001just for red light is on thank you um thank you for joining us for this meeting uh on august 29th 2022. uh before we begin guadalupe may we have the translation information for our spanish speaking audience absolutely [Music] thank you so much um i'd like to call this meeting to order um monica may you do roll call please mr amador here ms lovato here ms zubia here thank you next we have approval of the agenda can i amend it of course i'd like to move to amend the agenda and switch 1.5 with 1.4 so that 1.5 is first before 1.4 thank you may i have a second oh second thank you uh monaco roll call please mr amador aye mrs aye ms lovato aye ms lubia aye and i believe we need to have a
002motion to approve the amended agenda is that correct i move to approve the amended agenda oh second thank you monica roll call again sorry mr amador aye mr estrada aye ms lubaro aye ms rubio thank you so next we will take 1.5 first which is the election of board president pursuant to board policy bda with miss lewis's resignation the office of president of the board of education is also vacant for the remainder of her two-year term board policy bda requires the board to fill the vacant office nominations for president xiaomi shall be made from the floor and voting shall be by roll call unless you all prefer secret ballot is there a nomination for a member to serve as president of the board i have a nomination i nominate vice president lovato to continue in
003the role of president thank you is there a second a second thank you sir thank you all i humbly accept um i was going to say do you accept that i yeah not his plan but i i'm happy too monica roll call please mr amateur aye mrs bella thank you all i look forward to continue working with you um next we have the reopening of the application process to fill board vacancy of education with the resignation of president ramona lewis last month we previously declared a vacancy to date only one application has been received compared to previous vacancies over the last several years when numerous were received to that end i would like to entertain a motion to extend the application process or timeline so just to clarify um this is the uh uh this
004is the term the term will be ending um next year november right correct so november in a year to finish off ms lewis's term yes so and we have so many days to fill that correct yes we have a 60-day deadline which i believe is september 9th so we would need to extend the application deadline to include that date which i believe is a friday in hopes that we get more to apply um otherwise just to be um transparent here if we don't have um additional applicants um then we may consider appointing someone um but we still will have the community correct okay yes yes and we still it's my understanding we still have one applicant we just want to continue the process extend it a little longer so that in hopes we have more
005people yeah so we can have an interactive community forum and um so and i just wanted to make clear that um the reason i had asked to amend our agenda earlier was because i feel more confident having our board president in position before actually doing the other process so it just makes sense to have it that way first which is a step i think that we didn't take previously as well so um okay well then i motioned that madam president before you move forward just to be clear that um former president lewis's uh resignation came in on july the 17th effect of that date and so it's 60 days from then that you have to fulfill the or fill the uh vacancy which would then put us at september the 15th september 15th is that
006calendar days or work day it's it's calendar days and uh september the 15th would be a thursday september 15th okay do you recommend that we go that long or should we i think we allowed ourselves a little leeway last time if we do it like the friday before so the resolution um that you passed creating the vacancy or the process for the vacancy gave you the discretion to adjust the timelines however you need to okay and so i i would recommend that you just adjust the timelines uh taking into account that you have up until september 15th okay okay and we'll just announce the dates separately okay all right okay awesome i have a motion on the floor do i have a second oh second thank you uh monaco roll call please mr amador aye
007mr estrada aye ms lovato aye ms lubia aye awesome um very quickly before we adjourn i'd like to take a moment of privilege um we recently had a passing of mr travis he served for a number of years at lester arnold um i know at our last uh graduation ceremony uh several students acknowledged him publicly during the ceremony and um i would just like to take a moment and and wish our best to the family for this extraordinary loss yes thank you all um i would like to take a quick break as we welcome our guests coming in and you're welcome to gather food i believe we'll have a banner and and just turn the volume down for the next few minutes so we have a chance to all grab food and transition down there
008and then we'll begin our meeting with the city you thank you oh dude we need to i don't think we need to adjourn yeah we're continuing we're just taking a quick break so i got a whole piece thank you the red light is on thank you all for joining us i know you have to get out of here quite soon so um really quickly do we mind going around and doing some introductions and then we'll start with the video and some updates and we'll get you out of here on time um yeah i'm renee lovato i'm uh just got it appointed as board presidents um i want to go this way okay you can just ask thank you maria zubia secretary of the board dr carla lauria superintendent joe salazar chief legal counsel mario marquez
009chief business officer good evening doug cfo i'm dr jeff mckenna chief of human resources hi i'm jennifer allen thomas on city council for ward 2 and i'm also the mayor pro tem hello everyone thank you for having us tonight i'm susan noble and i'm a city council person for ward 4. good evening sean ford uh city council at large good evening as well jason rogers deputy city manager for commerce city kathy blakeman i am the acting city manager at commerce city i'm richard myers i'm director of public safety for the next six months for commerce city i'm james amador i'm on the board uh janet estrada i am the board treasurer last but not least hi christy douglas commerce city council at large pleasure to be here thank you great thank you all for joining
010us on such a short notice uh dr lauria would you like to start with a video yes um thank you everyone for being here again we do have a short video just highlighting a few of the things that we're doing here at our district with our students so we brought up two of our rapids two defenders today omar gomez and blake malone they're uh with us at al sub elementary just reading to the kids and really just participating in our outreach community raise your hand if you have a favorite book okay we'll just start right here what's your favorite book how many you guys here like to read okay a lot of hands okay so your spirit you'll stay true never sorry to be you but change your strides and fail soon a couple weeks
