001Okay, I'm going to call the meeting to order. Start with roll call. Director Assad Lucas here. Director Batiselli here. Director Goldstein here. Director Marsh Holen here. Director Potter here. Okay. I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Second. Director Assad Lucas. I. Director Batistelli. I. Director Goldstein. I. Director Marsh Holen. I. Director Potter. I. Okay. Rise if you're able for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. Superintendent update. So, I just shared with you all fairly extensively during the work study session where we stand in our advocacy efforts at the legislature uh to secure funding in future school years. I think at this point
002we have a pretty good handle on where things will stand for 25 26 or at least a floor. So that's helpful and it aligns well with the assumptions we've been making in our assumption in our budget plan that we rolled out before spring break. And then talking just a lot about some of the budget u work that remains ahead. There are still a number of folks that as school principles develop budgets will be informed later this week and into next week about whether they're returning for next year or not. So it remains a really stressful, hard, difficult time. There's lots of pent up stress in lots of our buildings about will I need to find another job or not for next year and we regret we were in that spot. Um but I am grateful
003for how our system uh on the staff side has been working through that really challenging time. So nothing to add beyond that here in this part of the meeting. Thank you. Board of Education comments, recognition, awards and vision. We'll start with Director Potter. Thank you President Goldstein. I will just say I hope everyone had a wonderful spring um break and had some time to recharge and um spend time with their families. I know that we are at a hard time with the district, so I appreciate everyone's understanding and patience and willingness to kind of come together and support one another and I hope that we can continue um behaving in this way as we move forward through additional tough times. Thank you. Thank you, Director Marsh Holen. Thank you. Um, yes, I hope everyone had
004a great spring break and um, thank you as always to our teachers and our staff during uh, the weeks of CAMASS. I know how um, hard it is and um, I have a stressed out child as I know we have um, students that you know really take that to heart. But I also had a kindergartener that got to cheer on the rest of the school so he was pretty excited about that. And I just think a lot of that goes into what our staff um does to support our students during this time. So I'm always very thankful for that. Um and thank you to everyone that came to the capitol to join us um to advocate and have really frank discussions on school funding um because the way Colorado funds school is not um acceptable
005and we need uh very big changes done at the state level. And I want to thank district staff for their continuous and tireless work um to advocate in funding for our students. Thank you, Director Batiselli. So, I will start uh with a couple of highlights. It's National Poetry Month, so yeah, um if you're doing anything with poetry in your classroom, I'd love to hear about it. Um, the second thing I wanted to share is that I did visit the um, Glacier Peak Elementary School, which is always near and dear to my heart because that's where my son went to elementary school through fifth grade. Um, and uh, it was a bit of a heavy meeting because it was taking place during the um, budget news leadup. Um, so, uh, there were still some wonderful things
006to share, uh, and I would like to share those with you all here. As far as the great things Glacier Peak is doing, the employee morale at Glacier Peak is high. Um and I think this is a testament to um Jenna's Gina Jenna Gina Gina's approach to um to working with her faculty where she gives them some options to so flexibility in what they want to learn about and how they want to learn about it. Um and uh I think we she also wanted to celebrate her special teachers specials teachers whom she really loves. She has a fantastic music teacher named Anne. Um they were responsible for Glacier Peak's first drama uh production play produced last semester which I went and watched and it was adorable. Um and they were also she also has a
007new computer science teacher who's phenomenal. I think she said he used to work with uh in rock with rockets in some way. I think she called him a rocket scientist. I don't know if he really is or if he just sounds like a rocket scientist, but he's been doing some wonderful things with computer science at Glacier Peak and she just wanted to celebrate them. So, I thank her for taking the time out to visit with me. I contacted her beforehand and I said, "We're still good for this meeting, right?" Um because I wanted to be respectful of the the situation. Um, she also mentioned that they love to take a sort of inquiry based approach to math. And I wanted to express how much I love that approach because it looks at math not as
008something that you just memorize, but something as you you learn about so that you can accomplish something with, right? And I had a hilarious situation at Lowe's which really kind of uh cemented this for me because um the woman didn't understand what two feet looked like and she was trying to charge me for a 16ft piece of rebar and I finally looked at her and I said I'm 5 foot. This is two feet. But I mean, I think that kind of goes to show that math when taught in the abstract is when taught away from the situation in which you might use it makes it really impossible to learn how to apply it to real situations. So, I just wanted to celebrate Principal Costa for doing that with her students, trying to make math tangible
009based on real world problems because um I think there's a real need for it. Uh what I would like to also say to the faculty that we're losing is um you know this is my perception is that this is a state funding issue. This is not due to anything that the faculty have done on their part. Um if we could keep them all we would keep them all. Uh and all of these losses are we're no longer I think trimming the fat. we are cutting into muscle due to the situation that we've been placed into. Uh so I just want to send out uh you know my heartfelt um sadness that those positions are being cut um and the fact that we've been put into a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
