Adams 14 Board of Education, Study Session, June 27, 2023

001thank you everyone for joining us and for being patient with us all um welcome to the June 27th 2023 study session which will be followed by a short special meeting of the board uh can we begin with instructions for interpretation for our Spanish-speaking audience absolutely thank you madam president buenos Tardes is [Music] thank you so much first on our agenda tonight is 1.1 the Adams 14 tntp progress towards goals Dr Lydia would you like to introduce this item yes Madam president members of the board thank you so much we have Miss Sarah Lynch here with tntp and this is part of the frequent progress monitors monitoring reports that you get we're going to include the entire year with the data that we have thus far because not every data at that point is here but

002I think it was a great year for us and you will see that in what is going to be presented so we're very excited about this and I'm going to pass it on immediately to Miss Lynch thank you doctor uh Happy Tuesday uh Madam president steam members of the board Dr Lauria and members of the Adams 14 team who are with us tonight and those who are watching also welcome to the members of the extended Commerce City uh Community who are invested in What's Happening Here who are also watching my name is Sarah Lynch I lead the team of TNT peers who have supported across all four domains a rapid Improvement here in Adams 14. we've been in every school in District spaces my role includes reporting out progress to you the Adams 14 board

003and to the Colorado Department of Education and to the Colorado State Board of Education as a member of the team at tntp I serve as the air traffic controller to make sure that we're being a value-add at all times and not taking or distracting away from the important work Happening Here in Adams 14. today my goal is to share progress towards our six major goals that I came before you I think in August to share after we had set them and tell you the story of our partnership this year and some things you may not know about the work that's happened on the ground uh preview and Dr Lauria has already mentioned the news is really exciting we're seeing tremendous progress in a very short period of time and I would name that it's happening

004much more quickly here than other places that we some we work which is great so as I shared our goals tonight are simple we're going to map our final progress towards goals knowing that some data hasn't been released and some is embargoed and I want to name the impact of key actions and deliverables we've been asked to work towards this year I also want to say thank you to every member of the community who's sitting here tonight it is not lost on our team how hard every single member of the Adams 14 Community is working to improve the experience of students and families here in Commerce City you're you're also working at the same time to protect local control and recognize that doing both at the same time can be incredibly taxing and difficult the

005hours you are working are long we've seen the hard work happening we know folks who are closing this building at 10 o'clock at night so just wanted to acknowledge that and and really appreciate being part of this progress as individuals the work you do really matters to the future of Adams 14 and to every single student who is enrolled and therefore you matter tremendously so thank you uh the first time I stood before you I shared co-created six major goals you can see them here at this point you probably know them just as well as anybody else because we talk about them a lot the goals were around retention of teachers and leaders who are meeting exceeding expectations task alignment knowing that the first barrier to knock down for students is great great appropriate assignments

006and getting those in front of them growing students using start and measure growth improving proficiency uh really third through 12th grade improving average daily attendance and ensuring that students who start the year here in Adams 14 not only finished the year with Adam's 14 but return next year as we work through this desk deck I'll pause and ask some questions and certainly if there are questions that come up along the way that you'd like to ask while we're in in that space please do the major headline is that Adams 14 has a lot to be proud of this year from the work done the team leaned in worked hard to work together and move data in the direction of these six major goals I'm going to start by sharing some facts about the work that

007you may not be aware of that have led to some exciting results uh the first is that 36 TNT peers have supported the work in Adams 14 this year one of the advantages to working with an organization like tntp is you have access to experts that live throughout the country when needed and so where additional supports have come in this year outside of the main team that have been on the ground in schools we conducted a very large-scale academic diagnostic it got us into every instructional space in the district folks reviewed 450 plus assignments for task alignment be led focus groups with kids with families with teachers and with school leaders um and we created report cards to help us with Baseline data to make some really hard decisions very early on in the work

008tntp is also supported with easy grants easy Grant support facilitation of PD and strategic planning in addition to the work we're doing on the ground in schools and with members of the ESS team one of the first needs I think came up in a second or third meeting I had with Miss Burke was the need for support around facilitation of PDs together with District leaders TNT Peters have supported 90 hours of facilitated learning opportunities for adults and the net promoter scores coming out of those sessions is very high if you know anything about Educators which you all do they are a hard audience to please 70 percent of the Educators in the Adams 14 Community said that PD was a good use of their time this year the other thing that really came up through

009the uh through the feedback we collected was that there was feedback asked for teachers really felt heard a few of the things teachers asked for and we're really excited when it was responded to was they wanted to see a video of Adam's 14 teachers teaching and used those as the launch pad for the learning and so TNT peers went out into classrooms and took videos of some of the most exceptional Educators in Commerce City and we used those in PD in addition we were asked to differentiate the pde facilitation by language and so we brought in additional facilitators who were able to facilitate to Educators in Spanish and really focused on the Dual language teachers in those spaces and that's probably where we got the best results in terms of feedback from teachers was when

010we differentiated in that way which was great as you're aware we've spent we spent a lot of time strategic planning and we didn't do it with a small group of folks we had 33 people who consistently came to six strategic planning meetings those included teachers principals District leaders members of this board and members of the extended Commerce City Community so it really felt like a collective effort and I heard from Jason malberg who is a is a very outspoken he said he felt a part of a process for the first time and that we actively engaged the community in a different way than he had experienced and he's been here a really long time so I respect him tremendously so let's talk about that process we created a vision and after creating that Vision we

011created a virtual listening tour what was interesting about the virtual listening tours folks didn't have to take a survey they could click a link on their phone and actually speak into their phone to give us feedback in both English and in Spanish we had 488 folks who gave us feedback on the vision and I think we got to a much more concise exciting vision for the community based on that feedback one once we got a little bit further down the road and started to have priorities and goals established we then went back out to the community to ask for feedback 800 stakeholders were involved in giving feedback on the Strategic plan and that number has actually gone up because we continue to elicit feedback at every opportunity to make it really a plan for Adams

01214 that folks see themselves in and believe in as important for the future of Adams 14. uh we had a central plan which means we pushed in significantly more resources at Central than in other spaces and one of the exciting work streams that we worked in this year was with the community engagement work and shifting to Community Schools work approximately 873 parents participated through 20 engagement opportunities at Central Elementary School which is really exciting Matthias is doing incredible work there and parents have really shared the experience to shift in their students experience as the year went on if you all are trying to keep up they're a little out of order and I wanted to name this because I think it's important I know you all are working hard to balance your budget the strategic

013planning work was paid for through a grant with the oak Foundation of six hundred thousand dollars the strategic planning work uh was at no cost to Adams 14 this year it was it was a gift from the oak Foundation in addition tntp supported the acquisition of 1.4 million dollars through easy Grant support which is exciting because I know it's being used to build out a schools team that's going to be very effective having met the folks that are working on that so let's talk about the work in schools and what that looked for and what that looked like this year one of the things we put in place was leadership coaching across all K-12 schools and so each principal in Adams 14 had a leadership coach and that leadership coach met weekly with each principal

014and part of the check-in was what you might imagine you do with someone who is like let's check your data what do you want to focus on what's going well where can we be thought Partners in the work to make things better it also included a walk through of the school and so we have a progress monitoring dashboard we know we went to 1 000 plus instructional spaces this year the reason we know that is because every time folks walked into a classroom they used a tool so that their data was rolled up into a dashboard and we've been really able to track district-wide Trends which has been exciting it's also helped as we start to think about more nuanced support moving forward one thing we've heard loud and clear from CDE and also from

015the state board is they appreciated the transparency the data systems that's that have been co-created here this year using the progress monitoring dashboard and a district-wide assessment strategy allowing us to track progress towards our six major goals it's something that um CDE is talking about with other districts in this work because they thought it was so effective I think the other thing that's allowed us to do is speak to the work accurately in a data-driven way and tntp has been able to get out of the way so Adams 14 can tell your story because the data is at your fingertips through our work with the HR team Partnerships were established with reach University we're really excited about that partnership we are hoping it helps build a teacher pipeline here and just to name Nathan's team

016has taken up this partnership and they're so excited about the piloting work that's going to happen here in Adams 14. it's really it's it's centering the educator that's creating space and a real inclusive practice that they haven't seen in other places so they're thrilled about that in addition with Miss Burke we established a partnership with one million degrees this money allows folks who haven't finished College to return to college and it helps provide in cases of emergency that may lead to someone dropping out it also helps provide books pay tuition it allows folks who have left both alumni and staff to re-engage in college uh we worked with Nathan's team to create the Ascend program this is a leadership pipeline program it's designed to take campus leaders or folks who are interested in being leaders

017in this district and provide them with an opportunity to learn some real skills and pitch a project to solve a problem here in Adams 14 and I was really inspired by the projects that participants came up with to solve problems like attendance one person was working on solving The Vaping problem in high schools just really uh collecting or fundraising for band instruments like it was a very wide variety of projects and people got to work within their passions as they did that work I brought this data to academic cabinet last week and I asked what was missing from our partnership and what they hoped I would say to you and so there are some additional points that they've asked me to bring to you tonight that are very exciting the first is that more students

018were on track based on the access assessment then were not on track so 58 of K-12 students are on track this year in terms of growth that's plus 17 from last year it's a massive Improvement in addition uh 1200 Plus hours of leadership coaching was provided by tntp directly to principals and their instructional leadership teams on campus this one is actually very exciting uh the third bullet point elg really looks at early literacy and is supporting the youngest scholars in foundational reading skills last year schools met one out of 21 goals or five percent of the goals that were set this year schools met 16 of 21 goals 76 percent of the goals that were set that's an improvement of 71 percent over all district-wide that's phenomenal Adams 14 exited 89 students from read plans

019that's a really big deal for a student in terms of their ability to be in classes that they're excited about and interested in rather than working on foundational reading skills uh in addition what we heard from the academic cabinet is they felt strongly that a more common instructional Vision has really allowed the work to progress quickly and it's been anchored in the Adams 14 student-centered walkthrough the big shift there is that when Educators walk into classrooms now in Adams 14 classrooms they're looking to see how are students experiencing the instruction is the teacher doing what students need those students who are sitting in front of them to master content are they feeling safe and are they able to be productive rather than focusing on what the teacher is saying it's looking at the impact on

020students which I think was really appreciated by Educators here I heard it from administrators across all schools and lastly we rolled out and installed lesson internalization as an expectation and provided facilitated practice across the district because of this we saw a significant increase in essential content especially in semester two when we really got rolling there so I appreciated the push from academic cabinet I'm going to pause there for a moment I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about our progress towards those six major goals now are there questions that I can answer before I do that yeah I just have a question the students who are on track for English language proficiency it's 50 are those um are those students that compose that 58 percent in dual language schools or are they all in the english-only schools

