001director Assad Lucas here director belli here director Goldstein here director Marsh hen here director Potter I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda as stated so moved second director Lucas I director bastelli I director Goldstein I director Marsh hin I all right rise if you are 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 thank you Lori uh I won't make extensive comments at a very high level but honest level the preoccupation that I and others have this time of year is around personnel and making really thoughtful decisions at our level about who's going to serve as principles and various other roles out of
002this building and working with our principes to support them and making similar decisions for their staff trying to create conditions where we're an attractive place to come through our negotiations process and we're spending we'll be spending more and more time doing that especially on the certified side in the weeks ahead and as you know Lori and Amir are part of our IBS team and we're set to meet again tomorrow night on a variety of topics including how might we find ways to reduce the number of uh teacher absences staff absences that we have on the use of temp leave because we're seeing a lot of increase in sub cost and the discontinuity and learning that comes when that happens so there's a lot of work around Personnel either individual hiring decisions or making uh working
003conditions and compensation agreements that can incentivize people to want to work here and then budget is just the big vehicle that helps all those things happen and there's a letter that I've drafted uh today that I'm having some people take a look at that may go out tomorrow to stakeholders in our community that just highlights the Big Challenge we're in in Adams 12 and it's not because of the federal government there's lots of worry and speculation that the department of AD may be dissolved or in whole or in part and that we might lose funding to support kids who are at risk or kids with disabilities from all the sources that we've been Consulting with it doesn't seem likely that will happen most of them believe the money will still still come our way through
004block grants given from the feds through some other Department to States and then the states in turn will distribute money to us we hope that is true but the big challenge we face is at the state level because of the State trying to deal with a billion dollar plus um budget shortfall and some leaders including the governor proposing that the way we pay for that is through from through some fairly significant reductions to K12 funding so I hope to send something out tomorrow about that and you'll hear a lot more about the why for my motivation to try to mitigate some of the reductions that the governor's proposed as Gina talks more about budget here in a little bit on the agenda that's it for me thank you all right Board of Education comments recognition
005Awards and vision start with director Marsh holen um okay well happy back from break everyone I hope they had a good break um I really enjoyed the last week before break was um hundreds day and um I liked at our social media had all the kids dressed up um my son wore hundred stickers that was fun um on the 15th I attended the um well we all attended the APAC pawow which is just an amazing event and um was really great to see um Northland I went to Northland High Schools uh the theater kids put on a theater camp for the younger sorry the theater students because they're high school put put on a camp for the younger kids um and that was a lot of fun and their upcoming show Chicago looks very good
006so I may have to go see that um otherwise I I think that's it thank you director belli I um I apologize I have a big long list of things it's my busy time of year uh I also attended the APAC the American Indian parents advisory Council um or committee meeting it's wonderful I just need to uh thank the committee for inviting us to attend and opening up their culture and their Heritage to us it's always an honor to be invited and it's always wonderful to see our uh Native students who are graduating um and to take part in the ceremony to sort of congratulate them I also attended the Frozen performance at Glacier Peak Elementary I think it was their first uh theater performance in possibly ever I'm not sure I don't know um
007but it was very wonderful and Charming to see the kids um performing that and a big shout out to the teachers and staff who helped out because they literally brought out an entire what is it one of those Lounge big lounge chairs and they their their scenery was very hardcore and I think they probably lost about 20 lbs dragging that stuff on and off the stage so a big thank you to them them I also attended the Westgate Charter School um I visited with uh the principal Sharon Collins uh and I got to see a few classrooms and uh watched the kids learn about a variety of different topics uh the it was the kindergarten 100 days of school event that day too and it's always very adorable to visit the kindergarteners there was an
008astounding amount of gray wigs and powdered hair and uh really surprising number of tiny little canes and Walkers that I didn't even know they made but they do so the kids were really leaning into it and having a lot of fun and um it's funny because kindergarteners were drawing pictures of themselves when they were older but they were all grumpy faces so the principal and I were talking like once you hit 70 you get to be as grumpy as you want to be so it's okay um so yeah I really appreciated her opening up that space to me and I also was able to meet with Sarah Shoemaker uh who is an assistant principal at at Prospect herge Academy but she was visiting uh Westgate at the same time so I was able to hear
009from both of them and um I got to hear the infamous story about how the teacher I think lost a class snake that the principal son found so yeah I felt I felt very much a part of the Adams 12 larger Community um the last thing I wanted to mention is uh I'm glad that our district has so far been shielded from some of the federal actions that are taking place but I I do do have an ask from UC Denver there they have a t prep program in the school of I think they call theirs Human Resources human development and education and their T prep program um has graduated 49 teachers who are now teaching in Colorado rural schools they are currently educating 77 more candidates um serving 57 rural College School Colorado school
010districts with four in partnership with four community colleges and unfortunately they did lose their Federal grant so um if without that funding they just can't exist anymore so that pipeline for Rural Educators which is desperately needed um has been lost and what they're doing is if you know anybody who has benefited from the T prep program or has benefited from any sort of similarly funded program if you could share your story reach out to and I have this contact information if anyone reaches out to the Adams 12 district offices I can get it to them but um wants to share their story in support of the T prep program at UC Denver let me know but the best way I can kind of depict how serious this is with the teacher shortage is that recently