010So thank you. Thank you, director of South Lucas. Good evening. Um yes, I hope everyone had a nice spring break. Um few things I wanted to address. First is, you know, these losses. Um letting go of our educators is not just positions, but these are relationships that we're losing and um that our kids are losing, that families are losing. And um relationships matter. And this is really impactful for um everybody involved. And and again it is really frustrating [Music] when try advocating and um you know trying to get people to understand to that they need to fund education um at our state level and pushing back against that. And so again, I want to thank you, Chris, for all the work you've done with in that area and continue to do. Um, and I know
011many of our educators see that too. And so, thank you. Um, another thing I wanted to talk about is there was a comment made at the last board meeting about that not helping our students achieve, especially in lowincome areas. And um you know again money um makes a difference. Relationships though make a huge difference. And as a parent of children who have attended title schools since my oldest has been able to attend and who's a senior at Thoren High this year. um those test scores aren't always reflective of what's happening um in those relationships. And so I I wanted to share about, you know, personally with my daughter who has just signed on. She um to go to CU in the honors program there. um you know is graduating top of her class in the
012IB program at Thoren High. Again, has only attended title schools. Um and I would like I would like to take credit and say because of my parenting skills, but it definitely is not that. Um I mean maybe the yelling of reading and doing homework, but um her teachers. It was her teachers. It's the relationship she had with her educators over the years that helped her be successful. Um, and so, uh, so yeah, so in those low-income areas, educators matter as anywhere because they help our kids be successful. You know, I know many students from Thornton High that have gone to Princeton, full ride scholarships to Princeton, full ride scholarships to um School of Minds to University of Chicago, Boston, you know, and also kids who have gone through Bowman and trade programs from Thorne High
013that have signed on with 70 $80,000 salaries, graduating high school. um in their trade industries. So, a lot of great things happen. The last thing I really I wanted to address is I've had to address this before and I feel like it might be time to address it again and it's an area that wish we could move past, but um it was also brought up at the last board meeting about concerns with bathroom use with um transgender students. or individuals. And as I've oh my gosh said countless times. So I am a certified offender therapist through the state of Colorado through the sex offender management board. Been doing this for much longer than I would like, but about 17 years now, 18 years. And never ever have I ever had a client, we've had hundreds,
014probably close to a thousand plus any of my colleagues in the field um that have ever had a an identified as transgender offend in a bathroom. It's not a real thing. However, I will say based off the cases that have come across my desk, the um what I've seen, what I've heard, what colleagues have shared, cases that we collaborated on. I, and this is my stuff, I will not send my boys into a men's restroom unsupervised because the most common offenders in bathrooms are cis, white, straight men, and that's what the data shows. So, again, I will continue pushing back against this because this is my area of expertise and it is not real. And um I I I wish we could move past it and focus on the issues at hand such as lack
015of funding in education and making sure our kids are getting what they need to be successful in life and past school. So thank you so much and I hope everyone has a great evening. Thank you. All right. Uh I too was down at the capital on March 20th. Um I started at the train station over here in East Lake and the train was full right away with red and um we were joined you know there were members of the legislature there there were members of CASBY there were members of case there CA and you know we're all from the three different types of um groups that represent public education and we all are tell saying the same story we need to do something about funding um I also got to go to a couple the
016unified basketball games that I I went to North Glenn High and I think I I went to the Northland Thorn for the last meeting, but then I was at another one at North Glenn High just because I had to go pick up my son and it was against the Northland Police Department and it was the cutest thing because they whipped the police department like 80 to 20 or something like that. Um but anyway, um it was really good to watch. Um I went to the Ams County Mayor's um and youth awards for Thornton and we had a few um kids recognized there and um I also had a CASBY board of directors meeting in the last couple of um weeks. I went and um I'm part of the 75th anniversary planning committee for the district.
017Um there's two major committees. one is the events and one is the history and yours truly is part of the history. So um I'll be collecting stories and artifacts on that. I also had attended um did my obligation as a member of the Broomfield Urban Renewal Authority and I went to um one of those meetings and um but it didn't have anything to do with any of our land. It was more if you know Broomfield it was the area on 120th um in the where the Safeway used to be in Oldtown Thornton. Um couple of negotiations including today and uh I had a chance to visit my dad over spring break, my 96 year old dad. So that was pretty cool too. So um other than that that's what's been going on. So with that,
018we will go on to general public comment. Good evening. The board welcomes public comment to learn about the preferences and concerns of the Adams 125star community. Each speaker will have three minutes. Please use the microphone and state your name and city of residents before beginning your comments. Please give any handouts or information you would like to share with the board to Lee Koko. A threeminut timer will be set for each speaker. Please keep an eye on the timer. Speakers will be informed when the time has expired and we ask that you end your comments at that time. Our first speaker is Thomas Scoville. Good evening, Thomas Scoville, Thornton. Mr. Superintendent, thanks for your 12 thanks for your Adams 12 community message. I was pleased to hear from you. You're angry about money. Angry may be