021that's a great question uh I I have to look at what you're looking at which slide are you on um this one this one here yes the first bullet oh the first bullet access um Miss Burke do you want to talk about who access targets well yeah I think I I know who it targets but is this data um just overall or because I know that there's a difference between students in bilingual education who are taking access then obviously if they're in an English only school then this makes a lot of sense I just want to kind of gauge where the growth is or how much growth Madam president obado board member Estrada thank you for the question unfortunately I'm not able to speak to this particular data set because I'm not sure exactly where

022we pulled it so I can go back through but I'm not sure exactly where the 58 came from so I apologize that I'm not able to speak to this one tonight I think it's district-wide so I think it's in across all contents yeah I'm just curious to see if it was if we if we're able to see how many students are on track and dual language or Bilingual School as opposed to the english-only schools yes Madam president members of the board this particular piece of data is across the district however we are seeing our students in bilingual schools are outperforming their peers as far as how fast they progress and so there are performing growth and achievement and then the other only I guess clarification um were the exited 89 students from read plans do

023we have like a total number of how many read plans we had of this I mean I'm assuming it's tons um just because that's how it is everywhere right but like do we know Miss Perkins we can report back after we find it okay just curious any other questions before I move on to our progress towards our six major goals um I have less of a question um I appreciate the the update and I love hearing about um the additions to the educator Pipeline and the programs such as um the 1 million degrees and reach University um what are we doing um so this is probably more for our team but what are we doing to communicate that with the larger Community like to know that these programs exist um because I I haven't seen

024anything except through like 1 million degrees is they had a big push with cozy and the department of higher ed do you have the answer for that one first yeah so Madam president Lovato board member Estrada so in our district we at the beginning of the year had 1928 read plans and that's students K-12 at the end of the year we have uh 1 866 and that's a decline from where we were this time last year thank you Miss Sheila our modern person members of the board to um your question about uh communication so it's um I think it's a two layer communication the first one is we have been uh communicating internally with our teachers these are programs that are that we established intended to grow our own so we started internal the ascent

025program for example we have 24 individuals who participated these are current teachers the ascent program is intended for those teachers who want to grow into a leadership role either at the school or even central office to go through the process so this is for us specific to grow our own the same with the reach program through reach we are helping our classified paraprofessional anybody who is not certified who wants to become a teacher to go through these programs so that we grow our own so those two in specific are intended to be internal the 1 million um one one million degrees yes we have also started with internal reach out to our employees um the goal with this um or the next piece what we're going with this is to start also communicating to even

026other um at a larger Community neighboring districts so that other staff members who may be working elsewhere and would like to take um to participate in these kind of programs you know will be one of the opportunities that they see uh you know if if they come to our district so it is internal because it's very targeted to our certain employee groups that we have so so it's not um it has not been publicized to the larger Community as of yet thank you that's super helpful every time I have a meeting I learn I'm like okay this is internal and um thank you I think the other Beauty about one million degrees is it also is intended to support Alum who graduate from Adam City High School Lester Arnold Who start and aren't able to

027finish because of some some issue that's popped up so it's also not only for staff or for Community but for alum who are coming back and saying I need some help finishing up yeah so let's let's let's talk about some results because we're really excited about this um we all know that the Educators who are in classrooms with children matter a ton and it is much easier to continue progress if you have veteran teachers who stick around and really understand the context that they're working in so the first goal we set was around teacher and leader retention we wanted to retain 80 percent of teachers district-wide who are exceeding or meeting expectations as of May 1st we've crushed the skull I'm gonna let you go ahead and take a look we met the school across

028all schools what I would acknowledge and name here that summertime is a time of uncertainty if things feel uncertain so it's going to be really important to reach out to teachers make sure they know their jobs are safe they're going to have schools to return to their kids love them and will miss them and are excited to see them on the first day of school so this is a goal that we feel really confident that we can meet and we recognize that summer is a time where we need to work hard to make sure our Educators know they're appreciated and cared for these are the folks that met or exceeded expectations using the Randa um right evaluation tool so um Mr if I may jump in here just to clarify um so for those individuals

029who are meeting or exceeding expectations that is the data that we are collecting here so I do not want it to be confused that at the for example out you know the first one with 100 Adams City High School 100 that we retain 100 of the teachers these are 100 of the teachers that are evaluated out of meet or exceeds level so it's not everyone so this will be different to the data that will come back from the state as far as teacher retention so it's not going to be the same data teacher retention data includes every uh teacher regardless of how they're rated in their Randa or um you know yearly evaluation this is specific to those that are meeting or exceeding we want to ensure they are um we're retaining as Sarah said

030highly effective highly effective teachers and as we continue in this work we're also going to be working with our administrators with our coaches and with our teachers also to understand um you know what highly effective means and and how to use the tool the Randa to us aiming to grow individuals it is also very common in the different states even to have a very high number of teachers over 90 percent of the teachers in large districts even that are rated at a very high level but then when you look at the student performance you say well students are not quite there so there's a little discrepancy so but that is the calibration and the alignment that with additional support with additional training uh better lesson planning and understanding of what strong instruction looks like and

031feels like in the classroom we're gonna start calibrating though so I just want to bring that caveat because this will be different to teacher retention at the end of the year well when we get that data I appreciate that oh go ahead okay all right I have a group um with that do you think we can start getting those numbers like how many of our teachers are rated as effective and highly effective and then I had a quick question about leaders how how are we identifying leaders in this group in this slide we've just captured we just captured teachers we did not there was there was a lot of movement going on with leaders so I didn't want to get that here without being 100 accurate but we can get that data Madam president that

032was my wandering around that because I know with Miranda it's all teachers all ssps and all APS and principals so this is just strictly teachers this is just teachers strictly teachers that is correct but we can have that data for administrators as well so we'll pull that data through HR and roughly I can tell you teachers that are rated highly effective is well into the 90 percent of our teachers rated high at a high level to Dr lauria's point we did pull all data for all teachers across the district regardless of their evaluation status last year 93 percent of teachers were retained as of May 1st this year 96 percent of teachers were retained that's plus three percent which is significant particularly in a time of worry and like working to retain local control this

033what we've heard from teachers is they believe in the vision they believe in the leadership they feel strongly that they're seen and heard and this they vote with their feet so all so the majority of teachers are sticking around and I want to want to open this up for questions and discussions you all play a really important role so we'd love to hear how you're thinking about supporting the retention of Educators in this District both during the summer and next year because people very much respect the work you're doing and are excited to hear from you but I'm happy to answer your questions also yes I think before we talk about that point thank you Dr Laria for that clarification I I was kind of getting confused with that slide but I do want to

034touch upon something you mentioned about um how we rate our teachers whether you know effective or highly effective and then what the data shows us and so you said something about calibrating and I just want to um make that or highlight that and into that I think that's important for us to see as a board where um you know sometimes in education we tend to see distinguished sprinkles of teachers and places but then the data doesn't show that and so what are we going to do to ensure that if indeed a teacher is distinguished that should mean that student outcomes are also um at grade level or above so just interesting to see when that will happen and how that correlates with what we see here so thank you um modern vice president for your

035question members of the board I think when the work will start happening it already started right because the work starts with bringing awareness and and having discussions around a number one student data we're going deep into Data analysis looking at specific students looking at different data points not only one assessment it's looking at different data assessments so that work has already started because it starts with that awareness understand teachers and leaders everyone really at the school understanding that you know when when we have Clarity of what good instruction means or a very high level lesson delivery looks like then we start saying okay well maybe the one that I said it was highly is not that highly because now I know something different so it's going to be um you know a work in progress

036we already started that work to answer to your specific question and at one point we're gonna have to come into a place where uh we're gonna say okay we're going to be looking at this student different data points of student outcomes growth achievement and really looking at that specific teacher or school rating and then start having conversations about specific teacher to student rating when we look at when we look at evaluation of teachers based not only but you know using student performance there are other pieces that we need to consider especially you know time of the student with the teacher at the beginning point of the student the ending point right so there's much more to the system if we want to start using specific student data as part of the teacher evaluation which is

037completely you know at a different level of data analysis but that work has started in what we are going to be expecting to see not only supporting teachers and administrators but also the coaching from principal principle coaches right and supervisors is really setting structures where okay now in this visit let's look at your evaluations and let's see you know who is your strongest teacher let's look at the evaluation who is the one that you feel needs the most support let's see that evaluation now let's go and visit to the classrooms and see is that really aligned to what we see in in the classroom happening so um but the work has started in we're gonna start monitoring also to see that there's there's this calibration it takes some some time and this is not unique

038to our district I've actually seen it in the different states I've been to where we have large number of students I mean of teachers being highly effective or rated highly effective but the student data is not quite supporting that mm-hmm director Zubia did you have a oh yes I'm sure sorry I just turned off my computer accidentally so um yes thank you for all this information uh I appreciate it um I I guess I was piggybacking on the on the question uh regarding the retention of Staff um mainly the teachers and leaders because when I look at this slide it's kind of misleading um just the way it's coming out as far as teachers and and leaders so maybe we should just say in this instance it's only the teachers and then provide something around

039the leadership later just so that when people are reading it they're not thinking that that's what it is also that it is um the the teachers that meet and exceed expectations I guess to me when I first saw this goal I was hoping that it was really across the board that it was all our teachers um that we are maintaining because we know we we're short-staffed if it keeps coming up that we're short staffed when it comes to teachers and so um for me it would be interesting to see what the expectations are that we're asking them to meet and exceed besides just scores I mean is there something when you ask the question what can we do as a board it'd be really nice to to know what it is that we've talked about

040what that accountability looks like and if that's what we're doing I guess I just I'm not making myself clear but I don't want to end up in and uh a situation where uh yeah the the scores are are not truly representing what the staff is capable of doing do you see what I'm saying because I know that that happened once when the state put the evaluations were attached to scores and that didn't go well I don't want I hope that we're not going that route because I don't think that that would be a a good way to do it but my other question really on this slide also where it's a little misleading is where we have Hans and 100 of theirs also is um uh have attained that and I my understanding is Hansen

041and Monica are together so I don't understand why Henson would be on there separately this is through May 1st so the merger is has happened now I think these numbers will look different in September or August we're reporting out on through May 1st I'm just looking at the perception of it if I'm a parent am I looking at this and you're saying that we met the goal of them you know 80 we're retaining 100 of them were retaining them for Hanson do you see how that just comes across as like oh yeah that's that's my school so if you're saying that 100 of them are retained that's to me that means okay the school is Virgin now yes yeah so just a little bit of confusion on there but I appreciate the data and this

042is good news um I think it's it's a great uh Baseline to to only move forward from here so thank you and to your point these this is the data for all teachers systemwide as of May 1st right so we know our permission when teachers start making changes so we are actually had that conversation with HR to um continue pulling uh and updating the data last year we were in the 24 25 teacher turnover that was reported uh and this is actually the last um or this data will be reported you know the last day of vacation and stops you know the first day because of school so that is going to be the new day so it's going to be changing throughout what I can say is based on the entire number of teachers