011ago we received an email from the colorado office asking to partner with them and being with our children at school when people take the time out of their day to come and read with them and be able to experience new members of our community engaging with their education excites them a lot of our players are homegrown players which means they grew up in and around the denver metro area or surrounding cities in colorado this is definitely an experience that i wish i had as a kid um i think that it's it's a role model opportunity and i think it's something that the kids can look forward to can lean on and grow with and hopefully gives them something to believe in as they believe in themselves so i think that if you have dreams and
012goals that is always important to work as hard as you can and follow your heart to try to get your goals and dreams accomplished you know i think it's important to us as a friend to really establish ourselves as a part of the community and i hope that you know overall the kids just have fun our guys love interacting um with the community and and just seeing their faces and being able to say that they went home and met somebody that wears a jersey is a pretty great experience for a child your dreams are yours now go and get them i love their faces when they're like oh that kept me smiling the entire um video but um just some of the things that we're doing at our schools i think this video just exemplifies
013how we're really in our communication department and how we are really trying our best to showcase the great things that are happening around in our buildings um this board is extremely focused and um very cohesive and have the board has given me the direction to really reimage how we educate students and how we really tell a different story our story has been told by many you know for many years by many people who may not even know what's going on here so our charge is to ensure that we actually share the story because great things are happening in our schools and that is not you know told or at least not not you know as often as we need to so we are creating we have a phenomenal uh communications department that is actually led
014right now by dr mccanna and his team and uh just putting out everything that is happening the great thing so that it was just a small video we are very excited this is week three or maybe for week three for students and um we're working right now on leveling classrooms week four right i mean well you know when you're having fun you don't even know when time is passing so um because otherwise like is it month 10 yet but uh you know we're having a lot of fun actually um we are now leveling classrooms uh we do have uh like every other state district in the state except 11 districts is what the finance project shared a week ago at the school finance we are experiencing some teacher shortages that was exacerbated by the state
015board to junk our accreditation and to throw us into the process to dissolve the district uh so that actually made some teachers scared we had several teachers dozens a couple dozen teachers that actually um you know uh turning their resignation the week off saying that they you know some of them actually shared you know what you know what if mid-year we do not have a job which it doesn't work like that we know it's going to be a process a long process involving surrounding districts they have already made a very strong stand that they will not support that so we know it's not going anywhere but the public and in the community does not understand that so it's our job to make sure that we are sharing the great things that are happening so we're
016leveling classrooms we're making a lot of progress there we're also working with a an organization a non-profit organization called connect ed and they are working with us to for me to be able to fulfill the charge that i was given by the board to redesign how we are educating our students starting with our high school so you will probably recall that about a decade ago when the district passed a bond to build the high school the promise that was given to the community in the wanting of the community at the time and it's still today by the way was to have different academies in the high school i have been working in education for this is my 34th year i'm going to stop counting i'm going to say over 30 moving on but in all
017my years most of them in large urban school districts i know that when there are several high schools and they have different themes the students can choose where to go based on their interests when we are in small school districts that i have also worked in small districts urban settings most of them when we have one or two high schools is we organically cannot offer you know as many options to students so we need to be very strategic in creating those opportunities for students so we brought in connect ed they are a non-profit organization that have that has worked with many districts in high schools hundreds of high schools helping them go through the process involving the community the businesses in identifying what may be themes for these academies or for these small schools within
018one school so that students can come in saying i am interested in technology so they can gear you know or they can continue their studies in that area uh in some cases it is it is a belief that we are putting kids you know in a little box you know you you selected uh i don't know for example technology or you selected health professions and now you're stuck there and it is the contrary because the goal for these themes is for students to prepare we actually work with them since middle school to help them start understanding their learning styles and uh what they're interested in and when they come in and start working or going to academies they actually learn all the standards around a focus of interest or around a theme of interest and
019they learn actually that to be in the in the health profession for example is not only i'm gonna be a nurse or i'm gonna be a doctor no there are hundreds of opportunities within that field so actually opens their their um perspective of what are options for them as they grow so we started the work already we have had two meetings with well actually several meetings but the last two were a week ago with uh teachers and administrators and we are there were some board members actually present and we are looking and going back to what the community and the students have said we surveyed all students and they that the themes are coming to emerge there's still more work to do this next couple months we're going to be working on solidifying the themes
020and once we have those we're going to be also engaging with the community with our partners like you know individuals like you we're going to be reaching out to businesses community partners to start also narrowing down the profile of our students meaning if we have a graduate from adams 14 what profile what are those qualities in students what do you as employers as future employers as communities say you know if i can have a a young student coming out with these things you know i can take them from there because we can continue that that preparation regardless if it's a student choosing to go to college to to the university you know directly to employment we need to know that because we need to backwards map if if this is by graduation so what is
021a ninth grader supposed to be doing what does a sixth grader need to be doing in third grade what is a kindergarten student when we say kindergarten is on a great level what does that mean so we need to have clarity on that and for that we need our communities to be involved in our parents it's going to be an organic process especially now with technology when things change every six months you know a phone is considered old after a year and you know it's incredible to me but uh it's probably going to be old in you know in five years it's going to be old in in a month maybe so it's going to be organic it's going to be evolving with time but that's why we need to continue involving the community and