011and this is entirely anecdotal I was working on a project at my job at CU Boulder in the school of education where I was going through a list of teacher contacts and there were about 6,000 science teach teachers on that list um from the Colorado and surrounding areas and my job was to just sort of test out how accurate that list still was it was about 5 years old and so I went through 250 of the people on that list and about one in every five were still at their schools so that shows you how difficult it is in Colorado from this one small sample to retain teachers and to lose teacher preparation programs on top of it that actively seek out non-traditional um folks to fill the role of teachers the T prep program
012focused a lot on par Educators in rural Colorado we can kind of get a sense of what a big loss this is and how um detrimental it is to Colorado So yeah thank you uh director ofad Lucas good evening um as it's been mentioned we attended the uh APAC poow and it's always I think this is my third third or fourth year attending I think third um it's fabulous I highly recommend it uh they do it annually and I mean it's just really beautifully put together and um done and so thank you to um our APAC leadership for all that you did and all the hard work and and um I know Shay Cox said she was there at like 6:30 or 7 a.m. and probably didn't leave until 8 o'clock that night yeah so
013um I also attended the special education advisory um committee meeting on I think it's the six I think it it's the day after our last board meeting but um it was really the networking part of it was actually a lot of fun um I was able to connect with parent even another a grandparent who attends my kids her grandson attends my my boys's Elementary School forn Elementary and this is the first time we had met and um yeah just a lot in common and we've been able to even connect since then and so it was really um neat but yeah great networking parents just getting talked to other parents um they had great breakout sessions depending on the topic what uh maybe you needed assistance with or questions for just more information about so they
014usually do those I think maybe quarterly I have to look back but um they send it out districtwide so if you see it definitely um attend if it's relevant to you it's very very informative uh as Chris said you know we engage in IBS and have another meeting tomorrow night uh I think that was oh what um before I kind of talk about what I wanted to talked about highly recommend registering for the five star 5K it's the last weekend May or April yeah um that last Saturday in April it is super super fun event um last year even with snow it was a lot of fun um it's just great Energy walk run roll whatever whatever works um and there's always uh really great special guests they're usually athletes that I don't know anything
015about then I get shamed for later because I don't know who they are by my husband but um yeah there's it's a really really fun event family involved schools will do Rally or uh relay um so yeah do not and make sure you register sooner than later so you're guaranteed a t-shirt um I have lots of my past t-shirts still so what I kind of wanted just to briefly touch on um is coming out of our work study session I really appreciate our Executives and administrators who attended to hear concerns or just even feedback from us about things that we've heard from other stakeholders in the system and just their openness to hear even when it's maybe not easy to listen to or hear or um you know maybe don't even always agree and that's
016okay and I think that's one thing I really really respect about Adam's 12 is we're willing to have conversations that maybe we don't want to have but we need to have and um we walk into it and embrace it and so yeah it just it feels really great to be a part of a system and a team like that that you know the common the common thing that we all have is kids and wanting to do better by kids and support kids in you know all the ways that they need so um I really appreciate that especially with just some of the chaos that's occurring is that we can be grounded in that sense you know with at federal state wherever we can be what we have control over is making sure we continue moving
017forward for kids and doing what's best so thank you everyone who attended thank you to everyone in the system we you know we wouldn't be able to function without everyone part of the system so thank you so last time we met we had just gotten off a plane and uh run here to a board meeting and then the next day I ran to the capital um where I got some conversations with some of our electeds about some of the concerns that we have about school funding and what's coming down the pipe um and then I've been visiting a few schools too I went to rockytop and um Lana the principal there took me around and got to see some old friends and meet some new ones and watch what's going on over there and and
018I was very pleased to see you can always kind of tell um kind of just the flavor of the school when you go into it and then I went into a an eighth grade science teacher classroom and she said to the kids do you know who this is and some of them actually said oh that's your mom and so they you know she gave them a little bit moment to you know ask me questions about what I do and everything and that was really cool um I did go to the um powow too and that was that was really an an amazing event I I I got there at 10 o'clock when they said it started but culturally I should have known better because they don't get going right away so I got to watch
019the whole thing kind of wake up and get going and then you guys all showed up and we got to you know we were honored and I guess I left a little too early we were there till like afternoon I believe um the principal Kate CLA were texted me she goes are you still here you won a prize and so I didn't ask if I had to be present to win but it was nice that they thought about that um and then I went you know we had our break and I just the other day Monday I guess it was I went to Century Middle School and I because know I just have random I set up visits or Stephanie gets me on the calendar with the principles and I don't go with any agenda
020I just say oh what do you want me to see well I per showed up perfect timing at Century um because apparently some students had written a grant and had gotten it to have a program and of all the programs that they had to choose from they chose a program called a seat at the table and it was about Martin Luther King Jr and they got to do two assemblies and one for the 8th graders and parents were invited and then one for the sixth and seventh graders and I was there for the one with the sixth and seventh graders and it was a little bit of talking a little bit of uh audio visual a little bit of music jazz music and and they related it to you know the Civil Rights era and
021what it all meant and they you know they basically went through the early beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement um and they culminated with uh Martin Luther King Jr's assassination and it was really cool um you know they had us up dancing and snapping our fingers and and the kids were great they were into it too and it was all about and and the principal was connect you know you could tell she has connections with a boatload of those kids and you know how she she and I talked a little bit and she said you know it's so important how we have connections with our kids and they do I mean afterwards after the assembly there were pockets of kids talking to staff all over the area between the gym and the cafeteria and it