019useful to virtue signal to your union bosses and to intimidate the faint-hearted, but it's not persuasive nor a substitute for facts and logic. Remember the adage for lawyers, when the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When the law's on your side, argue the law. Otherwise, pound the table. You're pounding the table because you lost on a vote of taxes and have a parsimmonious legislature. This won't help your budget. You have votes of people who agree with you and intimidating others is not going to bring more votes your way. So, how do you get more votes? Well, you might try pleasing the people that did not vote your way. For one, you should you could support measures popular among the targets of your anger, like those people that like Taber and tax cuts for
020seniors, for instance. I could be more generous elsewhere. Um, if I if I if I get tax breaks, I could be more generous elsewhere, but you seem not to care. School policy is another area like this one here on gender with folks in Washington now interested in protecting girls. You should be too and failure could cost you money. So, I look at your gender policy guidelines and they're awful and should be rescended because you would deny parents authority over and information about their children. You would do this without due process and without any information about the parents. You would encourage girls, you would endanger girls by forcing them to compete with larger and stronger boys. You would deny girls safety and privacy by forcing them in their undress to share showers, locker rooms, and restrooms
021with boys in their undress. And on school trips, you would force girls to share bedrooms and beds with boys. Your policy is risky for girls and is a bad way to earn more votes. Do not destroy the hopes and dreams and hard work of girls. Appreciate the taxpayer. Teach literacy and numeracy. Respect parents. Protect girls. Oh, one more thing. Your time has expired. Our next speaker is Keith Mains. Uh, moving on to Vicky Quintail. Quintile. Yes. Sorry. Okay. Sorry. I just got back from the dealership and I was there the entire day, so I didn't even get to write anything. Um, my name is Vicki. I have 30 years experience working with children. I worked in the school district at special ed. I ran a daycare center. I ran group homes. Um, and every child
022that I've ever worked with still is in my heart, especially my niece, who is just the most adorable, intelligent, wonderful kid you'll ever meet. Um, of course I'm biased, but I also have the other side of the coin. I have a very diverse family and friends and I am here to speak on behalf of all the children and adults that are in my life and in our school district right now. They are being hurt by every policy that is being pushed. We need to stop pushing the policies and come from a place of love, understanding, and welcoming, which is what people preach, but it's not happening. I love every child that I have ever worked with and I remember everything every experience that I've gone through with this school district in the past. And I'm
023sorry I'm way out of uh so I just want everyone to give safe spaces to these little girls and um keep them safe and focus on education like math and science and everything that we should be focusing on and not focusing on the policies that we are pushing. When you push these radical policies of boys in girls sports and things like that, you're not just hurting the children like my niece who would be fearful and she's so shy. She would just be devastated if she had to fight against a male in a sport or have a male in the bathroom when she's experienced her first period. It would be traumatizing. You're not just hurting those kids, but you're hurting the entire LGBT community because those people, majority of them do not agree with these policies
024that we're pushing. Um, I have a brother or not a brother. I have a cousin that is transgender. He transitioned when his mom died. Bad time. Um, my best friend's uh daughter just got out of a transgender relationship. My other best friend had to tell me when we were a child that um her brother was gay and I just said, "So, um, it's not a problem. It's not a problem for the general population. And it wasn't a problem until we pushed this agenda. We cannot keep doing this. You're destroying the exact people that you are saying you're trying to protect, the LGBT community and the children. If you want girls and women to have safe spaces, we can't do this. We need to be understanding. We need to listen to our kids and let's trust
025that our kids know what they're talking about. Let's trust that our kids can make decisions about their own body without anyone persuading them or telling them to question their gender. And since I didn't write anything down, that's about it. But as I said, I come from I I welcome and love every single person that has entered my life. My son's girlfriend has four moms. I love them all. I don't want them to be hurt by these policies either. And pushing the this is pushing hatred and fear against the LGBT community, and it needs to stop. And thank you for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Joanne Windholtz. Thank you. I'm Keith Mains. I'm uh from Thornon. I'm speaking in opposition to the confused, self-contradictory, and dangerous Adams 12 policy that allows boys and
026young men to enter the private spaces of girls and young women, such as bathrooms and locker rooms. Kind of ran in here. Sorry. This irrational policy further allows boys and young men to participate in girls sporting activities. This policy is a serious abrogation of the privacy rights of girls and young women and is a physical danger to their health and must be repealed. The policy uh stems from what it's called the transgender or gender non-conforming students and employees. In a word, it's a word salad of contradictory statements. So what I want to point out uh they in that uh policy they they define terms and definitions. Well they they normally you define terms and definitions but they say terms and definitions below are always evolving and changing and often mean different things to different people.