022the employers so that's with the high school we are expecting in foreseen between four and five academies within the high school including lester arnold so lester arnold will be if we have five there will be the fifth one each of the academies will have approximately 400 students and the goal is for students to be all four years with a group a smaller group uh when we are working in student or in communities that are impacted by poverty and and uh students may come with certain risks just because of language or etc considered to be a risk believe it or not it it really helps them when they are in in a smaller group because it creates that sense of belonging so we have less students falling through the cracks with the elementary also a quick
023update central elementary we propose to the state and innovation plan bringing a layer of extra support to the community following a model that is called community schools model and this is basically an extra layer of support that the community will receive the students the parents will receive based on what they say is their need so we started that process we actually have an area that is dedicated for community meetings and and we hired a coordinator that will be focused only in developing this layer of support for communities we're working with colorado educators association and the national educators association in in developing that and we are also working with tntp tntp is a national organization non-profit organization that is supporting us with developing strong structures for improvement because we know we need to improve in many
024areas and they will be supporting us with building those structures that will be sustained after after i leave and after my team leaves although my husband says i will never retire i say i will retire one day so when i retire they're gonna be systems that were actually born and supported at the community bottom up right from the parents not top down because that's when the leader leaves everything falls apart but if it's the other way if it's bottom up and we listen and involve our community members our partners you know individuals like you actually it doesn't matter who is at the top because it has a strong community foundation it will be sustained so that's that's the goal um in a very quick update because i know your time is limited but i don't
025know if you have any questions um or anything that any of my board members or madam president you would like to add really quickly before we go around for questions we are returning to pre-covered celebrations and so i would be remiss without starting that we're having our uh homecoming parade and festivities we're going to have a car show and the game and it's just nice to return to old traditions but our athletic director asked that i extend the invitation to you all there will be something more formal coming along the way but we would love for you to be in the parade and attend the events nope nope any questions yeah i just had a few questions are the resource officers going to eventually be back in the schools i can answer that yes thank
026you for the question madam president members of the board and miss helen thomas the resource officers we do have a contract with the police department commerce city police department the conversations that we've had with them is that they do not have enough staff to have all the resource officers that we that we assigned or we contracted or agreed to have so um we yes they can be back but i know we're working with the police department because it's a staffing issue last year we were expected to have five officers and we were able to get only two throughout the entire year so we're going to start to think differently on how to structure our security office because at the end of the day we want to make sure that we have that extra support at
027the schools but if we know that the police department is also having a staffing issue just like everywhere and exacerbated after kovit as we probably have experienced we need to structure differently so that we support the schools and also um you know working with the police department on you know how many officers we can get okay thank you because um i was just contacted by a lot of constituents and they were saying that's a main concern with the recent school shootings if you know the resource officers will be returning so yeah we're open for that we're actually having a meeting with them on wednesday and after that when we get a little bit more information we're going to be communicating an update to our community okay great thank you and then another question i'm just
028curious um how many applications did you receive for that open board seat and is that is the board planning to appoint that person um we just recently met about that right before um we started this meeting and we extended the application timeline in hopes that we get some additional applications mostly because we would like to engage our community and and in the past we've typically had many more applications so i believe we extended it through september 9th um but we'll we'll publish information um all right thanks and then i'm just curious from the time the other board member left does the board still have 30 days to point another one is that still how it works 60 60 oh yeah yeah i think yeah then i'm halfway there okay great okay thanks and then just
029another little update um i don't know if the board and everyone's aware but we just approved a 90 90 unit um affordable housing area complex to go up at 7001 south colorado boulevard and those are going to be two to three bedrooms like i said low affordable housing and the council and all hasn't discussed this but i was just curious what if the district put the adam city property up for sale today and just say the city or someone else bought it for 50 million i'm just you know making a scenario the best grant for approval doesn't come back until february or march but whoever purchased that land would give the money for the best grant because this is something i was just curious um if the board members have thought about because with those
030houses coming in i know back in there was a best grant for the alsup and adams city middle school and sheila burke was on that committee planning them for to get another adam city middle school and also but only all set pass i was just curious with that with those more homes coming in is there a thought or possibility how we can get a best grant for the new adam city middle school because actually we've met i met with finance today we were actually having a discussion about um not necessarily the property for sale but actually um another best grant and yes my recommendation as a superintendent is to con to apply for another best grant we will however look at the needs of the schools because i i know there's a lot of interest
031in having a particular school in this case you mentioned adam city middle school but what we would look at is based on the needs of all the district of all the buildings that we have we're going to go for the one that makes the most sense in 2021 there was a an analysis of the needs of the schools that was before i came but as it was not shared at that time but in january or march earlier this year we share that my team share that master facility master plan with them and definitely we'll need many many best grants to get where we need to be and we have more needs that funds at this time to fix them some of the schools and in construction and i'm not an expert so but this is