043we are anticipating there's going to be a reduction in that teacher turnover of the 24-25 percent even 26 at some times not the highest in the state because there are other districts that are that have a higher turnover so we're not the highest but we know 25 or around it's a high number but we are anticipating based on the number of vacancies or resignations or teacher separations that we had by December compared to last December and by the end of the school year compared to last end of the school year we are making progress however teachers have the entire summer to make decisions and it could be later in the summer when they decide to to leave so we're monitoring that closely and if I may um secretary um we are not going and I'm

044glad you asked that question so let me clarify we are not going to a system where we're looking at the scores to evaluate teachers not at all we know that the assessment as it is or many of the assessments that are used in our state do not benefit our students the audit the accountability audit said so this is not me saying that so we know that it's a reality so we are not going to to you know there to see the scores and then that is going to be the teacher evaluation um what I was talking about looking at the different assessments looking at how we assess students because it may not be a test it may be student products it might be student um projects that they that they share in how that is

045really supporting the feedback that our administrators are giving teachers as far as how they're performing based on how their students are performing as well so no thank you for asking so we can I'm going to repeat it we're not going you know to a model where we're looking at the state scores or different scores to evaluate teachers but we are bringing some calibration so that within our district we know how to measure student progress that is valid that respects the identities of our students and they're also going to be reflective somehow in our evaluations because it's at the end of the day we are going to be looking at the evaluations as a means to help teachers get better at serving our students that's it thank you for asking that question because cannot be misinterpreted

046that kind of leads into my next question so I believe there was legislation that was passed where um now the evaluations went from 50 50 of student learning versus professional practices to 70 30 are we moving to that next year um and if so how are we supporting not only our teachers so they know they're how how they're getting evaluated by our evaluators because to me that aligns better to our move to um better instructional practices um but I'm just worried about the transition and the the learning to how do you evaluate them but also so our teachers know what to expect in the upcoming year yes Madam president members of the board Mrs Burke will will speak to that because when the state changes we need to adopt to them so we are planning

047on how to support our teachers and administrators on that piece Madam president olvado members of the board thank you for the question so we do have an internal committee it's called the 1338 committee it is made up of school-based teams uh Union representation and District administrators as well as members from our human resources department they meet annually they look at the legislative updates guidance from the Colorado Department of Education and then we work collectively to be able to establish the metrics and measures that we're going to use to be able to put into staff's evaluations we're still in the progress of doing that and so we don't have it finalized as we move into the later weeks in July so around the 17th of July they're about we'll have this work completed and it's built

048off of part of our assessment strategy actually earlier today an academic cabinet we were going through this topic specifically with the notes from the committee what they're recommending how it fits into the assessment strategy we have for the district how we make edits for that and the timing of it so that staff are feeling supported as they go through their measures and that we're still meeting the guidance from the state department and any legislation changes foreign I think just to answer the question about how the atoms 14 board could support retention um I think so far this year we've done a lot in terms of trying to um support our superintendent to ensure that that happens the you know one of the major reasons is stress and burnout for teachers right for turnover and just

049leaving the profession as a whole and so it was just very reassuring to see um Dr laria's work with the school calendar and looking at the data for that and seeing when is it most beneficial to have breaks and things like that and so I think that as a board the more we can support our superintendent with um the decisions that she's making that's impacting this I think is huge another um thing that I was just thinking about what is um teacher induction programs and so looking at how we're doing that if we're doing that and how to better plan for Teacher induction programs so that um we don't lose teachers and we're able to retain them just a clarifying question if you wanted us to share our induction plans induction program plans that we

050have um yes we um yes Madam president um vice president member of the board we actually this morning met also about the teacher induction and we're looking at the documentation and the manuals and the guidance that we have for Teacher induction we heard loud and clear last year that the induction process was for new teachers to the district would almost hyper focused on instruction delivery and stuff versus some of the you know unfortunate ways that we do things and where to access curriculum and stuff like that so we are taking that feedback we're bringing actually teachers to support plan the induction program we have a teacher right now working this summer so if you would like to share some some of the highlights of what is going to be different during induction including the fact

051that induction is not going to happen only at the beginning of the year but throughout for new teachers as they come in so uh Dr Bowden for HR yes ma'am thank you so one of the teachers that was involved in the Ascend program spent her Capstone was looking at her induction program and what we could do to make it stronger and better and her Capstone project was absolutely phenomenal so we brought her in this summer she's working directly with us to establish an induction program that lasts the entire year rather than just the first couple of weeks of school the induction program is tied to the arcs the four arcs throughout the year it's aligned with what curriculum and instruction is doing in their professional development and it'll be offered on Monday nights throughout the

052year and it's going to be more like a college kind of course catalog where a teacher doesn't have to choose or get or only go to six different mandatory induction program developments they'll get to choose what they need based on where they're struggling or where they'd like to improve or how they'd like to grow as an individual and so they'll have lots of different choices we're also tying that in with our Aspire which is our student teaching program so if they're really struggling with classroom management or really making those connections with kids they can choose to go to one of those sessions to supplement what they're doing with induction and um it's it's the mentorship and the Protege are built into that calendar so in the next three to four weeks we'll have our entire

053year laid out in a calendar where they can pick and choose what's going to work for them and their Mentor as they go through the entire year so we're really really excited I don't know that I've ever seen it like this before she did an amazing job on the Capstone project and it's really exciting to see one of our own teachers come back and say Here's how we can improve not just at my school but at the district level and be able to take that and work across all the departments in the district to make it come to life and we're going to see a great benefit from that so we're really excited about that one super quick having a spanish-only strandless I know I know we heard it was a great uh a great

054thing to do in RPD is that something that we're looking for for induction as well right now it is not in the calendar the way we have it built but I will be mentioning that tomorrow thank you thank you thank you Sarah we're getting there I'm so excited about the questions I'm so excited about it you all take your take your time uh during the academic diagnostic uh that we we held across all campuses uh this fall we found that 58 of assignments were appropriately leveled for the grade that the students were in I think this is a place I'm most proud this is a place we all came together district-wide and said we know students need access to grade level content it's important that we focus on acceleration students tend to do us just

055as well on grade level content as they do on remedial content and so as you can see across the year we saw significant Improvement in task alignment across all schools we can take a look at individual schools as well so you can see every single School ended the year significantly above that 58 Baseline of course I have a question um uh the N numbers vary a lot by school I completely understand by Lester because of the enrollment there how can you talk a little bit about how the groups were created to be surveyed in this yeah in order to get data uh in this task alignment category the school leaders and the instructional coaches needed to use the tool it was used differently across campuses and so when leadership coaches were on campus working with

056principals and they went to school it was a part of the practice when tntp was in the school during 360 learning walks we used the tool with Fidelity and I think it was a question about when no one was there supporting the instructional leaders in that building whether or not they made the choice or not to use the tool that's where you see the difference growth so we set a really audacious goal here the headline this fall coming out of the academic diagnostic was not not great that the average student in Adams 14 grew less than half a year each year and so we knew that in order to do right by kids and families in Commerce City we needed to turn this around very quickly I'm really proud to say that's what happens so

057if you look across the elementary schools we've we've actually pulled apart the data by school and you can see across almost every school both in ela and in math and an SLA and math taught in Spanish kids grew more than they were growing historically in Adams 14. I'll give you a moment to look at that just for clarification this is based on Star data the Baseline at the beginning of the year and the end of the year um so it's not Steamers data or anything we used specifically star data for this or Star assessment for this we then wanted to see what growth looked like across the district because we did give start start the star assessment of K-12 first grade through 12 in math and you can see here across all grade levels across

058the district we saw tremendous growth and in most cases in most grade levels students were growing more than they were historically so what does this mean for students in in atoms 14 and in Commerce City the average amount of growth across the district is 0.7 years this growth we did not hit the 1.5 years growth goal but if an average student now is 14 grew three months more this year than they did historically so we see that as quite the win um one thing that jumps out me out at me is the data around the reading assessments that were done in Spanish I just wanted to throw a quick shout out to Dr Lydia I'm so excited for the footsteps to Brilliance program that's going to roll out because um I really think the more

059we focus on bilingual and biliteracy education it's not only going to affect our students academically but socially as well so um I loved seeing the the one points something numbers versus the the lower numbers awesome so we're not going to spend a lot of time on proficiency we know the cmass data is embargoed and so we're not ready to share that publicly so instead we looked at growth using the star assessment the star assessment is one of the best best nationally informed assessments for predicting outcomes on CMS and we weren't expecting a ton of growth in terms of proficiency this year it usually takes three years to really impact proficiency numbers in turnaround work and so what you can see at least in the star data is that where we were predicting pretty consistent results

060from previous years on CMAs with 6.1 of the students estimated to score at or above proficiency on the math assessment and 11.7 percent of students were estimated to score at or above the proficiency Benchmark on the reading test I think early looks at the data this may be lower than what's actually going to come out and we're excited to share that when it's it's no longer embargoed the final two goals were around student attendance and persistence remembering that the goal we set was 95 attendance we know students who Miss more than five percent of school each year tend to really struggle and they don't tend to grow a full year which is why we set the goal there we knew it was audacious uh and that that we probably wouldn't hit it in a single

061year it was more of a Five-Year Plan and what you can see is really pretty exciting across the elementary schools we saw growth in attendance pretty significant growth at a few campuses on average district attendance went down that is due to Adams City High School attendance it really pulled the district-wide data down if you removed Adam City High School attendance data from the state of the district actually would have grown in terms of overall attendance where we saw incredible results and where we put our learnings into place around attendance was for CMS attendance is super high stakes during State assessments you get points it helps you get out of uh situations that you may be in on and we saw some of the very best data ever in the history of Adams 14 this year

062on CMAs this kind of blue cde's mind when we shared this data with them overall 95 percent of students attended school during cmass and participated at Adams City High School very different than the overall attendance for the year 98 of students participated in CMS that's incredible it's the best attendance in the last 15 years there uh and at Adam City Middle School uh 99 of students participated which was an increase of 17 uh from last year in terms of C Mass participation now your next question may be what did you do and I think in academic cabinet we spent a ton of time talking all year about how to improve attendance and participation particularly on the most important days of the school year there are some days that matter more we know it's important kids

063come every day what Adam's 14 put into place during cmass was a daily check-in a check-in a checkout and they tracked every student's attendance for the weeks that cmass was happening and so our big learning is if you look every day and you talk about it every day and you reach out to families every day families are going to show up because they know it's important the other thing that happened here was very much a by any means necessary how can we reduce barriers for families to get kids to come to school and so when I see this data this was like the entire District working together saying no matter what we're going to get kids to school so that we can show the progress that's that's happening here in Commerce City so this is

064an extraordinary data point I think our recommendation and what we've been talking about in academic cabinets how do we do this at the beginning of the school year coming up to October account so we can get kids and families into the habits and our staff in schools into the habit of communicating regularly so everybody knows the importance of school each day so huge kudos to the staff in Adams 14. I um in meeting with Dr Lydia for our check-ins when she told me these numbers I almost fell out of my seat I I just thought it was amazing um I know a few years ago um as a parent we we met and we went through a lot of initiatives on what worked and this kind of sounds a lot like that it's reaching out