027And so when you have a policy that is it's it's self-contradictory because you assume that people are going to follow your policy because they understand the meaning of the words. And if you say the words can mean anything they want then how can people even follow the policy? So it's a rather irrational position in the first place. Um so you need to have a rational policy. Um but gender is a scientific reality. Every single cell in all of our bodies are stamped with our gender. And everybody knows that if you know science, if you know biology, the wonder of reproduction, I say is is really just an amazing thing of gender having the specific organs. It produces powerful hormones as we all know. I mean, it's incredible the small amount of hormones that can make
028huge changes in a body and it does and it and it allows a male and a female to do what God has designed them to do. It's a wondrous process. the female reproductive. You could you could talk about it for hours and I've listened to uh the incredible uh beauty of the way that things happen a certain way and uh clearly that is not an an idea. Um that people can't have an idea and decide they're a certain gender. That's clearly not scientific. It's not rational. Um and I and I I quote this verse uh from Galatians 6:7. Do not be be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sws. This policy sews the wind and it will reap the whirlwind of gender confusion and sexual abuse. And it already has done
029that. I mentioned that last time I spoke. Um there was actual sexual assault and uh it uh in in a couple of cases. So um I appeal to you to um to reject that and uh what's the word? Change it back to something rational. Oh, Mr. May, sorry. I actually I made a comment about that during my comments before you got here. So, um, as I shared, and everyone's going to have to hear it again. So, I'm an offender therapist. I'm certified through this, uh, sex offender management board of state of Colorado. Doing it for 17 years. And, um, that's not an actual real thing. I've never ever had ever hundreds of clients, my colleagues who have been doing this for 20 plus years, all of their colle never have had a client who has
030been identified as transgender and have been in a bathroom. Um, however, what I did share of the hundreds of cases that I've seen over the years, um, the most common offender in bathrooms are sis, white, straight men. And so that is what again the data shows. So just to just to make that understanding, are you what happened in Virginia where a boy pretending to be a girl raped a girl? So that there that's not being transgender, that is having offending behaviors. Those are separate things. And so somebody who purposely who's a straight identifies as a straight or cis man or boy um goes into and that's what I'm saying. Those are the most common offenders um in bathrooms. It is not somebody who is transgender. that's not a real thing. And so I'm more than
031happy to have continue having this conversation with you later. You can contact me, email, call um my contact, even my work through the sex offender management board. You can look me up there um through my agency. Um but yeah, I'm happy to share all that information. Well, I would suggest the policy doesn't prevent that because you allow people to identify however they want and they can dress how they want and then that means they can use whatever restroom you want. So whatever you say wouldn't actually prevent what I'm saying. Our uh final speaker speaker is Laura Garcia Pasco. That concludes public comment. All right. Board committee leaison reports. Uh, is there a DAC report? No, DAC meets next week. Okay, thank you. Is there a fact report? There is, but I have to admit to
032fact that I was skiing with my kids during the fact meeting. Um, so I was unable to listen, but I know um there's a quarterly monitoring report. Um, Aaron led that as well as the ass acquisition and disposal. Um and then Margie and Bobby reported on deferred maintenance um and maintenance of plant facilities. Um and they worked on the monitoring report. Um so again, sorry I was skiing. Thank you. All right. There was a LRP pack meeting on the 20th and um we met virtually um because um staff was not or the well there it was it was that day we had the um big rally at the capital but we talked about uh bond sequencing bond sequencing adjustments. So the bond has been totally mapped out as to when things will happen in the
033next what six years maybe sounds like five six years. And so this summer um Horizon High School will have several projects going um starting um Bride Horizon's preschool will be closing. The tennis courts are in poor condition and require resurfacing. And um another um project that's going to be at every high school field are bathroom and field toilets. And so they're um working out the sequence of which high school when. Um STEM lab um has asked to postpone their construction until 2027. Um the Thornton High School design has kicked off and um there's a group now called the Thor THS FFB DAG group and that's a Thornton High School Future for Bowman. Uh they actually met today and I popped in for a few minutes um out of bargaining and um just the whole sequencing
034of how that's going to happen. It's it's quite fascinating because as long you know it's going to be done with school in session. Um and then um they talked about track uh the track at Thornton and why is there not going to be a track because there's one across the street at um the stadium. And then um it there was a question about parking at Thornton High and there's not going to be any significantly new parking but there will be parking. Um and um they elected a vice chair because the former vice chair resigned because he is an architect on the project. And we will be getting um quarterly updates on the purchasing and financing. And there's a um going to be a QR code link that will have all the information of all the
035schools that's going on on the website. Is there anything I might have missed? Oh, no. No. It was a good meeting. Okay. Next instructional materials presentation. Miss Brady. All right. Good evening board members. Thank you so much for having me here to talk about instructional materials. We have had a busy late fall and early spring making sure that we're ready for next school year. Our instructional materials um committee met this last Monday to make sure that we were ready for this board meeting today. Um, as you know, our instructional materials review process is aligned to board and district policy 6230. And um, that process requires that we look to make sure that any materials that we're adopting is aligned to the Adams 12 um, curriculum and also aligned to the Colorado academic standards. And then
036this um committee that comes together is a multi-shareholder committee that follows that policy and then makes a recommendation to you all um using a consensus model to make sure that um those materials are ready for board approval. So our committee again like I said met Monday. Um, we're coming together to you to let you know that we had a strong consensus on all three of the material sets that you're going to hear about today and that we're recommending that all three move forward. And we'll talk a little bit about each of those here in the next few minutes. So, um, the three that we looked at is for math, illustrative math. And while um we are not going to be implementing this one this next fall, we do want to go ahead and have it