022was really really special um and then I did the IBS with um Amira and I think that um pretty much sums up my busyness um the casby winter conference is tomorrow on Friday is anybody else going I'll represent and uh I think it involves going back down to the Dome and and then also just um talking with board members from other places so on that note I will go on to board committee liaison reports uh what did I skip oh public comment I'm sorry okay next on the agenda general public comment do we have any I didn't want you to skip it though I know I can't skip it okay all right sorry okay now I will go on to board committee lays on reports do we have a DAC report we do um and
023because it's been one of those months I had to sit there and remember what I was doing three weeks ago um for about an hour and then I was like oh yeah um we and how could I have forgotten because Gina lanir showed up at that one and she did a wonderful job presenting to the DC on school finance and the Adams 12 budget and all the great things she and Aaron do to keep us uh above ground you know keep our nose clean and all that good stuff so um she did a pretty darn good job trying to explain School Finance in Colorado in 45 minutes um I think that deserves an award actually uh we received lots of great questions from people on the Dak committee about how it works and a lot
024of it sort of people are very intrigued by the whole M Levy situation um after that there's a survey the survey that they've been sort of tinkering with and working on that Bo has been helping out with uh the participants tested it out and they offered feedback on that survey so I think the next step is to make those changes based on that feedback and get it out to principles to send to the Sachs thank you um LR Pac we met on February 13th and um I have the minutes right here so um our vice chair had to resign the vice chair of the LR pack had to resign because um that would be a conflict of interest because um he actually is now part of this whole process of um spending the bond um
025so that they are taking interest if you're interested in being the vice chair you can uh fill out a form we also talked about the North Stadium Bond project um because they need an HVAC replacement and then we started talking about the Thorton High project um the design will kick off in March and uh we have picked a a contractor so the architect's all the way done deal and I think I may have in my inbox a recommendation for the the contractor side that will be acting on very soon good yeah and then um talked about um some land acquisition around that and um we also um talked about some of the positions that are being hired for the bond hiring and um Talk about the summer projects that are coming up and then sadly
026at the end we talked about or we said goodbye to Tim dozel as he goes on his next Journey um and thanked him for his work with us so that's that in the nutshell okay then fiscal year 26 budget assumption update Gina and Aaron would you like to give us an update good evening Bard oh that's loud sorry good evening board um I know you've heard a lot about the um concerns we have with the budget some of these slides you've seen before we won't go over in detail others myself and Chris will likely add some commentary along the way and please stop me with any questions so we'll look briefly at the impact of funded pupil count a slide you have seen before we'll talk a little bit about the what the legislature may
027or may not do and look at some of our budget assumptions for fiscal year 2526 I appreciate you guys letting us come tonight to talk about this we thought it was really important as we start preparing for rolling out the school-based budgets that we come talk to you first so on paper our goal is to get the budgets to schools I think it's March 14th that last Friday the second week of March with the hope that the schools can turn that around by the um before they go on spring break we may delay that um based on what we're hearing from the state but that is our onp paper goal right now I think you all are very aware aware of why averaging is so important to Colorado school districts we um we really rely
028on those funds to help provide stability when we're preparing our budgets and so we as you know adopt the bo the budget in June we don't know our funded pupil count until December and we're halfway through the school year then so to make a big pivot without the um benefit of that averaging would be incredibly difficult and as Chris has talked about countless times when we're declining enrollment we're not declining neat little class-size buckets we're not losing 30 um fifth graders at one school those students are spread out across the district and across grade spans so it's not as simple as well you have 30 less students you need one less teacher unfortunately that's not how it works this is a slide you've seen before so the bars are our October count the the number
029of students from October count the yellow line the one on top is if you look at the far right side the those numbers that's the number of students we benefiting from for averaging so in 201 1920 I believe that amount was roughly 129 students and then when we look at 2425 our benefit of averaging is close to that 1250 um you can see that as our enrollment starts to we're still declining but as we start stabilizing the gap between um the number of students we're funded for and our actual account gets closer I'm not going to go through any of this with you guys I just am really liking to keep it so that the board and others are aware of the Contin budgeting that the district is doing throughout the year every month we
030do something around budget every day I do something around budget actually all right so first at the January board meeting I announced that the um inflationary number was released that was 2.3% which is um really pretty small compared to what we've seen in the last few years that will increase the base for all school districts throughout Colorado by 2.3% and so it will grow from um 8,691 point8 minus 19 19542 um every school district receives the same base the next piece we have that's a challenge is as you've known as you've heard us talk about even without a change to averaging in the form that declining enrollment piece is going to impact the district's ability to have stable Revenue we are looking at in our current budget modeling a decline of 83% funded students depending
031on what happens with averaging we could see a reduction of funded pupil count year-over-year of as little as 585 students or up to 1,65 four students if we go to threee averaging our funded pupil count year-over-year will be down 1300 students so you multiply that by let's pretend $122,000 it's a very big number year-over-year the other piece that's impacting our funding is we're estimating a decline in our atrisk students of just about six maybe 6.5 percentage points and the reason for that is in this year we have had roughly that number of students who were no longer Medicaid eligible and at risk for direct certification purposes the way that the state uses at risk for funding allowed us to carry forward for one year only those Medicaid those students who were no longer Medicaid eligible