065to the students letting them know how important it is that you're here on this day and and having somebody dedicated to say why aren't you here or what can I do to support you to get here um so I'm wondering how we as a board can support something like that I know um the boys mind you my my son and his friends graduated in 2016 but they still talk about um coach Aaron Phillips rest in peace he passed away but he he knew every student in that school at Adams City High School and he would call and say whoa whoa whoa I see your card leaving where are you going and would get them back so I just think the more we communicate to our students that we care we want them here the more

066that we'll see our numbers continue like this but great job this is amazing news yeah modern personal members of the board like Sarah said I think the beautiful thing of this data is for us to be able to show our own Community we can make it different and we can change the narrative and we can change how we think about school and we can change the fact that oh yeah is that school of course that's going to be the attendance because this is the reality in this was the reality in every single school and um the theme has been happening just one day so it was consistently right where we had staff members getting on a school van and going to pick up the kids like no no you're coming in um so it's almost

067our own testimony that we can um make it different and um and then pushing out um you know those in in communication strategy that we're working on to to bring this to light to say just like Sarah said you know it's in our own schools we didn't see a video of another District we didn't hear data from another state this is our own students our own data so um you know that this um success gets contagious right because it can be repeated so I'm very proud of the team just like um Sarah share she's proud I we're extremely proud of the team and will continue increasing uh it doesn't matter how many strategies or uh less internalizations we work on with our teachers if our students are not in school we are not going to

068move the needle so it's important for both things to happen at the same time my last wondering I'm sorry to interrupt because I know you're going to the next one did we celebrate um at Adam City High School in Adams City Middle School okay just curious I wanted to make sure the students and everything but they did every single men we were celebrating was almost like I um I mean 98 like Sarah said it was uh 15 years last time that we've been closed to to this kind of attendance uh certainly not since the new accountability system was put in place we've reached this level so um this is the first time in the history of this accountability era since 2011 that we're gonna be able to meet this threshold for the school and that's

069going to be a huge difference in our school performance framework so um yes we're um again as promised uh making history for our community as a team of our students and it can it can happen this is proof of that this is not one person driving a strategy this is the entire District coming together and saying it matters we're going to make it happen so just really was exciting to watch happen in real real time we set a persistence goal um this fall because there was a lot of challenge being experienced by the district both from an accredited accreditation perspective and a lot of things in the news in shockby and so we know that affects families it makes them nervous and we wanted to commit to keeping families here and set a goal around

070keeping families here in Adams 14. I'm really excited about this data families in Commerce City have chosen to send their kids to Adams 14 and they've kept their kids here even throughout a difficult year you can see a couple of schools that did not meet the expectation Lester Arnold has it has a different population so it's a much harder goal for for that school to hit and then at one of the preschools they did not hit the hit the target but at every other school they did and that's really exciting parents have chosen to keep their kids here in the schools that they started this goal will be final on October count of next year we're measuring from October count to October account uh and we we have been talking about attendance and so I

071think one thing we heard from parents during focus groups is they just wanted to know like what's the what's the number I need to think about what how do I hit 95 percent uh we did not set a strategic planning goal around attendance and we know it's going to be important even though it's not part of the Strategic plan so nine days is 95 attendance which is why I included this year there can be a rallying cry on campuses just to let families know like we we know uh there are going to be family events and activities and emergencies and health issues what we want to be aiming for is being in being in school all but nine days during the school year so that's what this slide was about we would recommend using this

072as a way to figure out who needs additional support particularly around summer school addition additional tutoring or transportation for students that fall below this number they probably are going to need some additional support to make sure they're ready for the next grade and I'm not talking about retention I'm talking about filling in the gaps in other ways um as you all are aware uh we we have a strategic plan it is working on getting branded and finalized and we're tweaking some of the goals based on the data that's come out this spring that's really forced us to go back and look did we set goals high enough which is a really good problem to have so I've I removed the slides around like what our strategic planning goals are because we're making some shifts but

073we will report on that uh the next time I'm sitting in front of you I promise but did want to re-anchor us in the work the district did this year around the Strategic plan uh really creating a vision that lots of folks had imp impact on and I was actually in the group where we took a vision statement that was four or five sentences and just the translation wasn't inspiring and we're able to get this down in a strategic planning meeting um a board member may have also been a part of that group which is exciting so we're excited about this Vision we believe it represents all that atoms 14 is for kids and Families and we know that we have a North star priority moving forward this was created by the 33 folks who

074were part of the planning process and the 800 people who gave us feedback um and so this this will anchor the work for Adams 14 moving forward as a North star priority and then we have several priorities underneath so people can find themselves in the plan they know why they're important they can see themselves in the solution and hopefully we'll keep everyone very much engaged in the progress we've made this year so happy happy to answer any additional questions you all may have but it's been such a pleasure to be in this work with everyone in this room and Beyond director Molina hi Thomas uh I thank you so much for the presentation um it's well there's a lot of awesome milestones and I know we have a lot of work to do still together

075um my question is uh I I'm just looking through the I'm trying to find myself in there as a parent and I think I've said this for years and many platforms that um as the whole child includes the parent and I I feel like I know the teachers are really important um I know of course the students are the number one that's why we're all here but are these orphans because I don't see me as a parent on some of these so I'm trying to see where the parents are I do um and I'm speaking as a parent because I'm my kids are some of those statistics uh as far as like the the uh attendance you know I I have a I deal with a sick child that is impacted by the attendance I've

076been hit by truancy uh so where are we in here that's all um yeah I mean I will take a stab at this and I think uh what I was excited about the last time I was in this space was the recommendation that came from Dak uh what's really important I think as a parent um of any child in any school is you want to know where your child is what are their individual goals what what do they need to do in school to hit those goals and how can you support outside of school and so I was very excited to hear from Doc that they recommended quarterly check-ins with families where they review goals for individual students and how can support how they can support at home I think you're going to see it

077be a part of the Strategic plan as we move forward and a large majority of those 800 people we got feedback from were family members all right as a parent I still have a child in the district oh yeah I I have a child okay I have a child in the district um and I I would like to see how much more I could support support her I I normally um and then just before I was on the board uh still and even up to now I usually have to go seek myself right directly go to the horse's mouth to find solutions for my child um and and I uh I I hope that uh also I'm gonna go rewind to 2020. that is probably the closest I've ever felt connected to the district because

078I wasn't getting a call from this person that would call me to check up on us every almost every day I think so I don't know what kind of program that was but that was a good program because it encouraged me as a parent and I knew I that my district care better not only about my kids education but of our health because we are an environmentally stricken Health impacted community so we never know what's happening in the household so thank you what and I'm gonna I'm gonna pass this back to Dr lyrics I think you want to name something I think when we set and I'll use the attendance goal because you named attendance it's a struggle when you have health concerns and I'm assuming there's a 504 plan in place to support you

079and and making sure your child gets what they need I think the the goal is if you're not hitting the attendance goal or you're missing more than nine days of school what we're proposing is resources are put in place to ensure that even if you can't be in school you have those gaps filled so that you're ready for the next grade and just to build off of what um director Molina was saying I think attendance is um something that I tend to focus on a lot when we're talking about um just continuous Improvement and family engagement and things like that and I think that um one of the things that I think would benefit when we're talking about Improvement attendance is being proactive in wraparound services so thinking not only like how before I was

080a 504 coordinator for my school I don't even know what a 504 was and I'm in education and I'm a parent right but like how many of our parents don't know the um the systems the structures the forms the things that they can get to support their kids when um they can't make it to school and so I think for me one of the biggest things when we're talking about attendance is not necessarily only focusing on how what we're going to do to remediate absences or things like that but how can we be proactive in supporting families I was reading an article the other day that one of the um biggest things that help the school district get students back in school was having washing machines at their schools and so thinking about poverty-stricken areas

081like how that makes an impact and so just thinking about outside of the box like how are we supporting our community and families to make sure that attendance isn't this punitive thing where because of lack of information on how the system the school system is or lack of resources you know just looking at the whole picture yeah I think um for me I always go back to the four domains of Rapid School Improvement and these all hit on that to me and and tied into the climate and culture Community engagement I think that's where we struggle a lot where we have struggled so I don't know um how how we build programs like that or if it's something where we as a board really dig in and study what's happening at Central and the impacts

082that's happening um or having on on that Community to see if we need to make that drastic move to a community schools district to have services like that to improve student learning um director Zubia yes so I think I was going to clarify your question I think what you were asking is in the work on the plan itself we didn't have like a goal or an objective that was specific for parents um I know we talked about it just so you know I mean we had this room full of ideas hundreds it was the ideation idea Asian phase of everything there's tons and tons of ideas and how to narrow it down um and I think um it's it's implied that obviously children aren't orphans so the majority of what's being requested are asked of

083is the parents I don't think we had to call that out we don't want to offend parents by saying oh you're parenting you have to as a parent make sure your child's in school we don't want to do that either because people I mean as a parent I know that's my responsibility I think what we did really was focus on more of what it would take to make sure the the two main parts in the school were working which was the student and and the staff and how we can support them knowing that we did talk about exactly what you had asked how do we know as the parent what my child needs to learn on every grade level so what should my child know by the time they get out of first grade out

084of second grade out of third grade we even talked about having a schedule kind of like we have in in the medical system that tells you what to expect at your neck doctor's visit when your children are young right you have a schedule that goes from birth to 21 pretty much and it tells you what shots they get what they're going to see the doctor for we we talked about something similar for parents that you could have put it on your refrigerator and say at the end of the school Year my child should know XYZ or before next school year this is what they're going to be looking at so we talked at length about that just so that it was like one more tool and parents tool belts but you're right we didn't specifically

085call out like parent engagement or put a goal to how much would be expected for parents to engage or so forth I mean I don't know there were so many things happening um and so many ideas that now that you said that I'm like oh my gosh we didn't put one in there um just like we didn't put the attendant one for the attendance either but it wasn't because we didn't talk about it I know it was just at the end of the day we all had to narrow down the work and make it realistic and I don't know I don't know how else to respond except you're right we didn't uh call it out explicitly well and to me what I heard today is we're moving towards that we're building the the infrastructure to

086support I mean we've never had um our instruction aligned to the standard so we we couldn't tell anybody and positively this is what your student's going to learn this week and this is how you can support them um My Hope Is that we get to a point where we have that and we have it aligned in Infinite Campus or whatever we're using where parents can access and can follow along and know what's going on in their students um daily lives because that is one thing I I will give props to my son's school for doing like we we had that set up and I was able to know okay today you worked on XYZ do you have questions you want to talk about it like oh look at this article that I read about it

087as an adult and it just facilitated um better progress in school yeah members of the board um so um a lot of discussions here and I wanna I was taking a little notes um we we are um focusing and looking at how we re-imagine I know you've used that word before how we engage families in a way that it's genuine in the way that it feels authentic and that it's actually Empowering Families to be a better advocate for their own students in schools what questions to ask teachers what to you know what to expect it was shared here you know in this great level what to expect at the end or in the middle of the the year so we have documents and and we have uh resources have been created where in this first