032what i understand as a non-construction expert once you need more than 60 percent of the value of the building just to repair it we really need to consider and just tearing it down and build a new one adam city middle school is not in that position it's actually we have other schools a little bit worse so we will need to engage with our board engage with the direction and provide recommendations of what we would recommend for either tear down and up or or remodel based on the facility plan that we have okay thank you because i was just hoping to like i said maybe a new adam city middle school it would be nice if it could even possibly build up be built on the old high school site and you know because this is
033something i hope the board members think about and look because i think it would look favorable to the state board of education as well and you know i'm really rooting for the students of adams 14 to 16 and that's all i have thank you thank you councilwoman um i would like to add i know i follow the city council meetings pretty closely and i would love to involve the district and the discussions of the redevelopment of that area because i know with that housing it's going to bring changes we've already talked about the possible changes that are coming with the dog track development so we would love to join you in those discussions i'll just i'll just bring a couple of uh short updates for some of the things that that we've been working on
034um and it pertains to the mile high greyhound park um looks like all the infrastructure work is done now for that phase one and that's completed including the landscaping so we're you know moving on there and there's construction of the wood spring suites that's going to to begin later this year and that's 122 room suites basically that will be open for business in 2023 so that's well well on its way as well i'm really excited to hear some of the things that you guys are working on from the standpoint of your students and getting them into these academies he leaned over and made a comment about you know what about criminal justice getting these you know these students in early which i know we already have a good partnership with the students but to be
035able to to build upon that as well so many synergies you know us being not just an employer but also as we bring in new businesses looking at what some of those skill sets may be on that little segway there some of the business activities rather than going through this entire list we do have several um either new businesses or businesses that are expanding which equates to over like 150 new jobs just just for this short few that i'm going to read out to you which is which is pretty exciting one is the kamida park at the mile high flea market that's a company that's coming in and they plan to have 55 food trucks and operators out there which is pretty exciting and that's anticipated to open by the summer i know right food
036of 2023 so dollar tree is is coming in we have things like cabinetry companies that will be coming in so some of those those trades as well um what else do i want to mention here maybe a thresher foundation repair they're bringing in 63 new jobs by themselves with pretty high average wages for the for many of those positions so that's kind of an exciting thing for our young students to be watching and seeing what some of their futures might entail so that they can figure out what it is that they want to do with their you know their next level of their careers as well never forget about our police department we'd love to you know to see some of them apply there as well as they as they go through their education um
037let's see oh i think i'll just jump down to with the american rescue plan so the city's moving forward with a homeless navigation center and so we are in partnership with adams county on that it's not going to be a homeless day shelter it's more of a a transitional navigation sort of a center it's going to provide critical intervention support services some transitional housing mental health services addiction counseling and this partnership is also going to we're looking at doing a community of pallet shelters is in consideration at this time that will serve as that that high barrier to entry transitional housing getting people to move on and think about what it takes to be able to move from where they are to where it is that they would like to be so it's providing a
038safe secure temporary housing and then um staff will be finalizing some possible site options that we are preparing to bring to council for further guidance in q3 of 2022 and so with that i think that's just a few of the things that that we've got that we're working on he has a couple of things he'd like to mention as it pertains to a question that you had asked earlier good evening to update you on the school resource officer program it's true that we're challenged we're down out of something like 129 authorized sworn we're down 21 officers that's a hit and obviously it's a priority that we put people in patrol cars covering neighborhoods however in my past agencies i've had tremendous success with sro programs i believe one officer in every school saves five officers
039on the street in terms of proactivity intelligence gathering quick intervention you know if you can catch i my wife's a retired middle school and elementary teacher and we've long discussed you can ask any kindergarten teacher six months into the school year who are the three or four kids i'll be locking up when they're teenagers why wait let's get involved and find out what's going on in that kid's life and how can we intervene in a way catch them upstream and throw them back and then when they're the big fish downstream they're they're going the right course so that's what sro programs can do among many other things so we are prepared with some pain and some pushback from patrol to implement three sro officers starting september 12th we think we can move people around enough
040and how we have that planned is one full time for a high school up in 27j one full time at adams city high school and the third one will serve both districts they will go at is it kearney or kearney middle school up north and then down here at adam city middle school and with the promise that as soon as we get a couple academy graduations and we begin i've had four entry-level final interviews with candidates in the last week so we are aggressively pursuing new officers the issue with adams 14 is that the contract actually expired two years ago and you've had a lot of turnover as you've alluded to and our folks don't know who to call anymore and they're having a hard time so maybe when the meeting occurs wednesday we'll try
041and have the right people there you can have the right people there and then we may have to call on council to act on a quicker than normal ordinance process or approval of the contract because to me we're four weeks behind right school started you should have an officer in the schools so um that's the status of the sro program i also wanted to a little bit address concerns about school shootings because you know uvalde is fresh on all of our minds i will tell you overwhelmingly that law enforcement across the u.s were thoroughly disgusted by the incompetence shown by the agencies involved certainly here in colorado home of columbine were which changed everything on active shooter situations i'd put our officers up against any other state in the nation on their ability to quickly
