Work Session - March 18, 2026

001work session up will be starting at 542 after a dinner break we have a few different items on the agenda for the work session tonight starting with a a pitch for an innovation zone school that you're going to hear and I I had said in the read-ahead email that I wanted to just kind of start with a very brief overview for our new board directors of some of the differences of school governance types. I had a little bit of help from Dr. Comfort in putting this together and so anything that I say that is accurate is because Dr. Comfort fact-checked me and anything that I say that is inaccurate I would beg that Dr. Comfort correct me but the mistakes are my own is what I'm trying to say. So then the reason I'm doing

002this is because we kind of went through this a few years ago our older board directors may remember when we were going over the proposal for CSST and there was no short no small amount of confusion about what CSST was what the law provided for how that worked And so again, I just thought I would try to set the context really quickly. I'm not you know me I'm not going to be long-winded here. So the the modal school right the traditional district school is operated by the local school district which is to say us right we as the board set policy we set overall goals and then we delegate a substantial amount of management authority to our chief executive the superintendent who then manages the day-to-day operations of the district the funding right is through

003per pupil revenue allocation under the state finance formula, the SFA. That all goes through our budgeting process and we'll be talking about that more later tonight. when we go over the preliminary budget development assumptions. This is not the only model of public education in the state of Colorado. The state of Colorado actually has a very diverse set of offerings of how public education is delivered to the public. And so I will very briefly touch on three other options for public education. This is not an exhaustive list, but it's close. These are the major offerings. The other major thing that we have in our portfolio is charter schools. So these operate under a charter contract with an authorizer. We saw this at a previous regular meeting that authorizer is often the local school district, right? We

004just passed the renewal for SEVA's charter application, but it does not have to be the local school district. It can also be authorized at the state level through CSI. We had an example of a school that had a wider geographical interest just last regular meeting that said, we actually don't want to be authorized by District 11. We would prefer to go through CSI. So they have a charter contract with the state. They have their own. alternate governance model. They're governed by an independent board of directors. We provide a certain amount of oversight. The DAC helps us with that to some extent, but we do not run day-to-day operations for charter schools. They have their own independence governance model. They operate with a significant amount of autonomy over operational details such as staffing, curriculum, scheduling, and

005they have automatic waivers for many states' policies and the specific contract that they have with their authorizer outlines how those waivers function. They receive per pupil funding as well and then we have a certain pass-through of MLO money that goes to them that is state mandated as well. The theory being right there a public school just like anybody else. They are serving students just like anybody else and so they get a certain amount of MLO dollars. Innovation schools and innovation zone schools were established under the Colorado Innovation Schools Act of 2008. These are The intention of the law was to try to provide some opportunity for flexibility and operational choices. more akin to a charter school perhaps but not fully in that direction and so innovation schools are still a part of the local school

006district they operate under approved innovation plans and the local board then approves those plans and those plans also allow waivers from various different policies or state policies so we have some innovation schools ourselves North and Mitchell Our two examples of innovation schools with innovation plans, our older board directors may remember previous conversations where we have talked about whether those schools are making full use. of the flexibility of their designation of innovation schools as to whether we want them to innovate more. You may remember those conversations from previous years. My understanding is what we are being pitched on tonight is an innovation zone school. So this is similar. This was established under the same state statute. They frequently, although not always, operate under an alternate governing body, as does CSST. CSST is an example of such

007a school. where again we kind of we ultimately approve the school it's considered a district school we delegate management authority to this alternate governing body if they choose to set one up there are all there are numerous ways of doing this you can have non-profit governing boards you can have some kind of other shared leadership model you can have other collaborative governance structures it's still funded through district per pupil allocation similar to traditional schools it's still a district school The law just provides for a few different alternate arrangements, both in governance and in terms of operations. And this came up when we were thinking about CSST. I just want to foot stop this. An alternate governing body is explicitly one of the things the law says. You can consider this as an innovation. This is

008a useful thing to do in certain circumstances. Brandon, did I get anything wrong? That all sounds right. Okay, thank you. And with that, I will turn it over to Superintendent Gall. I'm going to hand the clicky over to my good friend, Dr. Bolton and his team, and let them make the pitch. Think a lot about the successes that we've had with CSST of how we bring students in K-12 with higher ed and industry together around the learning experience. Don't let anything else distract you. Think about that under this setting. For those of you that toured today, I think you got to see that and realize it's something completely different than something you would expect to see in a comprehensive high school. We're not trying to be against comprehensive high schools. We're trying to answer the

009demand signal for parents and students, which is nature, more uniqueness, more individualized opportunity. Dr. Boll. All right. Thank you. So many of you have met me and visited with this board several times over the years. But if I haven't, Lance Bolton, I'm the president of Pikes Peak State College. I think I'm finishing my 15th year as president of Pikes Peak. So I've been here a long time. It's really given me an opportunity to build a lot of partnerships and understanding of the community where we work. I want to introduce my colleagues, Dr. Joe Sharlaman. He is the Executive Dean of Health Sciences at Pikes Peak State College. He can answer any technical, detailed questions you might have about our programming. Donna Nelson, who is the Chief Development Officer at Pikes Peak. And I think one

010of the key things that we see here is certainly an opportunity for us to... bring in additional resources that will serve District 11 kids through this partnership. We know that our philanthropic partners in the community love to see this kind of partnership on behalf of kids. So we're really excited to share this idea and pitch with you. I want to note that launching a healthcare innovation school, it will be a first for Colorado and it's really a national best practice model now in education to create hands-on meaningful experiences in education for kids that lead them directly to work opportunities and that's exactly what we're all about as you'll note in the slides our target opening is august 2027 and the goal for us is simple but powerful every student leaves this healthcare high school with