088grade for to use an example this is what the student is going to be learning but um the feedback that we heard from families this year in particular and you heard that as well okay you are communicating you're doing better there we just do not understand what you're saying because we still use a lot of jargon and jargon is very specific to Educators so you know I'm outside of Education my daughter who is outside of Education I talked to her you know I was like I don't know what you're saying right because we Educators we we liked our gun in this technical acronyms and stuff right so that feedback is coming back we're using that we you approved a new communication specialist or director I guess is the title I don't know an individual who

089is familiar with the community is bilingual and it's going to be focusing on um parent engagement family engagement student engagement Community engagement right so we um actually you approved him about a month ago he started this week because I'm telling everybody um you know oh I need you before um July 1st we have a lot of work to do uh one of the individuals that you will consider for um approval I'm presented to you to for your consideration is Miss Idol she is here Espinoza Idol to support clde she was part of the group that came to do audit so she's still on that contract but I'm like you know you're coming full time right so um I just want to say that we are looking at how we use our parent uh liaison's feedback

090from the community from even principles and from you is at the beginning of the year we increased maybe two years ago we increased uh family engagement lesson engagement or apparent lions at the schools from a part-time to a full-time and the feedback was that did not really make the difference that we wanted to see in as far as increased genuine parent engagement so with our new director we actually today also we had a lot of planning meetings today one of them was um that a different type of training for apparent Liaisons we met with footsteps to Brilliance actually so that how we are going to be aligning not only the resources uh training for parents younger than Pre-K students even resources that we're bringing looking at the student The Graduate profile that was developed last

091year so by the end of pre-K one two three my student is to be able to do this because this is the goal that we're looking having that Horizon you know start the North Star where students need to be so we're in uh working on that looking at how to bring parents in to get their feedback how you want us to communicate differently we've heard that um and we're taking action on those more visuals than long documents with all this jargon in acronyms in there how to increase parent Knights including and insurance that in our Title One plans for each one of the schools there are specific things during the title night apparent engagement night to work A literacy on math that is also going to be involving parent focus groups and surveys to hear

092more from them and also working on the wraparound services that you mentioned we are expanding those not only to the two middle schools but also to the high schools to continue that support and we as each year we expand more and more one of the objectives that you um that the Strategic plan cadric came up with is ensuring that 100 of our students have access to wraparound supports to social emotional support right so attendance even we talked about this at length on how attendance is not only because I'm not feeling well right sometimes I don't feel safe in my school I'm not going to go there sometimes our lessons are boring let's call it as they as it is you know some students will not go just to see it and be bored there they'll

093find other ways to you know entertain themselves so um it's it's it's elevating every aspect and the expectations of every level to increase that attendance but I do want to call out you don't have it here because the document uh the Strategic plan is is um it is a long docket not everything is in this um PowerPoint that Sarah shared but you're the third goal out of four that the board worked on was to ensure that Adams 14 school district will establish and cultivate Partnerships to fully engage all members of the community including its families and students to create a culture that values trust respect and high expectations in the work of the group one of the objectives that was um identified was a 104 actually by the end of 2728 This Is A Five-Year

094Plan um have an Engaged um 27 28 to 75 of the community stakeholder participants will feel that they are engaged in informed transparently throughout major District processes and decisions through predictable structures and sustain a high level of trust in a two-way communication so um that they can ensure also another objective says that they can ensure all that their own students are experiencing an academic success so to get there means that we are informing parents what they're supposed to be learning bringing them to be our partners in education and also the next piece of um or or step in this process of the Strategic plan that we're going to engage in mid-july is bring the Casual back to look at the measures and how we're going to measure that we discussed uh in one or two

095um study sessions ago are we actually looking at achievement because as they are written some of our goals here students in the academic for example they're going to achieve this um well if our assessments we know they're not supporting the um our own students are our the personalities of our students the realities of our students then are we going to be measuring ourselves with achievement near achievements they hit this or didn't or that growth right so we are based on your feedback uh based on feedback of the community looking at this thresholds and also looking at how we're going to be measuring those um but one of them to your question director Molina one of the areas the third area to be specific around community and culture that the goal set up before you actually

096got here uh the caterer worked on objectives for that and it's very specific to parent engagement and parent um genuine partnership with us in the community not only parents only so that's work that is coming but um not mentioning these two slides it's many more slides for the Strategic plan not everything was included I hope that answers your it's coming or at least connects that it's not not included at all in the Strategic plan it is correct hold me accountable for actions not for what I said thank you Dr Lydia um I have one kind of technical question which I should know and when um qualitative question um stars and CMS are they all done electronically on the computer is that the way our students are doing it now okay um have we ever looked

097at how that's done because I I out of sheer curiosity I actually had like a little bit of time today for the first time and I can't tell you how long so I ventured on to the website of the practice questions and I took third grade math and mind you I love math I pride myself on my math skills and um it it assessed um and I I don't understand this whole core and the way they do stuff now but I I was flabbergasted at the way it was it's very different than the way we grew up doing it um you know you fill in a bubble and um so I guess I'm wondering how we're preparing our students to do this in electronic format like the way the question asked me to show my

098work I thought that's the way you did it but are we showing them like this is a sample question you're gonna get and this is the answer you should give because somewhere you check something but they have the little box there sorry thank you I'm impressive members of the board uh Mr Burke will respond to you another question thank you madam president thank you for the question so as we prepare students for any type of State assessment we do throw throughout the school year so it's not just a one and done or right before the state so our Specialists that are here at the district office when we're preparing our scope and sequence and lesson plans and internalization we look at cde's released items and we embed those into their upcoming units as it relates

099to those the teachers work with them during their plcs and put them in as part of their lesson preparation so maybe an exit ticket for students so it's being matched to the right level of rigor so teachers know how to pitch their instruction to the right level of rigor as well and then they get to practice those along the way part of it is also done into formats that are electronic so students get to engage with it both with paper pencil and an electronic format so that they are used to it in any type of option that is presented to them if students have it electronically they always have scratch paper for math specifically so that they can show their thinking and then transfer that and that's part of their test taking strategies which is

100just part of best practice as we help prepare students which what they would get in a real world scenario as well awesome thank you I'm completely dating myself because I I wasn't expecting that and that's probably that's just how our students grow up now days technology my other question is uh to you Sarah I I love this update so thank you for putting this all together and I know as a board we often discuss like when we have our one-on-ones like how how can we support your work and and maintain that connection um I know it's a little different um than our previous thank god um contractual obligation but I just wonder like with the the data changing it was made like is it helpful to do this once or twice a year should we

101push this out a little bit should we do it quarterly like how can we support our connection and supporting the work uh I've been here quarterly uh this is where all of the data wrapped up I think we want to continue with the Cadence of coming quarterly I think it's important it's also mandated uh so I think uh having your support and telling the story uh really matters you all are seen as leaders in this community the Educators here respect you they see the district working hand in hand with the board and so I think it's like talking to families getting them to come back if they've chosen to go somewhere else enrollment matters to budgets and really encouraging folks to stick around if they're making some decisions and I think uh when something's not

102working letting us know so that we can solve it because if one of you is dealing with something or you're hearing from a Community member that they're dealing with something we want to support you in getting your problems solved because it will impact lots of families district-wide I think that's one thing I'll give our board props on is we've gone through so many training things I think we've finally got into a Cadence where we know how to listen to our community and then poor Dr Lauria we call her up or we have our one-on-ones and and we definitely alert of the issue so thank you yeah my team has felt supported uh they they tune in they watch uh and they know that you've you've heard and you respect the work that they're doing what

103I would name is are our folks all we aren't we aren't salaried employees and so we have a certain number of hours that we can give to The District in terms of our time every single member of my team has worked well above those hours because they're invested in the school leaders they're invest in your teachers and they're invested in your kids and so I just want to acknowledge the hard work of my team because they've really committed themselves to this work um and and they spend a lot of their time thinking about it that's great thank you so much uh board members any further questions comments all right thank you so much thank you thank you please let your team know thank you for all they do and thank you for all the hours

104that you guys spent putting this together and all the hours worked um getting the the community together to come up with all the the responses that we had so thank you yeah it matters we're here we're in Partnership yeah so I just want to Echo um that partnership and collaboration uh read the discussions uh sometimes heated discussions okay now let's go and have some ice cream or something uh because it's about the work and uh it's really brainstorming how to continue supporting our teachers our schools our our leaders um it's it's hard work transformation is hard work is is not cut for any educator or every educator it takes a very you know um specific set of skills uh because it's draining and it's exhausting so I just wanna Echo you know how supported also

105you feel from them so it's mutual that that support and um it's quite refreshing because you know we we had a different experience but it's definitely different when the board and the district has a say on who that partner is it's a two-way Road it's a marriage and in a marriage both of them need to agree to uh you know to continue moving on together and I feel definitely that's what has happened here so I'm really excited about continue the work continuing the work we are actually uh presenting to superintendents I was invited to go and present to superintendents in in the summer the work that we are doing in the district and of course the work that part of that presentation is going to be the work of uh in how tntp has supported

106our work uh yielding great results so I'm quite excited about that [Music] thank you oh two two big items this evening next on the agenda is uh 1.2 budget review um I'll turn it over to Dr Maria and Mr Moss yes Madam president members of the board it should be working the clicker but I'm not sure so um Madame President members of the board um uh we will do an overview of the budget in what we're planning this is the third time in the recent weeks that you actually see this presentation we're going to be calling out the things that are different we are very excited um in and I just want to uh thank our chief uh finance officer and our team it has been long days um of of work and almost like

107an audience every time you turn we are until you're peeling that audience and uncovering things but um what you're going to hear today is getting us closer to a um to the budget um in in putting the dollars where your goals in the Strategic plan that you have been clear are so this budget is aligned to the strategic planning moving resources closer to the students ensuring that there is Equitable practices in our not only for students but also in our hiring in in um in in our staffing practices so today the goal is for you to look at how we get closer I will call out there we are expecting a few more changes not not massive changes but we as we look into every single line item and uncover some things that should have

108been in place that were not in place uh we're gonna bring some tweaks that we already know um on uh to you on Thursday for a final presentation for you to consider taking action on on that day we if you still do not feel comfortable we still have until the 30th so we we can come back on the on Friday if you have additional questions or would like for us to change something um just as a recap for everybody outside or our community listening this presentation is structured in a way that is looking at buckets on how we receive funding and how we're using that funding in the expenditures so the first few slides is just a legal and expectations of the things that you know you need to do with the budget in this

109budget approval process but after a slight nine I think is when we hit now the the numbers and some of the changes are going to be called out for you because you have this presentation ahead of time I I did alert you there were going to be some changes to it and dog is going to go through it calling the mountain please ask any questions this is why this uh session is just a study session for you to ask us many questions we can answer them here we'll answer that and if not we'll can bring him back on on Thursday when we come back together Madam president and members of the board Dr Lauria uh thank you for uh meeting tonight to go over the the newest version of the budget which we just finished