042mobilize go to the scene of an active shooter and go to the source we train as an agency adams county sheriff has trained uh all the adjoining cities have trained and we all have similar response protocols and so i still want proactively an officer in the school but historically it's not always the sro that intervenes and is able to stop the active shooter i know about active shooters in my first year as chief in colorado springs we had the new life active shooter that first killed some kids up here i think in arvada and then came down to the springs so i've been there and you want to be prepared for that and you want the men and women on your agency prepared i feel we are prepared but we're not sitting on our laurels
043we constantly are looking at the training so that's a little update for sros and in the god forbidden event of an active shooter you can count that we'll be here we're not going to stand around if we're here trust me so i um i just had a comment to um one of your your comments of having a police officer in every school and starting when they're early that's an assumption being made that the kids are genuinely bad that there's like you said three out of the bunch to me once again that's a deficit mindset and for our kids who are initially already struggling with racism and structural racism that comes from not just law enforcement but other inequalities it just does not make sense to me to say that every school could benefit from having
044an officer on site to make sure that you know you get them early that's that to me just does not sit well with with my community because once again i've known a lot of these kids since they were born and i just don't think that um you know you could tell that early that they're going to be people that you're going to lock up later so i just wanted to put that out there because to me it's um it's an unfair statement of the community that i'm trying very desperately to bring up uh from that deficit mindset to saying these are let's look at it as an asset base and let's look at resource officers as an asset and how they can help benefit our kids as opposed to how they're going to help penalize
045them and as a parent i can tell you how my kids were penalized by the police officers when there was nothing being done i mean taking a shortcut across the quebec apartments did not mean a ticket for my kid because he's brown and my other kid because he wrote a word on the wall did not mean that he had a small word on bathroom wall that he needed to get a ticket that totally made him think that he was such a bad person that he was suicidal after three years i will not allow any other child to go through that ever again because my kids went through it and i don't think i think that there's a a plus and a minus and we have to find out what is the balance here and i
046know that there's a need for resource officers for certain reasons and certain purposes but i don't think that there's a need to have one in every school for these little kids especially my linguistically gifted kids that are in this well let me clarify because i think philosophically we're in the same place i wasn't inferring that the three or four identified kindergarten were bad kids they may have something going on like a learning disability or issues at home or sibling issues or something that is keeping them maybe they have adhd that's been undiagnosed who knows my point is let's focus on being proactive and working with mom and dad and working with the teachers and the counselors the earlier we can all collectively work on growing strong and healthy productive kids the fewer need up in
047high school for that i also am very much in agreement with all the research that shows diverting students from the criminal justice system results in much better outcomes than ticket ticket arrests frankly i've told sros before forget that you've got handcuffs because that's not why you're in the school and to be honest with you i've had school administrators that think they're there for school security no i don't think that's why they're there they're there to be counselors mentors to augment the great work that teachers are trying to do every day only they don't teach traditional math science english and so on they're there to provide yet one more stable adult in the life of children and all children need stable adults that they can trust and turn to so so we're really i think in
048the same place i probably misstated what what no we um just take a comment and a point of clarification uh we agree 100 of being proactive and that is actually the model that we're bringing to central elementary with community schools and the vision of the board is actually to expand it to all schools we do know that in urban settings and in areas that are impacted by poverty there may be some issues that um you know kids kids have quite frank sometimes you know what our kids have to deal with i would not be able to bear as an adult but uh the way that we are being proactive is to bring those additional resources with social workers with uh you know trauma experts who can actually help our students and our adults deal i
049think it is our kids are fine they're great is how we adults see them in how we work together and collaboratively to find uh proactive ways to support them that will actually build up the home um so so i think we're on the same page and we want to be proactive it's just a different approach or an extended approach that my board is taking on bringing community schools and we did have a contract with sros but it went through last year so last year we did have a contract and i went through the year the conversation back in the spring that i actually had with um the department as well was um how we're going to tweak it this year because we had funds that were expected to be i mean that we had allocated
050to be in the fund so we could not use them to buy you know ftes or individuals to come and support with security because we're waiting on the sro so we'll find a model that understanding we may have one and a half sros we're going to be using our our funding to support also community schools and other types of proactive supports for our students thank you for that discussion and i also if we could have jason rogers just speak with you shortly thank you all i think it is worth mentioning that there is an agreement in place that we obviously have of atoms 14 in and around my high ground park i think we've all have seen the success of maha greyhound park as the various residential starts to pop out of the ground what
051that starts to generate in my mindset is as we see how that starts to come to fruition was the impact on the school district and in part we have a two-part agreement that speaks to about the 330 000 uh 333 thousand dollar contribution from the developer to the school district as it relates to modular trailers you know the city remains uh at the willing and ready to have that conversation so that those funds can be better appropriated we had had some previous conversations with your staff that intimated possibly wanting to look at a different use that would be better i'll call it mobilized in for the school district we are supportive of that we want to be able to figure out how we can get with you all to advance that and we actually have