037approved because we are going to be working with our elementary principles on readiness um to be prepared for implementation in the 2627 school year. So, we want to be able to pull some resources and work with the vendor in advance of that implementation so that we can start to, like I said, work with our elementary principles, work with our coaches, work with our instructional leadership teams to really be prepared for that implementation in the following year. The other two are both secondary language arts um resources. One is my perspectives which is by Savas and it's our middle school curriculum that we've been looking to implement and then the second is a um AP resource for AP laying in high school which has already been approved um by one of our schoolbased approval processes but we
038want to get it district approved. So let's dig in a little bit. Um the first one let's talk about is my perspectives which is the middle school English language arts. We've been in front of you before talking about our middle school data which has been an area of struggle recently for us. Um we started this process of looking at middle school resources in November and we um went out with a formal inquiry to see what's out there um in the world of middle school resources. And we did that by first looking at everything that Ed reports has out there and is highly rated. And what Ed reports is is it's a um third-party resource where they you know vet curriculum and they really look to see is it aligned to the common core is it
039effectively rated um in terms of implementation science is it highly rated by educators in the field and they give um it a score based on red, yellow or green. And so when we um went out with that formal inquiry, we only looked at resources that were highly rated green in all categories by ed reports. And we came down to six resources. Those six resources were vetted by an internal committee that um included members from our district literacy team, all of our special populations, GT, CLLDE, our um student support services, and then we narrowed that down to a group of um three resources that we wanted to bring forward to an adoption committee. And then our adoption committee really looked at what are our values in Adams 12 and also our 6230 um rubric which we
040use in our larger committee and we um narrowed that list even further to the one that we're bringing forward to you today. We also as part of this process visited other school districts with those three resources looked to see what we learned about implementation. We also looked at some data around implementation and that's how we came to my perspectives. So when we took this to our 6230 committee, they knew that we had even though it was a pretty quick timeline from November to right now, they um knew that we had done a lot of due diligence to get to my perspectives. My Perspectives is not only um a digital resource, but it also has text resources that have lots of robust reading and writing options for students. And so our middle school principal group, our
041middle school teachers that were part of the adoption committee all feel really strongly that this is um the one that we're excited about. So you saw it got full consensus by the committee um and everybody's really excited about putting that one into implementation. The other English language arts option that we're looking at, this one is not for middle school, it's for high school and in particular for um a class that is typically taken by juniors and or seniors at the high school level. And it is the text um called ideas and argument. And um it's already approved at Horizon High School. So, it went through the school-based approval process, which means their school community um approved that it would be used in their AP language class, but we know that Thornton High School is moving
042from IB and potentially looking to expand their AP offerings. So part of the reason why we are taking this particular textbook through this 6230 process is so that as Thornton High School expands their AP offerings, they'd have the ability to um also be able to purchase this text if we approve it here. Um this is a really outstanding textbook. It talks about every time we speak, read, listen and or write that um we are it's an argument. Lots of contemporary argue um pieces of text in this particular um textbook. So again you can see the committee gave it full consensus here. And then our last one is again this math resource which again we're not looking to um implement in the fall of this school year. it'll be the following year out. But we went
043through a similar process with math as we did with our middle school resource. Um we had our committee use ed reports. We also looked at CDE's recommendations about what are highly effective um resources in the lane of math. We had our adoption committee come down to two final choices. They then um visited schools. They also had math champions, which are kind of math experts in the elementary lane um do a couple sample lessons. We gave feedback. We did a unit planning with um each of the two finalists and then we made our selection. And then you'll be able to see that um some of the things that we valued in the math space um that our Adams 12 values in terms of the resource committee and also in terms of our math champions in order
044to make the final determination um and how we determined illustrative over bridges which was our second choice. Um these were the values that we ultimately used to make that that final choice along with the 6230 rubric. So, I know that's super fast. Um, but any questions about any of these three selections that I'm bringing forward to you today? I So, was one of the math champions who worked with the M was one of them Gina Costa? Because I do think she might have spoken pretty highly of it. um she was one of our principles that was on the resource adoption committee. Yeah. And so yes, she gave lots of feedback in terms of which were our final two. Um and I do think one of the components she liked was that um the the application
045portion of it or the inquiry pedigogy sort of portion of it. So yep, you you caught that really quickly. So great. Well, this is exciting because we've needed all of that. I mean, how long have we had every day math? 20 years. Yeah. Yeah. So, we're due for our math resource, but trying to time it just appropriately so that we don't put too much on the plate of our elementary leaders and um also manage that with everything else that we have going on in the system. Definitely. I guess I can also add with the the AP textbook. I I looked at that textbook. I'm a writing professor by training. I taught writing for several years at the college level. And what I will say about that textbook is that it's very in line with the