110up about four o'clock today I believe um the first few slides I'm just going to run through them you guys have seen all those uh there's no changes to them we're still maintaining our five percent uh general fund Reserve that we have to it's actually higher than that we're 20 21 percent um and then we got down to finally we cut so far since the beginning of this process we've cut 7.1 million dollars so I'm extremely pleased with that with all the help of cabinet to the HR staff to the finance staff we have been working non-stop and uh we still have have some work to do um as Dr Lauria said and and once uh I think we could maybe get down another one to 1.5 million if we're lucky so and then we're

111just going to maintain some things once we get it approved in September we got some new processes in hand that we're going to start playing with it's our position control program within HR and finance and the way it's been done in the past has not been the correct way and they were just copying positions instead of making new positions and leaving people where they're at they were duplicating and so it screwed everything up and we we just caught that here in the last couple days so our staffs are going to meet in probably the first week of July sit down and figure out what are the things that we need to do to make sure this doesn't keep happening we can't just copy a position we got to create a position and so for an

112example if Dr Lauria is a teacher and she's created in one position and then all of a sudden she moves to a superintendent they should delete that so we still have record of that control position and then give her a new code in position as say the superintendent and leave that code you don't if she leaves you don't put somebody else in that same code number it messes everything up and it double dips on the budgets and in certain areas and things like that that's where we came up today and said oh my God I walked into her and I said we found 2.5 million dollars and just double UPS and so we had to do a lot of manual journal entries today to get that fixed and so I feel very comfortable where we're

113at um as you're aware the first budget we had 88 million dollars in our total expenditures budgeted we are down to 81.5 million so that's extremely huge I feel very comfortable we decrease the amount that we were going to transfer to the capital reserve fund so you saw that was 4 million something last time now it's we've cut it down to three oh 3088 I believe um with that we're going to use fund balance in the capital reserve this year to offset that and then next year when we start looking at programs we'll boost it back up unless we still have some funds in in reserve our Revenue amount did not change unfortunately but we're working on that and uh so right now we are at a deficit of around six million dollars that we

114will be taking from fund balance this year um I I think in our discussions with cabinet and everybody next year we will be looking at how the ratios per school to staff are maintained and even my new budget person is saying you guys are overstaffed and pretty much all of your schools and I'm like we know I mean we we've lost a thousand kids in three or four years but we haven't cut any staff and so that's something we really got to look at this coming school year and we'll start earlier rather than later so in September HR and our finance staff is going to pull position control go one by one and make sure everybody's mirrored up exactly right and then we'll have it set then we can start working on the ratios early

115and start getting that out to principles and let them know you're going to have so many teachers you're going to have so much support and so much stuff within your budget um so you can see our fund balance it's going to adjust some this year but it's pretty much right around the 21 million Mark so yes we are going down about 4 million but I feel I feel very good about that um we didn't cut anything in the schools at all and so all the supports for the students and all those things are still there and we have not touched schools yet at all so their budgets stayed the same pretty much um so if I may highlight here something that is important um for our boards our board members and any Committee Member the

116last line in there where you see a total fund balance if you go across uh how we revise it for 22-23 it is 21 million um 200 000 and some change that is the expected where we're going to be ending this year after the couple of projects work that we um that you approved this year in um the buildings main mainly a lot of it just just you know injected in in buildings uh what we are proposing for next year if you look two rows to the last column there if you look two columns to the right is also ended up 21 million uh 100 and some change so a very small difference if you recall the last conversation we have this number was going to be 17 or 18 million but with the balancing

117um cutting um some additional expenses that we that are extra we do not need being a little bit more strategic in how we use our resources pushing things closer to the students that fund balance that it's the one number that you need to keep an eye on how much of the fund balance everything that is being used from fun balance should be approved by board members uh that's your savings account is not my account as a superintendent to expand like the other revenues that is one of the numbers that you need to keep an eye on to see how much is that changing we spoke last last time I wouldn't want it to have it too high we want to start using that because at the end this is monies that we have been saving

118throughout the years and the question would be why are you not spending that on the students for that one year so we want to make sure that very strategically and intelligently we're going to be using this to improve our especially our those one-time expenses that we have like in buildings you know renovating things in buildings make it better for our students but that is the one number that you also that you want to keep Taps on um throughout the year end in the Years whether you know you know pass by tanning or even okay so then uh the next slides are the uh instructional slides and it's broken out by each of the programs and so as you can see uh that uh you can basically look and see how much salaries increased over the

119last few years the benefits uh basically every service that we provide within the school district and so you can see down at the bottom of the slide it actually shows that uh the amount that we have budgeted for expenditures on the the prior page matches exactly what your programs are going to spend and we may not spend at all I mean this is these are numbers that we're saying this is what we're going to spend it on but we may not spend 10 million dollars and it may be 70 million that we spend so that's something that we will keep tracking and on a quarterly basis we'll bring that to you and put this on these kind of forums as well and and just help you learn this better I want to get better at

120uh basically doing uh what is it school Finance 100 or 101 you know and get you to a level to where maybe you're getting in the 200 range so we'll keep working on that yeah I do jumping also to node a number for you to look at because this is uh questions that I've received from the board how much we spend in salaries so as you see the different categories in your instruction student support instructional support staff Support Services Etc you see a line there that is for salaries and employment benefits this year after negotiations we you approved we present it to you and you approved almost five million dollars in staff increases with the step increase and with a cola increase so when you see uh you know going up by one or two

121million is not that we're hiring necessarily additional individuals these are increases in benefits and salaries that you approved as part of that so it's close to five million dollars so just um wanted to put that out there for you to consider as you look at the numbers um can I ask a quick question um under instructional staff supports for supplies and materials there's um 431 000 reduction in that um do you have some examples of what that is I just want to make sure we're not um taking away the supplies that are in the classrooms I guess I don't know how else to ask that claim for Dad find four on the far side so 1.9 instructional support almost half a million okay so I know where you're at now okay so whenever uh we

122allocate to the schools it's based off their student count so over the student counts over the last year or two we didn't change anything last year this year we did the allocation the correct way and it actually decreased because of student count numbers dropping okay so one of the things that we have discuss these student supplies student support student things that the students will actually get we're not decreasing to the contrary we're looking in ways to get more of those supports more support to the schools with the field trips is an example that you share that feedback with us so we are ensuring that in Title One those field trips are already embedded in there so schools do not have to do this fundraisings for field trips or you know we have Equitable opportunities for

123students to participate in at least two field trips a year for every grade level so resources that has been in the the focus of our attention here as we work on that plan we are decreasing however and you will probably hear it in the future we're proposing a decrease in expenditures such as you know food for staff schools can use their activity funds but not materials or general funds for those kind of things so we are monitoring much closer you know those expenses because um we haven't had any guard rails so we're putting guard rails because rather than food for adults although we want to feed our adults and have some chocolate every now and then we want to make sure that we are not using those funds or taking it from students you know

124so that we can have those things for adults so we are monitoring that better but throughout the budget process it's about how do we provide more supports to students and materials for them so as you can see we've got the charts updated now as well got those done today the revenue still at 78.5 million our expenditures shows it's at 80 81.5 you can see instructional Services is almost is half of our budget and so and that's that's just instruction that doesn't include the pupil services or the instructional staff that we also provide that's those big three make up the biggest amount of our budgets and uh so I I'm really proud about that because that shows we're spending 60 65 percent of our budget to our kids okay and I think that's a big plus

125this next slide it's still at the 81. of course 82 percent of our budget is spent on salaries and benefits throughout the district and that's pretty much average at every school district in the state so here's a slide we put together uh show and we showed the uh homeless portion of it that you guys are asking for we receive about 65 000 in Title One funds for homeless we spent 78 this year and so we had a little shortfall of 13-3 but when it's in title it still gets covered so we just put a budget in if it goes over it goes over and and we cut somewhere else within the budget to make up that difference okay so I have a question on that one why are we not spending what we're receiving for

126gifted and talented with our kids it seems like that's a part that we're missing on our kids our gifted and talented kids so we're getting money for them but we're that it's definitely a shortfall that we're not providing stuff for those kids yeah um president members of the board um Treasurer Amador so the funds that we get I actually had a meeting at eight o'clock in the morning with um uh Tracy oh my gosh they're rainy my the last time just escaping she is the the lead CFO for the state right so I was speaking with her about um the funding in in the expenditures we did speak about gifted and talented and it's basically just enough to cover for the assessments it's not really covering for anything else um besides you know all these

127additional supports and things that we want to have in our students come from the general funding it's something that we are subsidizing every district is subsidizing I spoke with her about special education and she confirmed that the districts are getting 25 of the expenditure for our special students the state all districts in the state so um the the it's basically 25 cents for the dollar that we spend in special ed so the districts are obligated to subsidize because at the end we will provide services 75 percent of it additional expenditures for special ed um we talked about um Pre-K as well which is here uh the promise is fully funded information we're getting is not quite fully funded so I spoke with her specifically about the digital prohibitions that the governor actually shared with me

128and the staff his staff shared with me in in a meeting that I approached him on this specific question what are the provisions for districts in schools that are highly impacted in in and will need that those additional funds so um to your question specific for gifted and talented this this goes straight to assessment actually [Music] with 12 000 for the entire District not much so it's set aside for assessments alone centrally in the schools it will work with the schools through other grants to to provide additional support um this is what is uh managed Century for for assessment which is actually what Tracy confirmed today merely assessment is what it covers nothing else but I think like I said last time goes back to a larger conversation with legislature on how we fund schools

129differently because every time we get more uh cost of living is higher we do not get the same as cost of living for us as you can see in the revenue uh where Castle in was around eight percent we don't even get that so um and we are subsidizing a lot of things that that this State one way or another makes the community believe we're fully funded pre-k is an example so um yeah that's two specific question about gifted and talented we use that for assessment and work differently with the schools to get materials in Opportunities and other opportunities I guess that leads to a question for me how how do we as a board evaluate what is being done and gifted and talented if it's if it's varying from each school like how how

130do we capture that information um and aggregate to say these are all the services we've provided this is what we spent yeah members of the board um she was jumping in to answer those um answer that question and and also as you um listen to her you know if there's any other way that you would like for us to report that it's a matter of you as a board of green we can add it to a uh one of the Els or one of the reporting that you would like to see I know you're working on these Equitable um policy Yale so to your pleasure something that can be added in there and that will pull reports for you on a not only basis modern president Lovato thank you for the question so we have

131been using the tools and resources from the Colorado Department of Education they have a rubric that they use to evaluate gifted programming from and so in may we worked with the director of student services and our GT coordinator to be able to evaluate our current programming using that rubric so right now we're going through that evaluation we have reached out to the state department in their gifted area because there's areas that we want to be able to continue and then there's gaps that we have as Dr Lydia mentioned part of the monies we have set aside is really for the assessment and how we identify our gifted Learners and we recognize that historically in Adams 14 these last two to three years both pre-covered and post covid we have been under identifying our gifted Learners