032there is absolutely a chance that those students will become at risk again from a budget perspective where being conservative that they won't because we're funded roughly $1,100 per atrisk student and so if we inflate that number too high I could come to you in a few months and say we were really wrong so I would rather erir on the air on the C the side of caution okay the next piece um we have we have um calculated for just holding place what would a compensation increase of 2.5% look like and so our calculation is roughly 10 million that doesn't mean anything has been agreed upon that's just a placeholder we've we've put out there to share what that looks like from a budget perspective um the next piece we know that we have to increase
033the substitute teacher budget for next year by $1.7 million the current budget is a little over 6 million and it's forecasting to be well overspent this year and um resulting in US needing to increase that for next year the next piece we've got to solve for is last year during the budget or this year I'm already next year is already this year for me sorry um this year when we were putting together the budget we planned to spend $9.9 million with one-time funds and so going into this budget process we need to identify what we're going to do with those $9.9 billion because they were funded with onetime money and then the district is experiencing ongoing inflationary pressures um I'm sure similar to what households are seeing and I'm looking to Chris to see if
034he has anything he wants to add I'll just say uh one of the big inflationary pressures is probably the biggest hike in health insurance premiums that we've seen in the last 15 years around here as likely it'll be 10% plus we've been pretty fortunate for a long time to be in the 3 to 6% range so that's probably $2 million in itself we spent about $20 million right now to pay 95% of the cost of employe only uh health insurance cost so that's a big hike and then there are things like custodial supplies and materials cleaning supplies um that have gone up really significantly and then finally there are some things that are going to go up and we're trying to tease out do we need to allocate more money or can we do it
035within our existing allocations and a really good example of that are utilities we expect there will be rate increases for water electricity and gas perhaps for fuel but we're also uh doing a close look to see if we can pay for those increases within our existing budget budget allocations if we've not been spending all of money in pastur for those purposes all right so the next thing that we're waiting for as as a district as we look at this to the state is the economic forecast that will come out on March 17th through that we'll have some better understanding of inflationary and revenue pressures for next year and um I'm optimistically hoping that we know the fate of 1448 um we are aware that one of the the triggers that should pause 1448 has been
036met based on an accounting change that the um State needed to do really that it was a technicality not a change in revenue and so we're not sure where that will land um but I'm optimistically hoping that we'll know more through that forecast the legislative session ends on May 7th we have real conc concern that we will not know School Finance funding until late April or early or even early May and so that creates just an incredible challenge for the district in making decisions okay so I had to model a few scenarios because I have absolutely no idea where this is going to land so what you're looking at here the First Column we're showing the current total program for the district excluding the charter school institute schools within our boundaries um you can see
037that our current year revenue is about 39.5 million our funded pupil count was 3482 if we were funded on the school Finance Act of 1994 with no changes to it straight fiveyear averaging the 3.2% I'm sorry 2.3% inflation our funding year-over-year would go up $2,734 funded on House Bill 1448 as written no changes our Revenue would go up $3.3 million if we're funded through the school Finance Act of 94 but with threee averaging our Revenue goes down 7.7 million and if we're funded on 1448 with threeyear averaging all of these those House Bill 1448 are assuming the six-year phase in not the governor's 7-year phas in um which would seven years reduces our Revenue more we would see a reduction in year-over-year revenue of 3.5 million so I have a question so when you say
038with HB house bills 1448 does that mean that the triggers going into effect if the triggers go into effect 1448 is paused and we are supposed to be funded on the school Finance Act of 94 so do we want 1448 not to be paused it's complicated so the reason it's complicated I'm just going to give my opinion is the state clearly cannot afford to fund 1448 and so if we're funded on 1448 the proposals are to get rid of averaging and I do not show that modeling to get rid of averaging my recollection and Chris is he remembers every number I tell him and so I'm gonna he does um which is good um I my recollection is if with 1448 without averaging it's maybe a 8 to 9 million reduction year-over-year does that sound
039right I'd have to look it up that sounds familiar but don't quote me on that one and I can I can look it up actually I sent an email with with it today so I should know but I have run so many scenarios I can't keep track of the numbers without looking so because the state cannot afford 1448 we will be much worse off um until the state has Revenue to actually fund it so for me we're better off with the 1994 if fully funded we're better off with 1448 I don't know if you want to add anything to that Chris I'll just say there are so many other scenarios that you could stretch along this uh this slide one of the scenarios that's not modeled there is if uh enrollment averaging goes away completely
040and we've talked to you a lot about if that happens that portion of change takes us backwards $ 13.2 million so that's a significant one we're fighting our best fight to not let that happen but if it did that's uh the worst case scenario in a perfect world it would be nice to have 1448 and stick with fouryear averaging which is what they sold us a year ago I don't know that it's going to advance all the equity interest that they claimed that it would a year ago and that's part of the reason why we fought against it but 1448 with 4E averaging which is what they told us a year ago I think would be the best case fiscally it just doesn't feel like there's any plausibility to that happening exactly okay so here's
041the I'm going to try to talk up beat as I go through this slide um here is one of the possibilities that we may be facing so I'm showing if our school Finance revenue is down $3.5 million year-over-year and then here's a list of expenditures money out that is could happen so I'm I've shown the um 2.5% compensation placeholder the one-time funded what I didn't mention in an earlier slide is our allocation to Charter Schools we're projecting will go up about 2.5 million and the reason for that is they're not declining enrollment so their student count is staying relatively stable and their share on a per pupil basis for mevy override will go up as our number goes down then we have a placeholder for health insurance if the increase is 10% % it could