052a meeting tomorrow to kind of have those kickoff conversations with your staff so thank you for that in addition to that uh a much more global big picture you know i'll say near term and long you know long-term future for the school district in the city thing around the educational literacy and the improvement that and in support of that would be the multicultural building is what we have called it or have deemed it uh really looking at an advanced degree program that aligns really with the programs and the themes that you were speaking about earlier from academies uh at your high schools that provide opportunities i wouldn't call them at a vocational of a step above that you know from a culinary from an aviation once again tying back into different paths forward for your
053student body and your base that's in our agreement that's tied to our commitment to the school district and we want to start advancing those conversations which will also be a part of our conversation tomorrow so very excited about where we see our commitment and our relationship with the school district going with respect to these two matters uh and i thought it was worthwhile to bring it up to you all that um there's a there's a lot of great working opportunity with these two projects that hopefully will be able to deliver to the community councilmember noble thank you and um thank you so much mr myers for weighing in on that because we had talked about that before the meeting started and i said are you prepared to answer this question and he said yes i
054am so there we are um i just want to say that i'm so happy that we can be back because you've all been through so much and as i recall we had a meeting with you maybe just after dr lauria had started but i was so impressed with you that night i just had absolute faith that you were going to be able to um help the students of adam's 14 that you were a great choice by the school board and i am very happy for you president lovato you certainly deserve the title and the position so that's very good that you're there um jason can i ask you about um how many units there are next to the tower on colorado boulevard also that's a multi-family complex as well yes ma'am so the tower uh
055the property to the south of adams county or the adams tower building that's a 66 unit development it's called south platte crossing it's still working its way through the entitlement process it is their hope if all things go well with construction and financing which they have about 90 of that kind of tied up that they will be open for i think their first level of occupancy uh third quarter of next year and as i recall that was that went up to three bedrooms as well that is a mix of two and three bedrooms i don't know the complete breakout but you are correct ma'am okay and then and then the one across the street that the mayor pro tem referred to is around 90 some units that's correct okay all right thank you just giving
056you the full picture here what's coming alrighty so very exciting projects for for a city and we can get into details of specific more short-term supports that uh you may be able to offer but into the future and thinking on when we have this community these companies come in to develop not long ago maybe last week two not even two weeks ago there were some articles about the opportunity that our teachers have to afford housing in colorado and our teachers can afford 15 to 20 percent of the homes in colorado that makes it extremely difficult for us to recruit teachers not only us in commerce city as in colorado and i have worked in different states because i worked for a superintendent who was a specialist in turn around who traveled across the state and
057and i you know joined him and he invited me to go with him so i know all states are fighting for great teachers and i also know colorado is not paying well at all actually we are at the bottom of all the states in how much we pay our teachers so and that's a funding issue about education but we can partner by probably having when these companies come in having some kind of concessions that there will be a number of housing that they're gonna be offering great deals to the teachers uh you know if the teachers are gonna be renting uh they're not gonna have i don't know the deposit or we're just fighting for teachers and i know i had this conversation with amy probably eight months ago um about the new um that
058are being built now but for the future i think it will be very it will just enrich our community that we have a partnership with the city in that we can offer as part of the a compensation package these great deals in these new developments everybody will benefit from having teachers you know as neighbors because teachers are great people right it's like you want to have police officers you want to have neighbors you want to have some doctors or people in the medical field because that actually makes neighborhoods uh safe and in and a nice place to be so i just wanted to you know put that seat out there because there are a lot of uh you know ideas and in in in developments coming in and we need support for our teachers outside
059you can already hear me huh all right well thank you so you are um dr lorea you are talking about uh the ability to be for teachers to be able to purchase homes rather because these are all rentals and i uh thank you for for the question i actually think it's it's both right uh it's able to rent if if it's there are opportunities for them to rent that are close to those you know in homes that are close to the schools or to purchase um because you know teachers will will have different needs and preferences but it's just very difficult to find even a place to rent it's in colorado it's extremely expensive and our salaries for teachers are not going up as fast as the home and housing and renting is so um
060you know they choose to go elsewhere colorado it's as expensive as i don't know well it's a big city like right it's like going to the bahamas and try to live there but anyway i think it's all of the above for just options for teachers and i know these are income qualifying so i don't know if the teachers meet those guidelines that may be some of the concessions and believe me with what colorado pays teachers who may very well qualify and which is unfortunate because they go through a four-year college to be teachers but i think even when it's income if there's a percentage of homes that will not have to qualify for income but it's you know just if they are teachers or if they work for the school system you know they can
061they can be there without necessarily meeting those qualifications so some i don't know some kind of concessions that's maybe i'm not an amazing conversation that we should have with chaffa to set up some kind of program such as that and maybe work in collaboration with the city school districts and and uh chaffa to see if we can't tweak the guidelines so they they fit the parameters that a teacher would need yeah i i do not know the details i know there are smarter people out there that can figure it out this is just an idea that as a superintendent i know that's a need that we all have you have your area of expertise in housing and development i was wondering can you explain the academies at the high school a little bit more yes
062so the academies is basically a concept of a small school within a large school so in in large larger districts for example um you know i was in clark county before i came here i had 127 schools in my region i was a regional superintendent i had 39 high schools that i supervised so i had one high school alone it was an ib school international baccalaureate i had another one that was a stem school or steam school that is science technology mathematics i had another one that was performing arts so every child that went there you know in the elem in the um middle school they knew they wanted to go that way and then they would go to a high school that the entire high school was around visual arts performing arts so when