132and that population and so we've gone back to look at the assessment that we're currently using how is that currently rated uh within nationally rated within the state department is it on the approved website and so we're going back through those it's not as strong as we would like it to be and so we have funds set aside to be able to go back through and adjust the assessment for the 23-24 school year in there we only assess great students in specific grades and then as they follow the multi-tiered systems of support or mtss process then we go back through and evaluate them as needed to be able to see where their gifted area is or if they're on watch in their we subsidy funds whether it's through title other means within the general fund

133and at schools to be able to support our gifted programming but this year specifically we evaluated our program as a baseline using that tool in rubric and we'll continue to do that each year two times a year so once in December as we go through and close out first semester and then again at the end of the year when we close second semester um so I this is out of just curiosity um I know that this year we were able to in my own school we were able to add students to the GT pool based on access scores is that something that you are all doing here in Adams 14 as well yeah so thank you madam president Madam vice president for the question yes we are currently looking at those and um some of

134our new members that are joining our Adams 14 team um others that have come in to help with uh looking at our um audit is not the right word but coming in to evaluate some of our practices in items 14 have looked at that and so those one of the changes in addition to a couple others that will be set up for the 23-24 school year so it's more based off of a body of evidence versus a singular or a sole measure yeah very selective and so just thinking about like what other ways we as a district can ensure that we're doing um you know right by our students through the lens of equity especially when it comes to GT um I think is important can I just mention something so I recently learned that

135for some reason when it came to GT kids our bilingually our linguistically gifted students sometimes we're not being tested because of the language so to me it is important that we start looking at once again that as the additional gift because I like I said I recently heard at a conference that that has changed in Colorado to where now kids can be tested in Spanish as well not just in English but they actually have the GT test or they were going to have it available in Spanish so I just want to make sure that we're I know you probably are on top of that already but and the same hand I know for a long time that there's only like a certain grade level like you said where they get tested but we have a

136lot of newcomers that come in at different grade levels that are probably never being tested or haven't been tested and I don't know how we would capture them before they get to like the higher grades because I know it usually happens in second grade correct or fourth grade or fifth grade elementary school clarified so Madame President Lovato board member um thank you for the question so as we go forward we are making sure that our assessments and practices that we have are reflective of the student population that we serve recognizing that over 50 percent of our students are linguistically gifted and so we want to count that in there the assessment that we currently uh had been using with in uh gifted education is caught out quite quite outdated and so it's ready for us

137to be able to revisit and re-look at those and with our new leadership within our superintendent were able to do so where previously we weren't um as we look at the students because they're only tested in specific grade levels when we have staff come together on plc's the Thursday late start that the board just approved in the student calendar that's where our instructional and non-instructional staff get to come together both in electives because we recognize students may have a gifted area in athletics music art and we want to be able to look at those things collectively to say the student is really displaying these outside above and beyond what students or their peers may be displaying and so how do we go through and test in those areas so there's a cognitive one and then

138there's their creative sites that they also have in there that also get up to be a part of that work and our mtss process the multi-tiered system of support is a way to do that and through our plcs so both of those tools collectively allow us for students who are coming in new to our system whether they're newcomers whether they're transferring them in from another District we get to be able to see those displays of both within their academics and their cognitive components as well as their artistic sites that students have because giftedness can be there's multiple areas where students can be gifted in and just to add more pressure members of the board in Secretary Zubia with our new structure for registration office centralized registration office one of the things to monitor is actually

139um because one of the services that we're getting ready to provide is when they are new students are coming to register we are assessing students right there so we know there's a language there's somebody in there who can do the assessment right there so when they go to the schools they have that information the the teachers do so one of the monitoring pieces on my end is you know the new students and where we are with any of the assessments so this will be included in there to see how do we monitor so that no student falls you know in in any of any crack that you know he was never tested or she was never tested but there's going to be the new structure is allowing us to put monitoring systems in place to

140to look at those specific details for new students so just a follow-up because of the Grant I mean the grant the funds because of the budget does that mean that that number is going to be have to increase because I see even with a special ed the difference and I know there's a lot of work that needs to be there so before the budget is finalized or those numbers are we going to see an increase in those numbers when it comes to making sure that we have enough funding to be able to do all of what you just said so right now that's where it stands as of uh just the revenues and expenses to date for this school year so the budget actually is probably around the 10 8 11 million Mark for special

141ed again and so unless you know like today we we did some Cuts within special ed and also other areas so these numbers will change and it could change tomorrow again and I I know there's at least four more positions we're looking at and you know we will have discussions about those tomorrow and and decide whether or not we want to do that or just leave this budget the way it is right now and move forward and then just start making changes September October November December adjusted budget in January that is correct and now the next slide is something that you guys have seen but then we added the numbers into it so you can see what each Academy is costing at the high school level um in the Middle School level so about uh

1421.1 million dollars is what we've budgeted for this year just for to add in these new academies now the other CTE departments and things they're still running so we still got Automotive we still got uh business some of those are still in in within that budget but this is what's newly created that's cost the district more dollars this coming school year because of the something we wanted to do that we should have done 15 years ago is what we're recommending for from the fund balance it's a one-time well this is going to be probably two time uh expense right now it's almost like a school weekend school like I said last time uh but year two is probably going to be carrying over but also some of the expenditures in the Staffing of the great

143that is leaving that fifth grade is going to be coming down here so we're looking at paper in this uh every year so by year three it's probably going to be a wash with no additional funds but these are one-time things Although our salaries it's a one-time expenditure because once we start facing out the regular High School Comprehensive High School and facing in the academies that there's going to be a a Washington point a transfer you know expenditures so then here's the 5B project and we kind of broke it out the pre-kindergarten move uh cost in almost five hundred thousand dollars just to do playgrounds uh bring in new furniture uh those kind of things spruce up some buildings we're having to build science labs at Hanson now because they don't have any labs there

144so we're having to build those out this summer there's moving supplies and movers and all sorts of different things built into this whole thing so that there's another 1.1 million dollars that we didn't anticipate for this year as well coming up um that will go away but then we got the 5B for the kindergarten move next year so that's going to be different going through six so we'll have moving expenses next year budgeted the following year when we go into Middle School then we'll have more so it'll build for the next two three years and then it should taper off again and go away okay so those will be one time one-time funds that we'll use and it won't be a recurring cost to the district one-time funds um out of what fun out of

145the general fund so the wonderful funds are something that you only purchase one time you don't have to purchase for it in three years okay so next year we'll probably have another million dollars that will come to you and say we got to do this again for a million dollars and then the next year here's the cost for the Middle School move here's another million or two million dollars and then the next following year there won't be a cost so it's just a one-time expense and you're done with it it's not like a salary um mention or maybe I dreamed this because I've been doing Finance this these whole past two months but um for projections for the board like for us to be able to see like it's it's helpful for you to say

146that now right but like um next year when we're looking at the budget I'm not sure that we're going to remember like all of these things and so is there a platform are we buying one do we have one where we can see the projections for the decisions that we're currently making um say for instance for example when we adopt curriculum like I would like to see when we're um deciding on these um or making decisions on these I would like to see somehow how that decision however we vote on it how it'll affect our budget and then projections in the future if that makes sense yes so we are getting that new forecast model that's being built we also have something that Sheila's created probably a few years ago I can't remember when you

147created it but she's got something built out on a curriculum plan and we can always bring that show you some of that kind of stuff as well and that's kind of what we go by I get with her and I'm like okay what do we need to budget for this year and she pulls it up and that's what we throw in once we get the forecast thing we can put all those things in and forecast sit out for four or five years so that's coming this has 5B that's coming up that we're voting on that's a huge chunk of money if we're able to see before we're making the decision what the impact will be on like the budget like in a presentation like this for example or how that plays in I think that'll

148help us be more fiscally responsible uh do we approve or do we not approve things yes that'll be coming and and to know whether it's a budgeted item so we already approved and knew it was coming or if it's an unbudgeted item like 5B where we gotta look at other options um I think for me it would be interesting to learn and maybe it's a conversation that I have with you or with our Treasurer but um what what type of threshold have we set for the 5B option to say okay maybe instead of taken directly from the general fund maybe we should um Finance some assets like playground equipment or um Furniture things like that like do we have an area that we need to be watching for where we say hey maybe we should

149look at financing this and and spreading out the payments versus a one-time hit to the general fund to be honest I'm not a fan of doing any leases at all okay um into a mess with the cop funds you know that's going to be paid out till 20 39 or something like that so it's 20 40. and uh so yeah it's I'm not a fan of those I don't I don't like the the idea that the district leased vehicles and now those are coming too so now we need to decide do we buy a few of these vehicles outright or do we just give them back to the company and say you can have them and then we look at different Avenues of vehicles or something um I'm more same way of computers years ago

150they used to have the Apple lease program and at a previous District I was at it took us five years to pay off computers that we got well by the time we paid it off we had to buy brand new ones again so you might as well just buy them because they're outdated as soon as you buy it anyway buy them outright and then just get a replacement cycle going yourself instead of doing a lease that leads me to another question do we have any type of asset management system in place because I know now like we have the copy machines that we now own and buses and all the things that we've invested in besides the depreciation schedule we have like something that tracks okay yep thank you we do have a program I

151think it costs us like 2 000 a year and a company actually takes our data and they throw everything in there that needs to go in so yeah we and for you guys I think the biggest thing that's going to be coming up for 5B is our combination of our middle schools because if we want to build a new one it's we won't have funding for that we'll have we need to go out and ask for a bond like hands down well and I think you had made the motion that we look at companies so that's again probably another unbudgeted expense that we need to consider okay yeah that's what that's why I said 5B I think and I think for like especially I think talking to Mario and looking at some of our buildings

152when we go out there to try and focus on not only the school but also some of our big needs for for our buildings to keep them up to date because most of those are 60 65 years old I mean they need a lot of work so but yeah so Madam president members of the board were looking also at best grants and the other opportunities I know where the echo is coming here are there opportunities that we have uh to increase revenue for certain projects and things above and beyond the one-time thing originally we were recommending everything from the fund balance with the cuts and the work that we have done some of that can be although it's a one-time we are trying to put everything in the general funds so that we do not

153use a whole lot of the um your savings account right but when we do move some things in there then we'll bring it up to you but those will be only one-time expenses right now we're able to put some of this in the general funds that's why we're ending in 21 the next year we're looking at uh 21 but um some of that leftover will go into uh fund balance you will see message increasing but it's really left over that we are already planning on using that was from the general fund in here so fund balance will stay as it is right now at the 21 million so is it fair to say that when you mentioned earlier that we should be looking at that fund balance that that should be the number we're looking

