking it to the scrapyard good okay thank you all
145right all those in favor okay any opposed okay motion carries all right board Round Table anyone was the uh weren we going to have a presentation from Hayden Peak Academy tonight was that take it off the agenda I think it was I saw on the agenda this morning leas agreement yeah Hayden Peak leement so what happened to that yeah that was a consent agenda item yes okay that was so uh the lease agreement was extended to Hayden Peak so that was the rental agreement so we did that in consent that passed right off right okay any round table from anyone if not I need a motion to adjourn move adjourn Madam Vice chair second second okay I have a motion in second all in favor any opposed motion carries we are adjourned just for theair