042cost roughly $2 million and then the substitute teach our budget so our total expenditures to solve for is around 26.1 million leaving a funding gap of nearly 30 million this list as you can see does not include any other inflationary pressure items that the dist that will put pressure on the district for this year so key takeaways regardless of what happens our revenue is declining because of our reduced pupil count that is that is the bottom line regardless of what happens our revenue is going down you all are very well aware of the uncertainty we have with school funding so um as we learn more we will continue to adjust the numbers and um we will communicate out what we learn the the for me the best case scenario is the school Finance Act of
04394 the most realistic best case scenario um is the return the school school Finance Act of 1994 with either a minimal budget stabilization factor or planned spending out of the state the education fund um but basically we we are bracing ourselves for a funding Gap and moving forward with those assumptions this may be more of a Chris question but um how is the state looking at the pure per pupil is there are they two tracks that they're looking at the 1448 and the per pupil are they tied together is it going to have to are they going to have to go together can can they ditch one I don't know if that makes sense so I'll take the first crack at it and then Gina can help me out if I misspeak here I would
044say the fundamental change changes between what we have now with the school Finance Act of 1994 and 1448 that's always been contemplated to go into effect next year the big changes are number one the new school Finance act gives a lot more money to small rural districts throughout almost my entire tenure on this role small rurals because they don't have big economies of scale are asking the legislature every year for 30 to 60 to100 million more to support them lots of those places are paying teachers 35,000 bucks a year they're just struggling um to keep their doors open they're fairly consistently declining in enrollment and so part of what 1448 is designed to do is to better fund small rural districts a second thing that it did and I think this was a big push
045from the governor is change this declining enrollment averaging mechanism from a fiveyear time frame to four years the governor's had longstanding belief that that money is not necessary we keep trying to make the persuasive case that yes we do need that because you might lose a few kids in a grade level year over year over year and it can take you six or seven years before you can reduce a teacher but it reduces averaging from 5 years to four years so it saves the state some money there a third big thing that it does is give more money to students who are identified as a student with a disability a multilingual learner student or students defined as at risk which is usually a student who's qualifying for free or reduced lunch and the special education
046funding increase is probably the most significant of those three pieces because it keeps what's been in place for the last 30 plus years in terms of what we call categorical funding for special ed that's a pot of money that the legislature allocates for special needs pupils that then gets allocated distributed throughout the state it keeps that and then adds into the formula and allocation for kids who are um identified with a disability so those are the weights that it has it also what I think uh is completely contrary to the message about advancing Equity it allows school districts to superi supersize their override revenues even bigger in some cases up to 30% in terms of the basic override so we now have a number of school districts that are permitted to get up to half
047of what they're getting under the state school Finance act as additional money from their community and that's fairly easy to do in places that have a big property tax base like Denver and Boulder and it's pretty darn hard to do in places that don't like 27j and Adam 12 so those are the Highlight pieces for most districts uh and I can't remember where all the hold harmless uh deals landed because there's lots of deal making that went on last year to get some places like Douglas County and Littleton and Jeff Co to move from an opposed position to at least a monitor or neutral position there were some deals made that I think mitigated some of the districts going back and losing funding as much as first proposed I don't know exactly where that landed
048Gina may have more info on that there was a hold harmless provision put in and the governor has removed that from his budget proposal so um getting a lot of ir from those districts who made a deal to support it yeah I'll just add a few things that I don't know that we said in the presentation were certainly number one not alone in the space of declining enrollment out of 178 school districts in the state I believe we're seeing in recent reports that 138 of them are declining in enrollment number two there's an article published in the sun today that I'll get on to all of you but it quotes a school district I can't remember the name of that District off the top of my head that if enrollment averaging goes away I think
049they take a 45 to 50% cut in terms of Revenue the out east so it's a small smaller rural District um you know the kinds of things we're talking about here are probably you know just a small fraction of that so there are lots of people who are going to get whacked much more than we would if this goes forward but then number three I would just emphasize it doesn't need to be that way our state education fund which is a savings account to support K12 has over a billion dollars in it and I believe this is one of those critical times to draw from that to mitigate the harms that the governor's proposal will cause in terms of programming reductions and class size increases and things of that sort so I do think there's
050a better way whether we can break through and persuade him and legislative leaders uh to go a different direction that's the big TBD but we're going to let our community know about those possibilities and hope that we can turn them around any other questions thank you Gina thank you thank you Chris all right next on the agenda North Glenn High School Ada upgrade I will entertain a motion to approve RFP 25- 017 upgrades for compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act at Northland High School as presented so move second all right thank you you Molly I'll do a quick intro and then pass a baton to Molly and perhaps Margie I'll say uh as background there was some debate among staff about is this an item that we need to bring to the board what
051your policies currently provide is that if there are Acquisitions or dispositions of property that are proposed or planned by staff that if it's in excess of half a million dollars and that acquisition is not part of a approved Bond plan from our voters or mevy override plan approved by our voters or part of the the annual budget that you adopt in June that we come forward and ask for your approval for those items or for you to disapprove those items and in this case it's uh there's debate among staff about whether making property improvements and correcting Ada deficiencies whether that constitutes an acquisition or disposition of property in this case an acquisition of property I think moving forward it will be helpful to add some clarity to the policy so that we're meeting your expectations