154at and somehow we're going to have to be spending it down that we shouldn't be spending it down so quickly if we're going to need it in the next few years for some of these major expenses right so therefore that's what we should be looking at is how we're going to spend it well I think it's not a matter of how but when um because it looks like every year we're going to be in the million Mark where all of these changes correct okay but so our next slide this this we put this one together for you so it shows our revenues of 78 million we have our fund balance of 27 right now um we're required to have the 4 million you take the 6 million away that we're covering we are down and

155that covers all of the expenditures for next school year if we are dispendable so that shows that we still have available the 21 million is what is in the budget and then you guys have seen this slide um nothing's changed with the the underlying assumptions that are coming in the near future um and then just all the other additional funding sources that we have nutrition service fund nothing's changed there since we've last met the only slide within all of these that changed was the capital reserve and I just changed the amount of transfer that we were doing from the general fund into the capital reserve fund and that's the only you know only difference in all of these slides so I'm open for other questions um email them send them Dr Lauria if you think

156of others tonight or tomorrow because it's nice to go and look at one of the older copies and then bring the new one especially when it's on the instructional program side and see where we were cutting things or we may have cut them out of general fund but we may have moved a lot of them to Title One or some of the Cozy or easy grants so we we may may have cut some things but instead of funding it at a general fund we said Sheila can we take it and move it here a lot of professional development we had in the general fund well we got the title II Grant so we moved a lot of that from general fund into title two and that that frees up additional funds for the general fund

157so that's kind of how we've been doing this whole process I mean we've gone through the revenue side to the expenditure side to the capital side to I mean we've gone through and through and we still got some work to do we're still like Dr Laurie said we're still finding things as we peel that onion and that's that was a big one we found the last few days within the position controls with Nathan and I and it was like this things matched in certain spots and then you look somewhere else and it's we have 147 vacancies and it's like what and so there's just things that we're finding and saying oh God there's six positions that are the same why are why are they budgeted we're not using them so that that's where we were

158able to make some of those cuts and get rid of some of those so we'll keep working and uh and we'll come back and if we make a change in the next day or two before the meeting I'll make the change and show it to you within the budget and have I have the resolutions ready but if I make another change or make another change I'm going to change the resolution again so I'm just kind of holding off and if we'll visit tomorrow all of us and if if we feel we need to make some more changes we'll do it if not then I'll probably leave it where it's at thank you for your constant work um I have one quick question um I I can wait I'll remember it Mr salzer go ahead hmm

159Madam president I think it's important to note that one of the big changes that we experienced last year is when the State Board issued their order indicating that uh engaging in this relationship with tntp meant that um we would maintain control over our own fiscal responsibilities right which is not what we had prior to tntp coming in and that was a big difference because we are now finding out that the prior manager screwed things up six ways of Sundown right and we're having to go back and figure out what in the hell just happened right um but it was that change in the in the order that allowed us to go through everything true it up finding he was right six positions of the same same thing just in different funds right and so that's

160helped out quite a bit being able to have that type of well that local control should have never been placed in uh you know taken away in an order so um that might be something that we might want to advise the state board on uh possibly at the next next meeting I I so appreciate you stepping in and making that comment because um I kick myself a lot because I think you know what if we hadn't have stepped in and looked at this but my hope is since we are the first that this happened to you that we're trial and error I don't know where the test may be for everything under the sun it seems these days but things like that like I hope that we can work with the state board and work

161with CDE so they're listening to understanding what's not working um because I said from the get-go we should have had there's no way we should have our financial oversight given away to anybody even just the general maintenance of it but um I also said that we should have had a superintendent for the first time from day one like we we can't hand over an entire organization to a company that knows nothing about education much less the inner workings of our community and our school district so my hope is I mean I'm so thankful for the team and that we're we're digging and finding all of this and we did it in time before we were upside down and in the red um but I just hope that we're able to offer these tidbits of information

162so that this doesn't happen because it could have been a lot worse I mean this to hear the different stories of what you're finding is horrifying um but you can only hope that it it leads to um some improvements because this is just crazy um the question that I had before you stepped in was around um around the budget because we we got into such a dire place um for me I'm thinking like um I remember uh we met with the financial Auditors because there were things where we were questioning we're like where's the checks and balances what um what type of budget training are we doing because when I hear this I I feel like our principles and our um at the very least people at each school should have oversight over how like

163I've always had to if I had a position requisition I had to say what budget it was coming from and then it had to get budget approval for somebody higher up I'm just wondering about the checks and balances that we're building along the way of finding all of these things that are happening out so like right now principles are responsible for their budgets what I'm finding is like towards the end of the year nothing has been spent and then all of a sudden it's like oh I have thirty thousand dollars left well then in May when school's already over they're wanting to go and just spend 20 thousand dollars to solve zero based budgeting yeah so what I'm going to put into place next year where the principals will have to approve the requisitions then

164it's going to come to the chief of whoever oversees the principles then it's going to come directly to me and I will decide whether or not that gets approved or not because I think there's just things that are purchased just to purchase because it's not the needs that we need it's oh I want this so I just go buy it you know and we got to start treating this like it's uh your own checkbook in a way and uh you know if I don't have enough money in the bank I just don't go buy something just to go buy it because like you said going into the red is not good even in your own checkbook and I I like your comment about how over the next probably two three years this District would have

165been in Dire Straits and it was and it was brought to my attention that uh when the previous management company was here I think that's the direction that this place is headed so we will get it fixed and we'll start moving forward and and as we find things we'll bring them to you I want you guys all to know what we're finding and and be honest with you and straight transparent yeah yeah um before you jump in they're just to piggyback on the principles and you know they they do have their own budgets but also centrally um I I we need to take responsibility for um our where we need to do centrally and um what I Envision and I don't know if you know the tech piece if we're going to get there but

166we now have a academic dashboard when we are monitoring the goals with tntp so what I Envision is actually to be able to have a dashboard for each one of the schools where um very easy they see how much they are spending in their funding so if we got to December and they have spent five percent of their materials budget you know even before then but those are conversations that supervisors can have that we can be monitoring rather than in May we're getting thirty thousand dollars in paper yeah not so much right I don't think so so uh also providing that support for principals so that they can get this report uh on a regular basis they know what to do with it and um team members supervisors and is the superintendent know how to

167monitor those so these are the also structures the monitoring structures that we're putting um in place and uh Doug and I talked about monitoring the expenditures so it's throughout the year and we spend the monies in this year students because that's why the money is there and that's why we get this money in a year basically these schools should have their budgets mainly spent within the first four months of the year so and we're finding that that doesn't always happen so we'll work on that so that actually was going to be my question is how are we going to make sure that our kids are going with with or are receiving what they need because I know that when you go through this lengthy process it almost um and I don't like to use the

168word micromanaging but it almost seems like that's where it's going and what I find when that happens is that sometimes it's easier just not to get the things that they need because the process the the red tape it takes longer for them to actually request it and do all of these steps that you talked about instead of just going and getting what they need I I guess for me it would make more sense to have something in place that they know what they know what it is and they can spend it accordingly but it's almost like we talk about those guardrails of what not to do as long as you use you don't spend it on XYZ you should be fine if you spend this much and I think that to me it makes more

169sense for our staff as well because I I think it would be unfair for us to expect them to do what a lot of the teachers and other staff do is they go and buy it on their own or they go without or they have to submit a reimbursement later because you know they need it now and by the time it gets approved it's a little late so how do you balance that to make sure that our kids truly are getting what they need and that the staff is getting what they need because at the end of the day if the staff don't get what they need the kids don't either so how do we do that without really penalizing them for for having a need a financial need of some kind of purchasing yeah

170or other I don't know I just never wanted to go to that other industry has no and uh and thank you again for you know asking the questions that we can clarify because what thought was mentioned was at the end of the year in May we get thirty thousand dollars in there like not too much right so it is not every single purchase that it needs to be approved that way it's if we get to the end of the year ninety percent of the uh materials that you has not been spent and now we're buying all these shirts and t-shirts for adult or stuff out there okay now that is that is when he was that was the example right but throughout the year at that monitoring piece uh the the on our end putting

171that structure together where principles and uh supervisors are getting the monthly uh expenditures in two months you have not spent any of your materials money how are you even supplies pencils for lack of a better you know a a laser example so it's not that every purchase is is towards the end we have to have you know but the principles need to know that also at the beginning of the year is not that at the end oh by the way this year you're not going to be able to right so that those are the structures that were the monitoring structures um not that they have to request permission to purchase you know a paper or some stuff like that and all of the schools do have P cards I'm not a fan of peer cards

172because that's just an open Line credit card in a way but uh we do track those as well and we only allow you know you can't spend more than like 900 at one time or something you know but things come up hey we need you to open it for 2000 we're going to go buy all this stuff so there's things in the works but I'm not a fan of them and I think um from RN directors yeah I think we can look at the administrative policy and look at the purchasing thresholds because we should be able to say okay you can spend 200 to go get roses for a fundraiser that you want to do in a school and not have to you know go all the way up to the chain of command to

173get that approved but yeah but if you're if you're going to spend five thousand dollars to get reams of paper just because you have that money to spend then there needs to be a threshold for that okay cash that was in my high school oh yeah everything's the big coins I know we're not going to go overboard like that there's a little barefoot in the snow [Laughter] it's getting late I think it's getting late thank you Mr Moss um we will look forward to any updates and then we'll be ready um board on Thursday to kick our votes so please get your questions to Mr Moss before then occasional yeah I have to say I think this is the um the best presentation uh to to approve a budget we've ever had so thank you

174guys all right team um that concludes our study session I propose that we take a five minute break and then we will transition into our board meeting thank you okay thank you all for 12 or 12 minutes yeah we say five minutes oh gosh 8 30 at the very latest that's right lights on guys um and we're okay not doing interpretation okay well there's no one to interpret yeah um I'd like to call the special meeting of the honors 14 Board of Education on Tuesday June 27th 2023 to order Ramona can we start with roll call please Mr almador here Ms Estrada Ms Lovato Here Is Molina here miss Zubia here thank you uh next on the agenda's approval of the agenda may have emotions to approve a motion to approve second thank you Ramona

175Rocco Please Mr Amador aye Ms Estrada aye Ms Lovato aye Ms Molina I thank you and we have one item on our agenda this evening approval of Correction to the posting and minutes of the February 28 2023 study session and executive session may have a motion to approve item 3.1 I'll motion to approve a second Ramona Brokaw please oh sorry um Mr Amador aye Ms Estrada Miss Lovato I'm Ms Molina I'm Miss Zubia aye thank you um that was a very quick technical fix and the information is available on board docs if anyone would like to review that that concludes our special meeting for this evening we do have an executive session scheduled I move that the Board of Education can be an executive session for the purpose of CRS 24 6 4024b legal regarding

176litigation for u-prep state board and attorney client and CRS 24 6402 4fi Personnel central office restructuring and end-of-year employment actions may have a second oh second thank you Ramona roll call please aye Estrada I'm Miss Molina hi thank you having no further business this evening we will adjourn the meeting after executive session our last meeting of the year school year will be on Thursday June 29th at 6 pm and it'll be a virtual evening thank you and have a great night we are adjourned