046kind of writing that they will do in college. So it feels appropriate for an AP level course. Awesome. That's super validating. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay. Awesome. Thanks. All right. Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP contract approval. I will entertain a motion to authorize the administration to take all steps necessary to enter into an agreement or a series of agreements with applications software technology or AS Plante Moran ADP and related or substitute vendors for the implementation of Oracle ERP applications in an amount not to exceed $11 million one time with recurring software licensing costs not to exceed $1,400. $100,000. The funding source for the one-time implementation of the project is proceeds from the 2024 bond. So moved. Second. All right, Gina. Good evening, board. You can see that I'm here with um Greg. Mila couldn't be
047here tonight, but the three of us and our teams have worked extensively for my goodness at least the last year, but perhaps longer on this project. So, some of this is going to be a refresher and I'll go through it quickly or Greg will go through it quickly um because we talked about this at a study session back in February. But for um just public sake, what is an ERP system? This is our financial HR payroll system that the district uses to do all financial reporting, process vendor payments, um comparing our budget to actual transactions, um everything storage for anything HR related, benefits and whatnot. So, we are currently in phase three. No, we're through phase three. We're at the ERP selection stage. So you can see we went through phase one, two, and now
048we're in three where we have made a selection on a product. Before we did that, we went through two different um phases of work where we looked at a needs assessment to understand where is the district at and should we really even be doing this. Before we um came here tonight, we spent a lot of time looking at what is the purpose behind why we're doing this. And so for some context, the system that we're on is Peoplelesoft. It was implemented back in 1995. And so for just some context, I want you to think about the cell phone you use today. Um, how does that compare to the cell phone you used in 1995? You didn't have a cell phone. Um, so as you can imagine, the technology and what we can do with a
049system and how we use it has come a long way. Today, many of our functions are very manual, paperbased, and um we have a lack of integration between systems. We're using shadow systems. We have one system for our inventory that um we are we say we're holding it together with duct tape and um a prayer because it's on a computer that literally cannot be updated. It can't be upgraded. So, if that computer dies, we don't have a full plan. So um anyway, so that that is part of the the reason for why we're here today. Um it also in it gives us the opportunity to improve our internal controls, our um inter application framework and so lots of positive things that are in the future if we move forward. Um, this this picture, this little
050graphic right here, I remember when we showed it to the team who has been working on it, they went, "Why is everything red and yellow?" And so red means those specific areas when we look at what they can do, how we're using them, um, do not meet the needs of the district today. You'll notice that most of those areas are red. Yellow means it's got some moderate capabilities. We have um we don't have critical concerns, but we're not we're not meeting um best practices and we're doing so many things manually. Do you want to add anything? Yeah, I'll just mention by the way this part here was a result of a week-long engagement in December of 2023 to look very systematically at all of the functionality or lack of functionality in our current soft system
051and uh after after doing that it raised up this assessment. You'll notice that there are no greens uh where it's fully meeting the needs of the district. It's an antiquated system. We really do need to move on. And one of the there's a a couple slides here we want to highlight. One of those is uh Rob Kale with Oracle who we've worked with for a number of years. He pointed out uh that that you know um there organizations are rapidly moving away from peopleoft. This is something that Oracle will continue to provide updates for a certain amount of time but there's not much innovation going on there. They're just keeping that running for organizations that um still have people soft and haven't moved away to another ERP system. of critical note which we also shared
052with you when we met you know a couple months ago is that the the labor the supply of folks who can adequately adequately support Peopleoft is shrinking rapidly um and so most of those folks are either have already moved into retirement or or have died so we really do need to be moving on especially from that regard also I think it's worth noticing to say what's going on with other districts highlighted here Adams 12 implemented peopleoft in actually 1997. It's antiquated as we were demonstrating on those previous two slides. If you look at a number of our peer districts or districts of similar size with throughout the metropolitan area, all of the districts that you see on that slide within the last decade have either moved and completely implemented a new kind of modern ERP
053system or in the process of doing that. Uh so for us to be able to keep up with our peers and and honestly just to be able to do uh business in the in the 21st century in a modernized way with technology that's going to meet our needs to improve our systems. We have really got to move. So hand it back over to you. And when we were putting this together we did some research and currently there are 22 districts in the entire United States who are still using Peopleoft. of that 22, three are in the process of um moving to a new system. So, as you can imagine, we're one of that 22. So, some of the desired states that we have going into a new system is integration so that our systems are
054talking to each other. One of the primary areas that we like to talk about is our HR payroll system does not talk to our general ledger. over 80% of our expenditures are related to staff. And when those two systems aren't talking to each other, there's a lot of manual work being done behind the scenes to get that data correct. But when we're talking about forecasting pay increases or uh static, what is our salary and benefits, we're having to do a lot of projections on our end because the system can't do that for us. And while we try to be as precise as possible, having a system that's fully integrated does a lot of that for us so we can provide more timely updates and more accurate updates. Um, we also need to look at streamlining
055processes. Um, currently, you know, I think about we talk about this with our team. A lot of people for their personal finances use a product called Quicken or QuickBooks and that integrates with your, you know, your finan your personal financial system and connects to the bank and clears checks and clears deposits and our system is not set up that way. We do not have um everything with all of our cash transactions is done in a manual. somebody is sitting down one at an one at a time saying check 1480 cleared um for this amount. Yes, that's correct. And same with deposits. So, it's incredibly manual. Um and so that's something we'll be looking for to reduce that manual work and create some efficiencies that um can help us minimize errors, reduce the manual work, and