052I ask that we bring up forward and talk to Lori briefly about this because I think on our end one of the key uh interests that we hear the board articulate and that we hold a staff is transparency we know with policy governance there's a lot of authority delegated to me and our leadership team to make financial decisions and yet uh we feel like there's some guardrails that are important to have and when you're making a significant new expenditure that wasn't otherwise planned we believe it's important to bring it forward and let you know and get your thumbs up or thumbs down on it so that's some background some why and after tonight I think we should revisit uh this policy language and just get more clarity about what things should we bring forward that
053are midyear changes and at what dollar amount with that Miss Molly all right thank you very much so North Glenn High School as you remember just a little background before I go into the what um as we looked at the I I'll just say the background around the ADA compliance issues were recognized in 2022 if you remember from there to now we planed a bond and North gland High School is one of the potential schools we looked into rebuilding so it looks as if we knew of this on uh in 2022 and we're bringing it to you in 25 that's because we had an agreement um that if North Glen High School was not selected for rebuild we would go ahead and then unpause and complete so that we could be fiscally responsible so that
054is what uh the background is let me explain the the what so uh this is through the office of civil rights monitoring plan that we have completed in May of 22 through the Colorado Community College system and that's the agency that is uh responsible for a CTE in the state and the funding that correlates to to that there are federal regulations um kind of behind the scenes that the cccs investigate and and they um visited Northland High School and found accessibility deficiencies so we are in need um of completing those we have it planned for this summer if this is approved um and those include things like the West student parking lot um some South ad ministrative visitor parking areas our toilet rooms on the second floor our health clinic accessib uh accessible toilet room
055our theater dressing accessible room um locker rooms the Little Theater guard rails and drinking fountains and then some UL assembly details so that is the detail that will be in this project it has been bid and is compliance with District policy 3320 which is our procurement competition requirements um we have the total project expenditure is $834,900 the uh funding source for this is Cap Reserve uh through our Ada reserves our Ada Reserve current balance is $874,900 so a if this for to be approved our balance in the Ada Reserve project category will be just about4 ,000 but the overall total balance um of capital reserve following this project if approved would be $24.26 million um I will also just share that um if we do not complete this project I do believe there or we
056do believe there will be a potential for either funding loss and or at a minimum uh ineligible to apply for other perking grants that CTE programs often are funded through in addition we would have continued accessibility deficiencies for all of our students in Northland High School comments or questions I was glad to see that this is being brought back up because from the legal standpoint I think it's just really important it's also important from a from a community standpoint that our students feel welcome a fully welcome in in this space um my father he has been in a wheelchair since I was 5 years old and so the um experience of a person with a physical handicap is something I'm very familiar with and it can feel really alienating to not be fully welcomed and
057embraced into certain spaces um and yeah I think it's great that we're we're doing this now I don't think this is a should we I think this is a we we have to for the legal reasons for the compliance reasons for the students feeling welcomed family members feeling welcomed and embraced thank you for sharing that director Assad Lucas I director bastelli I director Goldstein hi director Marsh holen hi okay all right thank you thank you Molly next proposed resolution Equitable funding of Colorado public education um I'm going to I guess I can make the motion okay I'm going to make a motion or ask for a motion to adopt the resolution supporting adequacy and colado public education funding as presented so moved second all right so sometimes these resolutions kind of need to be quick
058because they're immediate and relevant today tomorrow and maybe not two weeks from an now yesterday years ago this one so you know I have the advantage of being part of a network of um school board members being on the casby board and we talk to each other and you know we're that you know you guys have seen you know our resolutions that we you know that we as a organization act on in behalf of all School boards and all students and so sometimes we rather than you know we we we form coalitions I I guess if you will um to send messages of how we feel about what's going on at the state level sometimes the federal level and um the adequacy studies that you know we've talked about a little bit is you know
059there were two of them done they were uh mandated by legislation and they were they showed that we underfund public education in the state one said 3.4 Bill billion the other one said almost 4 billion or over four billion and so that's a big number when you look at the whole big picture of how much money does go into public education and so um this is an opportunity for us to be a collective voice as we send a message to the goldome of how we really feel so comments questions no I mean I agree I think this is one of those things that is well over and is really dire especially with Current financial um uncertainty in our state and um you know I mean even just reading through this and hearing it when it's
060like I mean our Educators there's such a discrepancy between teachers and then people with similar education in in educational experience or professional experience um and pay and it's just I mean these are people who are educating our kids and or with our kids eight hours a day and um propelling them for the future um at risk should be a third higher for at risis students like I you know I I think it's just I I think what's so frustrating for me is this is not a big surprise it just um I think there's many people who feel this way and so hopefully now that it's official and you know it's been assess and um these reports have come out that it's harder for people to avoid these conversations so this is really crucial for our
061kids and public education like Amira I wasn't I mean I I was glad to see this this resolution um the the thing I always get stuck in and the number might seem seem surprising to some who aren't familiar with the state of school Finance in Colorado compared to other states it makes a lot of since when we also learned other things like I believe last time I read Colorado was 46th in the nation for school funding so yeah the 3.2 billion deficit in one study and the 4.1 billion deficit in the other study makes a lot of sense um the other thing I would say is that this is a concern and I'm glad that Adams 12 is taking this proactive approach and pushing back um with other districts is I'm not entirely like Chris