063you are as a child in a city or in a community or a district that has a lot of options you know they they go to different high schools in in and that's the choices they have they can go to a comprehensive as well but in a small um setting like ours which there are great advantages to being a small school um the the opportunities for students to choose a theme are more limited so the the academies is in one high school you have different pathways or different themes the students go there um it's not that they're locked in for life we're not asking a 13 years old child to make a decision of what they want to be when they grow up you know some of us at 30 do not know that yet
064but uh but but it's a theme and there are surveys they work with counselors to start understanding what their learning style is what they are attracted to and they learn all the high school standards that any child you know needs to learn but around a theme so if they are doing mathematics and i decided to be in an academy around um performing arts uh then everything in in in the standards are taught around the theme of performing arts so for example i can be looking at the music or the uh the time of the show i don't know um no now i'm making stuff up um but you know around those films because i am definitely not in performing arts should have selected another one to give that that example but um it is around
065that if they're in the health professions then they learn math and they learn their sciences around relevant project-based activities around health professions so um the the child can switch academies if they go into ninth grade saying i wanted to be in academy a but then after like i don't think i like this one they have an opportunity to change what um that what we have seen in academies because i've been in districts that have had high schools with academies is that we have very few students that will change because as i said before uh is not to lock the students into one profession is to is actually opening their understanding on how much is in a profession you can be an accountant an accountant in the health profession and you can be you know any
066any role really any any job you can have in any of the professions so the teachers are trained on those they are experts in those fields they also like um you know the themes that they're going to be teaching in so it's a win-win because it's it's relevant and exciting for the teacher to teach in an area that they like uh and also exciting for the for the child um it is based on project learning so um it is not let's sit down and repeat the multiplication facts or you know whatever they need to memorize it is actually uh through projects that the students can choose within this area of interest they apply the standards so a lot of benefits to it each academy because they have 350 to 400 students it really becomes a
067community so there's a lot of peer support in in in peer encouragement uh for the students and um in in they go you know like a like a family but at the same time they experience the comprehensive large school because some kids like that i have two girls and one of them was all about comprehension the all the things that happened in large school the other one is like the smaller the better so they knowing that there are different personalities the the students do not have to give up the large comprehensive feeling and experience of a school because being in one building they can also experience the large activities we are expecting to have identified the themes probably in about six weeks uh there was a lot of work done throughout the summer and meetings
068happening with the individuals the students have been surveyed from seventh grade and up the goal is this year if if you will consider this year 0 or your planning year and once the academies are identified then we go into training of teachers so that the teachers can also start selecting which academy they will they will be selecting to or they want to be so this year ninth graders going into tenth grade uh and we are evaluating if it's appropriate to have an academy for tenth graders as well or if we're going to start just with ninth grade but next year today's 8th graders will be coming into an academy and then we're going to build up the academies that way we're going to go two ways so it's going to be 8th graders next year
069into ninth grade potentially tenth grade it all depends on um the work that that we do and if it's appropriate to have a tenth grade academy uh it's going to go up with the students but we also want to go to the lower grades in middle school to start helping our teachers do project-based learning with our students and to start helping students understand their learning styles you know as soon as they go into middle school and then we'll go down to fifth grade as well very good thank you and i would love to visit central and and see the community school model first hand so uh look for me to be asking for that invitation and then the meeting tomorrow who who always going to be included in that meeting with uh uh ma'am oh
070no no isn't there a meeting tomorrow okay thank you for that clarification it's going to be some of the uh i'll say more direct and technical staff pertaining to the modular trailer conversion into a more uh i'll say a highly more deployed use of those funds and then other technical staff in and around i think the concept making of the multicultural building of mr marquez myself and other staff that are not present today i'd also like to have a better understanding of what's going on there as well so with respect to your question ma'am uh not actually question but your statement with respect to affordable housing and attainment more affordable attainment of housing for uh for teachers obviously we welcome that conversation look forward to having that in trying to define a path forward that
071can make sure that you all could be successful with the recruitment and retainment and once again enrichment of your of your staff so thank you so i do have a question about the buildings because you're going right there on the right there by the end line right that property there is the 7001 colorado boulevard with 160 some units or 97 units and then in the one acre you're putting the one acre by one acre of the 66 right next to the where the community building is at right across by the dmv and all that stuff right right so the the private development there's a private developer for both properties that are putting those in i've been to both all the meetings for them so that's why because kind of looking at all that in the
072development when you pass that to get it build i guess the question is did you think about any kind of retail that should be going into that area i mean there's not there's no stores there's no anything there's i mean what how are you managing going to build and manage the property there when i mean we have one stop sign that's on the corner and there's no nothing else i mean the traffic that you're going through they don't stop there i mean it's that is i mean how are you going to develop that to handle the amount of almost 163 new units between those two so the development of themselves we don't have i would say a programmatic and what i mean programmatic we can't depict we can't out outside of our comp plan and