056increase our internal control and stewardship. Um so after this 18month exhaustive and collaborative process the district has selected Oracle cloud with as the system integrator. Um Oracle happens to also own Peopleoft which we're using. So a lot of the people that we will work with going that route we have worked with in the past. Um something that to note is um we will be the fourth metro district to choose this product and in integration partner which means we get to learn from what those districts did. We have partners in how how did you do this? How did you make sure that you had the best process in place? What lessons did you learn so we can learn from their lessons? So I'm really excited about that. Um throughout the project we have set up a
057structure and so we have the executive steering committee that's made up of myself, Greg, Mila, and Bo. And then we have the selection committee. And so we've we've really worked hard to have a collaborative process between HR, payroll, finance, purchasing um and it voices were all heard. And during the process to make a selection, I think we have a slide coming up on that right here. Those people weren't the only ones who were part of the selection process. And so we included over 30 members across all of these teams that participated in a week-long workshop listening to the presentations from a couple different products and implementing partners to to determine what was the best product for the district. and it actually ultimately worked out to over 60 people who participated in the readiness and future
058state planning. So during the RFP process, the Oracle product received 86% or a little bit higher votes as the preferred solution. And then from that, there were a couple bids using Oracle with implementing partners. Oracle doesn't implement it. Well, not they wouldn't implement him implement it for us. it would be too expensive. Um so we need to use a preferred partner and the team um unanimously chose A as that that piece. So as I said the uh final recommendation is that we go with Oracle cloud with as the simp the system integrator. I'm not going to spend any time on this but it's there for you to look at. This is what our timeline is for the the project should you guys approve. Okay. So, budget considerations. We um there will be some upfront costs
059as we go through the implementation piece all the way through go live. And so this is roughly all in a three-year project. Starting in the July time frame, we will have that's the upfront cost for the implementation that'll happen over that three years. The ongoing cost will pay for the subscription for Oracle software. um that will replace what we're already paying for Peopleoft and then we will we are expecting anticipating that there will be some potential not potential there will be some cost savings but then there could also be some red redeployment of staff and so we may have some staff doing things today that we don't need them to do three years from now where we may say you know what we we'd like to repurpose this staff to do something else. So that's
060what we're looking at for that plan. So as already mentioned, we anticipate the um project will start this July and end November 2027. We will work with our partners to have a change management stat strategy. Um this will ultimately impact every employee in the district because of the HR peril side of the house. Um and the um the team has already been doing preliminary work in the event that we are able to move forward. So the piece in your um opening talked about how we will pay for this. So the project will be paid for using the interest earnings on the bond. So, we're anticipating right now based on the state of what we're forecasting and seeing that our interest earnings are going to be a little bit more than 11.7 million higher than we
061had anticipated going into the bond planning. And that's the last slide. So, any questions for myself or Greg? And then Erin was a huge part. I mean he has led this project really well and so if you have any questions for any of us. This might be I I mean I think I know the answer but um so what I heard you say literally everything like all financial information everything of the district is held in the current system that can't even get updates. So if it crashes there's no way to recover it. Is that correct? No. So I I was sharing the example of our inventory system. That's the one that we can't update. The rest of the system does get critical updates and required updates for Yes. Sorry, I did not mean to freak
062you out. Um that was just one piece of the the reality we have. The the system itself is receiving required updates. It is not receiving any enhancements whatsoever. And so that that's so the other one is what's being held together by tape and prayer. Cool. Okay. But also to add to this, to make People Soft continue to work, you've actually had to It's sort of like the used car that's reached the point of no return and you've actually put more into it to buy a new car. Um, that's where we're at with this People Soft because you've had to hire someone just to deal with peopleoft issues. Correct. There. I mean, we have a team of people who help support Peopleoft. One of the um challenges we have every month with is with payroll. And
063if we did not have the team from Greg's side of the house supporting the payroll process, um we would be at risk of missing payroll. We have something happen nearly every month that is unique every month because Peopleoft was in um very much customized meaning that behind the scenes code was done to do something that it wasn't designed out of the box to do. And so we have random things that our payroll manager will be working on. Payroll, hits a brick wall, reaches out to Greg's team for them to go in behind the scenes and figure out what is going on to make sure that payroll does happen. Yeah. So from my perspective, the costs of keeping people soft are greatly outweighing adopting a new program at this point. Yes. And I we've talked about
064this a few times. Um this this probably should have started happening um 12 years ago. Um it's you know it's it's something that needs to happen but it's hard to you know it it's expensive. It takes a lot of time and effort and work and we've had many conversations about when is the right time. We are approaching a critical point with the staff to be able to support it. We have those staff today. We won't have those staff forever. Um hopefully they stick around, but it's a limited pool of people. People aren't saying, "Yay, sign me up to be a Peopleoft um support person." Well, and with the Oracle software flipping over, I mean, because we've had people soft for how many year? So like do you anticipate being able to then use this software