062and Phil might have this Clause memorized but I'm pretty sure the state constitution says that we're supposed to provide an adequate education right thorough and uniform thorough and uniform so is it thorough if we have a $4.1 billion deficit or a $3.2 billion deficit and the other piece is when the mill Levy override and the bond were on the um when we were working on that uh I believe you shared a statistic Chris uh superintendent gdowski the formality is difficult for me sometimes I answer to both yeah uh you shared a statistic about the the dollar amount of investment and how it correlates to an increase in Student Success rates and I think about our concerns Statewide around students uh performance and and proficiency and I think about how much more we might see and
063might be able to invest in our students success if we had adequate funding so um I can't remember what that Source was but if you have it handy somewhere I'd love to see it again I'll dig that out I would just say um thank you for putting this together and thank you um Lori and for everyone that goes down and testifies um in my work I'm meeting a lot of lawmakers and um lobbyists and it I think for us constantly like it's unnown how inadequate it is and how um inequitable it is especially if you're in a county like Broomfield where uh you cross Sheridan and schools are funded very different uh for bbsd than they are for adams2 um and that's not known so I I feel like um I just want to make
064it a statement that I appreciate this cuz I'm I'm sure it feels like yelling into the void or that everyone knows it and you're beating a dead horse but I really think um continuing to have this conversation is incredibly important so thanks and I just want to point out too when Gina showed us the budget she gave us a number of 390 million and when you look at the resolution the resolution says that according to this adequacy study we we are underfunded what is it 210 to 270 million I mean it's not quite half or it's not quite double the need you know that we need but it's close and um but yet we're having to have a billion dollar refund to our taxpayers this just want to put that on the record anybody else
065anything else director Assad Lucas hi director B ell I director Goldstein I director Marsh holen I I want to thank everybody for their advocacy of what's best for our children next proposed Proclamation women's History Month I will entertain a motion to adopt the proclamation declaring March women History Month in Adams 12 F star schools as presented so moved second any discussion women yay ladies all I have to say is I highly recommend the book I think they've had multiple versions now of it but um good night stories of Rebel girl or for Rebel girls um it's just a collection of oh a collection of um stories of famous women who made history and changed the course of well history and what we know now and contributed in significant ways and just a great fun read
066but it's a good book for women's history mon what's that quote history was not made by women who behaved or something like that and all big decisions just think if we ruled the world you know I know um we're resting here tonight all right call the vote director Assad Lucas I director bastelli I director Goldstein I director Marsh holen I okay good all right on the minutes I will entertain a motion to approve the minutes of the regular board meeting minutes and work study session of February 5th 2025 and the special board meeting of February 10th 2025 as presented who Moved second any discussion okay call vote director Assad Lucas I director bastelli I director Goldstein I director Marsh holen I on to monetary report Gina is making your way over there don't go too
067fast because it's take me a while to read this I will entertain a motion to acknowledge that the board has received a monitoring report as of February 26 2025 for the period July 1st 2024 through December 31st 2024 of the superintendent concerning operating limitations policy 2.4 Financial condition condition and activities and finds the superintendent's interpretations are reasonable and supported by data that is relevant Justified and complete so moved second okay hi dinina excuse me did that motion what was the date of that first motion received a monitoring report as of February 26 2025 that's what it says in there okay that's not the one that I printed off earlier this week Sor oh that's today right that is correct it is it is correct now thank you okay so um we're back this quarter reporting
068on the monitoring report 2.4 as of December 31st 2024 so the second quarter of the year and I'm happy to report that we um have compliance across each of the categories so one of the first areas we look at is monitoring the fund balance and reserves and so the district and our charter schools are adequately correctly reporting for Taber and other um fund balance components this slide um shows what we're for casting as of the end of the fiscal year the the final um bar graph of our unassigned fund balance so we are looking at a fund balance unassigned of $18.2 million which is in compliance the board policy is not less than 4% and not more than I think 8% 6% 8% yeah I don't have that written down we also look at The
069District's cash position investment and liquid liquidity on page six of the report um as of 1231 the revenue in our governmental funds all of our governmental funds exceeds our expenditures by $ 61.9 million so we're um reporting good liquidity there and then another way to look at it in the monitoring report is having our liquidity above our monthly expenditures so you can see the um smaller portion is our restricted reserves we can't use those funds for other things those are restricted cash and restricted reserves the purple portion is our unrestricted cash and then that green line is our average monthly operating expenditures and the reason we're seeing um much better liquidity than I would normally report uh through December we'd be pretty okay but next quarter we would see a big drop off is the
070change we've told you about the state made and how we're being funded on the state's share of our school total program funding and so just as a reminder in Prior years we were funded in roughly equal installments over 12 months and now we're being funded those in um 9 months because then the remaining month remaining months will re receive our property tax revenue from the county so that has had a really great impact on the district's liquidity and also our investment earnings I changed my pages got out of order sorry okay so um the other things we look at is are we paying our bills on time are we collecting receivables in a timely manner and um we are reporting compliance there no late fees which is fantastic and then we look at monitoring our
071bond compliance and tracking of mevy overrides I had really good notes that I wrote down okay so I'm going to go from my memory because I clearly didn't bring that page with me but um we break out we we walk through the mevy override 5c spending and other Mills throughout the report and I encourage you to take a few minutes to read that if you haven't read the whole report already it's really good information and then on the bond portion we um keep track of the bond funds we don't co-mingle those funds those proceeds with our general funds or other so for the last Bond issuance 2016 all of those were spent as of June 30th so we don't have anything to report because as of December 31st we had not yet issued the new