073our land use we cannot tell a developer you need to do x y or z we can encourage them we can try to help promote and by sharing them with various data where we have the ability to say you know this is what we're looking for in the development and we actually have some form of actual fee simple control or funding control behind that is when we're actually a partner through either our housing authority authority or a direct relationship in an agreement between the city and that and that developer so when you find those two projects and that's just a form and function because of our limitation as as a local government authority and also our land development code that guides our way forward with the comp plan that being said we have to be
074a little bit more i'll call it introspective of where our current comp plan is and and what our specific plan for that area which is the stationary and master plan it identifies what property should be residential identifies what property should be commercial what property should be a blending of those two at the end of the day the two properties that we have didn't necessarily meet the test as called out by those two documents for commercial that being said that one developer that will be placing a coffee shop and or a local grocery store or question mark to be determined on the 98 unit site met the call by our council of thinking about being the first through the door right as i like to call it that camel's nose underneath the tent you're going to
075be the first ones that will be building that will be serving as a catalyst that will be able to help meet a variety of different deserts for our residents in that area whether that's through grocery whether that's through retail whether it's restaurants or even just workforce employment opportunities for those that need it that can have it in its proximity to the rail station so that individual came back and and met that test and we'll be building a 2 000 square foot space for some type of commercial function you will also notice that some of the properties that are zoned and that are called out that we have a missing middle of our zoning to allow for commercial not necessarily to be the entirety but a small a small strategic focused component to help support the
076area so we're taking the necessary steps in our land development code to promote that as well which should also help to promote some of that commercial activity and or workforce activity for our populists in our residence within that area as well so there's things that we're doing that obviously we can't control how they put that shovel in the ground but we're trying to support and encourage it when they do come through our door which is where we do have the control to do yes ma'am thank you i would like to clarify at one of our recent council members for that property the city paid for a report to be conducted for those houses and it was a tap report and it's addressed a lot of issues for the development in that area such as there
077was no sidewalks there's no interest for emergency vehicles several other concerns were addressed you know the schools lack of school funding the safety and health and i just want you guys to be aware that two council members one being myself voted against this because the recommendations that were recommended in the report were not even complete such as even art being entered into that area because we do have the rtd train line so those are some of my concerns we didn't even address the issues in the report but yet we approved all of these homes and it's right next to a cement gravel plant as well so i was concerned how is that going to affect the health and safety of the residents living in those homes as well and then another thing that i just
078wanted to address because i know we're limited for time but i know it was a previous school board that he approved the trailers going up at central elementary school and i think it's very unfortunate because i lived here my entire life and i don't know how many of you guys have looked in these schools but some of the bathrooms don't even have doors etc etc and i think it's really unfortunate that we're building all these homes and we're throwing our students up in trailers instead of finding funding to get them some homes i mean to get them new schools and i think it's really unfortunate and just in closing i wanted to thank you guys um on one other thing i wanted to bring up at one time like i said i've been following city
079council for years been in commerce city all my life at one time they did offer an ordinance for any teacher police officer or firefighter that lived within the commerce city area and worked in commerce city they offered some type of down payment to offer assistance if they lived in the city so our city attorney is not here today but i will look into that further and then in closing on behalf of the mayor and other city council members we really want to thank you for allowing us to be here today and we'll do whatever we can to work with adam's city 14 school district thank you thank you so much i know i promised we'd get you out of here and we're late um really quickly i know um there's a lot going on in
080the news about the restructuring of the district and we really wanted to increase the frequency of our meetings with you just so we can um even conversations like this are super helpful around the development everything like that so because we're limited on time maybe we can follow up on this i just don't want so much time to go in between the next meeting with you all so i'm very open to feedback or thoughts or i have feedback but i do want to go on record that i had those same concerns james i mean to me this is very poor planning um not recognizing the issues of the community not looking at the community itself not looking at the needs of the community i sat in on those meetings i was on the original comp plan
081and that's not was what was planned to go in over there the promise of the light rail was that we were supposed to have some kind of services available for the community not to add more people in and to have those people then have to get on the light rail and take their money elsewhere outside the community so i want you to know that i i was not in support of any of this and i'm one voice but we have to start working together more this is this is uncalled for we should not be working in our separate silos where one does not know what the other is doing we have to start working as a community we have to so 100 i'm on your team this is a quick happy note for you last
082month the city council voted to give every school in adams 14 as well as 27 j 2 000 per school so i don't know if you've begun receiving that money yet but you will be getting two thousand dollars per school that is awesome thank you is it for anything specific or it's you know um reunion elementary does a golf tournament and they ask us to sponsor last year and this year so we were sponsoring at 2000 and the city council said well in that case let's give every skill school two thousand dollars so you don't even have to put on a golf tournament you will get the 2000. yes it's however you wish to use it that will benefit your students and those checks are being cut this week so exciting thank you good you
083heard it straight from the bus yeah well i know you all have to leave so very quickly thank you for joining us we will adjourn and then we will follow up on um meeting more frequently oh yes we have a motion to adjourn second all in favor thank you all thank you thank you you