065for many many many years as well? That's such a great question. So um the Oracle system is cloud-based and they actually require updates upgrades to happen quarterly. You don't have a choice. Um with it being a cloud-based system, we cannot customize it. we can configure it and um we have to accept the updates that they push out every single quarter which keeps the life of the system. Um we we were actually talking about it the other day um I don't I don't want to put this out in the universe but it's a cloud-based system. So, you know, back when we implemented this in the '9s, I don't think we anticipated serverbased products to go away. And so, we were laughing about kind of laughing about what does that look like today? We can't imagine cloud-based
066systems going away um with technology changes. Who who know who knows? But, um I would anticipate that this is a system that will be around at least as many years. I have a follow-up question. So looking at some of the technical um and IT issues just in business in general, we've seen a lot of um cloud-based issues specifically in health care, right? Where like someone got in and shut down the whole system. Are there safeguards in place that you like make you feel comfortable that we're not going to be sitting here wondering what like how are we going to continue working or is our data at risk? Um and just for privacy issues. You bring up an excellent question. In fact, in in the IT space, regardless of whether it's an ERP or any other
067technology, um you know, organizations that well, like certainly Oracle and others who have the resources that we don't have to stand up serious robust systems, uh in in general, they can have pretty uh you know, pretty pretty robust uh security teams. On the flip side, they're also a much bigger target. most of these cloud-based systems. We did a a pretty thorough check of the security practices of Oracle cloud. One thing that gives us a lot of um a lot of comfort or that we feel good about is every year Oracle is investing approximately eight billion dollars in their Oracle cloud infrastructure and a very sizable amount of that is around cyber security best practices and and we had our cyber security team take a really hard look at that and it's one of the few
068vendors that we've worked with. It's like gosh, these folks really um would be kind of like at the top of the list in terms of very best practices uh from top to bottom in terms of how to handle cyber security and and just to be forthright as we all know there's no such thing as a system that can never be hacked. Um but we do feel uh that that Oracle really is kind of best to breed because of both the resources they had to spend on that and kind of the years of experience with some very um you know some some really robust cyber security stuff. But it's a great question one that we spent a lot of time talking about. So in on the same line here, does that mean that we will have
069the ability to free up some of our cyber security resources and staff or, you know, transition them elsewhere? Um, or are we going to continue having the same number because I know we deal with our own kind of cyber attacks separately from our systems, right? Yeah. So this this is not a significant reduction. In fact, it's it's probably not a reduction at all in terms of the cyber security lift for this. instead of all the data being uh stored locally in our data centers, instead we've got to make sure that we have the proper kind of integration set up from our network up to Oracle's cloud to make sure that that is secure. And so that's going to take some work and of course we'll be monitoring monitoring that from our end as well. In
070addition, in our data centers, we actually have several hundred what we call virtualized servers um that that you know a lot of servers that can sit in one piece of hardware and and there's a lot that goes into securing those plus the network plus all the devices and all that. It a K12 environment is really complex and and kind of challenging to secure in a in a good way. So, um, but yeah, we we feel good about, um, our HR and finance systems moving to the cloud, but we still have plenty of other cyber security to work to do for the rest of the network. So, it sounds like they have adequate things in place to prevent that kind of thing from happening. Do you feel good about it? Like, say, knock on wood, if
071something were to happen, do you feel like they're going to be able to quickly respond and help and and they're trained to deal with that quickly? Yes, we do. Um and in part of what we looked at, we had some pretty thorough uh conversations with them in terms of incident response plans. Actually, we talked about that with all the vendors. If there is a if there is some sort of breach, how do you plan to respond to that? How do you communicate out? What's the time frame around that? Who do you notify and when? And and they've they've got it down. Perfect. Thank you. Anybody else? Call a vote. Director Assad Lucas. I. Director Batistelli. I. Director Goldstein. Hi. Director Marsh Holen. I. Director Potter. I. Okay. 2.5.8 policy revision. I will entertain a motion
072to adopt the revised board policy. 2.5.8 revisions as presented. So moved. Second. All right. Mr. Sperry. Thank you. At our last meeting, we reviewed a draft of this change and I mentioned uh the desire to add one more possible exception and you'll see that in part A, which would be an exception from board approval, would be to implement repairs, replacements, or renovations paid for or reimbured through insurance claims. So, it's not It's replacing something that's already there. So, I didn't think the board would need to approve that. Other than that, I think the policy changes help to clarify things by defining property asset acquisition and also disposition and by providing examples for each. So, I recommend that the board approve this policy change. Okay. Questions? Okay. Director Assad Lucas. I Director Bastelli I Director Goldstein
073I Director Marsh Holshen I Director Potter I thank you and thank you Mr. Spar for all your work on this. All right minutes. I will entertain a motion to approve the minutes of the work study session and regular board meeting of March 19th 2025 as presented. So moved. Second. Any discussion? Director Assad Lucas. I. Director Batistelli. I. Director Goldstein. Hi. Director Marsh Holen. Hi. Director Potter. I. Consent agenda. I will entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda it consent agenda items D2 and D3 as presented. So moved. Second. Any discussion? Director Assad Lucas. I. Director Batistelli. I. Director Goldstein. Hi. Director Marsh Holen. I. Director Potter. Hi. Okay. Um, our next meeting is next Wednesday because uh of the offset of spring break and uh you can see um maybe you can't but I
074can see I guess um topics that will be coming up down the road and uh interspersed with graduations. We're getting to that point of the year. So, I don't know about you guys, but I've been here for 11 hours and I'm tired. I got I got a short break. One question. Do we When will we get the graduation schedule? It should be on your calendar. Great. I'll look for that. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, without any further to do, I will say we are journed.