072Bond and so I expect when I come back to you with the report as of March 31st that we'll have something more to share regarding the bond all right and so the next piece that's monitored is the audit compliance and so first the um auditors Clifton Larson Allen came and reported to you regarding our annual audit last December and the next piece that I want to highlight is we have one year left in our contract with Clifton Larson Allen before we need to go out for an RFP so our plan is to go out for RFP late fall early December we don't want to do it too close to the timing of the actual audit but in plenty of time in the event that the district chooses to go with a new audit firm gfoa
073recommends not to change Auditors more than um more often than every five years and so we typically do a contract for five years or one year with five renewals so that's where we're at with that piece and then a quick highlight on the quarterly financials so those were included in board docks for you these um financials are again as of December 31st and a friendly reminder when you're looking at the budget to actual that budget is the June adopted budget and not the January amended budget because this is as of December um to get a closer highlight of what the amended January amended budget looks like we have that reflected mostly in the forecasted column there may be some updates um for items that we see trending a little different than we planned when we
074put together the budget in December for the January meeting but that really closely aligns to the amended budget and from a highlight standpoint in the financials the general fund revenue is trending higher than last year and again that's because of the change to the primarily to the change the state made with funding our um State share and our expenditures are trending slightly higher to adopted budget um and by slightly I mean 1.3% and so not significant and those are the big highlights I have any questions Lor could I make a quick comment so the gist of this report is all about uh quarterly financial statements Where Do We Stand mid year I'm glad that we're in compliance there was some discussion that Gina just engaged in about independent audit and I've emailed you recently but
075I just want to say it in a more public setting that as I looked at a CDE report re reflecting on all the audits they received for school districts throughout the state I didn't read the entire list but as I went fairly deep through looking at Big districts in the Metro and I think I got through Douglas County we were the only one of those big districts that did not have an audit finding either in terms of our basic set of financials or the federal program that they audit intensely on a rotating basis and so it it says a lot about the exceptional confidence that we have in Gina Aaron and team and I just want to publicly thank you uh for doing an outstanding job yeah thank you I appreciate that and Aaron really
076does work incredibly hard to uh limit those type of findings as we shared during one of the presentations um that we made regarding audit there will be years we have findings um it it happens and and many of the findings tend to not even be Financial related and so but I I really appreciate those kind words yes thanks Aaron thanks Gina thank you both thank you both how many years has clipon Allen Larson done our audits you know that's in the monitoring report and it's many years I think it's 2021 oh no it's longer than that they've been doing the audits for I would guesstimate 20ish years and there there's only a few audit for firms that will bid when we go out to the market um and so it's um it's hard to change
077Auditors so something the district did the last time we went out for RFP is we required the audit firm to change partners and so and they did that I know when I said on the fact a few years ago that question came out I think it was around 15 16 years even then at that and so that's been like you know three issues so yeah it's been it's been a long time that they've been on there so good partnership yeah I'm going from memory but the last time I looked I think there were only maybe three or four audit firms that will take on a district our size nice okay director Assad Lucas I director bastelli I director Goldstein hi director Marsh holen I all right Prospect Ridge Academy kindergarten Readiness assessment waiver request I
078will entertain a motion to Grant the request from Prospect Ridge Academy to purs pursue a waiver to Colorado revised Statute 22-7-10 142a and allow the use of the waiver if granted by the state to be in effect through the duration of P's current contract with the district which expires on June 30th 202 is that to be considered as part of the overall consent agenda oh you're right yes it is but then there's no motion for the consent agenda or did I not see it so Phil would you be opposed that there's not a like a a more broad-based consent agenda motion to like do each one individually the Personnel report and the P piece there's only two so yes you may con you may proceed in that fashion okay that's probably the easiest path forward
079at this point okay all right do I have a motion so move second any discussion okay call a vote director Assad Lucas I director bastelli I director dor Goldstein hi director Marsh holen I okay personal actions I will entertain a motion to approve the Personnel actions as listed resignations and terminations transfers and reassignments employment and leaves of absence no moved second call a vote director Assad Lucas I director bastelli I director Goldstein I director Marsh holen I there calendar um next Wednesday we have Community engagement board meeting in North Glen High sounds like we came up with having you know our usual session with students before and what time will that six stud six students at what time six okay good and yeah because I looked at my calendar and then um I think we're
080just going to do some updates then for our meeting um because when we met we couldn't really come up with anything that was relevant and we don't want to meet for the sake of me so we'll get use that time for updates yeah two items uh that you could add for next time one is I really encourage us to have a discussion about that policy that I was referring to on the uh Northland High School Ada project and what are the board's expectations for unplanned unbudgeted expenditures during the course of the year when should we bring those forward so I think that would be a worthwhile disc discussion and then the second possibility is an hour probably wasn't enough for some of the discussion that maybe you wanted to have or would like to continue
081around things like student conduct Behavior professional learning and the rest so if there's pieces of that uh dialogue that we started but didn't finish or that you'd like to explore further that could be a good time to bring some people we might not bring the whole group that was here earlier tonight but we could bring a small group of them to continue that discussion if that's helpful and we will be meeting at North Glen High in the stem room there all right um then we have our March meetings and our April meeting our regular schedule's a little off-kilter because of spring break so we'll meet the second and third Wednesdays and I already signed up for the five star 5K get your shirt I get a shirt then my son has signed up although he
082doesn't know that yet um any questions comments or anything before we adjourn my kids usually find out the morning of as well but he had fun last year with your husband and his friend so and he has been running a lot more too so hopefully um he will have a good day okay we're Jed thanks everybody