011a healthcare credential that puts them to work So, the model integrates high school learning with career level training and a highly structured career focused environment. school will be modeled after the Colorado Springs School of Science and Technology and thanks Nathan for being here I want to note that I serve on Nathan's board I was a founding member of the board and continue to be an active member of that board and we see a similar pathway here for students to be engaged in very specific detailed career oriented instruction and curriculum I've had the privilege of serving on your board since I mean when Yeah, I came May of 2024, two years. So I think a lot of learning has gone on in that process that we can certainly apply to the opportunity with the healthcare high

012school as well. So the program in our hand we're envisioning, it will initially focus on licensed practical nurse. physicians and training. So one of the things that students will have to do on the pathway to that is they'll have to earn their CNA. So students would actually come out of the program with two credentials. So certified nursing assistant, which will get you a job in healthcare already. But we want to graduate students with an LPN. With an LPN, a student can earn approximately $60,000 a year in Colorado Springs area. LPN opportunities are consistently listed. top job openings in the Pikes Peak region they're really hired primarily by long-term care facilities retirement homes and rehabilitation facilities that hire the LPNs you really have to have an RN to go into the hospitals and eventually they typically

013require BSN and I want to talk a little bit about what that that pathway would look like so we imagine the instruction will combine both traditional high school coursework and extensive concurrent enrollment in the junior and senior years to lead to the LPN licensure. We anticipate that Pikes Peak State College faculty will teach the concurrent enrollment courses and partner closely with their colleagues at District 11. So while we expect LPN to be the foundational program, we also anticipate if we're successful with this model, and I'm sure we will be, that we will expand the opportunities. And we're thinking about especially dental assisting and EMT. So a lot of great jobs in dental assisting and a dental assisting program graduate has a fast track opportunity into our dental hygiene program. Dental hygiene is right now the

014highest paying producing job that we train people for with salaries over a hundred thousand dollars a year in the Colorado Springs area so we want to make those opportunities available to young people coming into those programs EMT we see is certainly an opportunity to get more young men involved in health care as well So we imagine although we never know but based on the classes that we enroll that an LPN program will be primarily heavily female if we were to also starting the EMT program I think we would get more young men coming into the healthcare profession Which is a great profession for both young men and women But the the overall goal certainly to create a scalable health care training program aligned with regional workforce needs so What the pathway for students coming into

015this program? I just want to highlight those of you who were on the tour today Thank you for taking the tour. I want to highlight that the scale pathway that Joe is built in nursing So CNA is that first job and now get you a job as a tech in the hospitals LPN will get you job a living wage job out in our long-term health care facilities An RN is needed for the hospital. If you complete our LPN program, a student could go right into our RN program, registered nurse program. If they do that, there's a fast track that they can finish an RN in three semesters. they could complete that RN program with the District 11 Promise Program. So a student could come out of, come through the LPN program in high school, go

016into the RN program following high school with support from the D11 Promise. It didn't take a job at a local hospital. The hospitals will pay for every student they hire, and they hire everyone they can get their hands on. They compete for them. They will pay for them to continue into their BSN program and complete that. A student coming out of a District 11 high school could complete a Bachelor's of Science in Nursing at Pikes Peak State College with no expense to themselves or their family. through this model and we think that is phenomenal. So an RN coming right out of Heights Peak State College working at UC Health, I pulled the data on this with help from their human resources folks, earns about $90,000 a year for life changing opportunity for young people. They

017earn so much because If you're a new nurse, guess what? You work nights, you work Christmas Day, you work New Year's Day. So there's a lot of differential shift pay that's part of that $90,000. They're getting hired in the mid-70s, but they're actually earning over $90,000 a year on average, which is amazing. Real quick, sir. Yes, sir. We have a lot of acronyms in the educational field. Yes. My wife is a nurse, so I'm familiar with these acronyms, but just for the board and for the public. So CNA. Certified nursing assistant. LPN. Licensed practical nurse. RN. Registered nurse. BSN. Natural science and nursing. Okay, so these are all credentials that we're discussing, folks. Dr. Keery, I appreciate that. I do that to Joe all the time because I get lost in his acronyms, but thank

018you for backing me up. Didn't mean to interrupt your momentum. Sorry. No problem. We really envision this as a powerful step and an opportunity for us to partner with District 11 in a really meaningful way to create new opportunities for students in the district. The key part for Pikes Peak and what we're thinking about with this is if you were on the tour today, you saw this is not a traditional learning environment. We created a really powerful hands-on, energizing experience for students. We help students begin to imagine themselves as healthcare professionals from day one. Students are typically in uniform when they're there in the CHES building taking classes. They're in uniform when they're going through the simulations. They're having the experience of being healthcare professionals. It's really the challenge that we often have with students

019is to put into their imagination, into their mind, the idea that they can be a healthcare professional or that they can be whatever that thing is. We create that opportunity through this type of program and this type of instruction that is very, very hands-on based. To accomplish that, Pikes Peak State College is coming to the table with an investment of $5 million that we would put into building out the nursing simulation space that would be needed to replicate what you saw today. And if you didn't get to do the tour today, I want to tell you it's an open and standing invitation to come to the college and have an opportunity to do that tour and see what... healthcare simulation training can look like. I will tell you that that center there is a national

020model. It has attracted people from all over the country to come and look at that and to talk about how they could replicate healthcare training in their spaces like we're doing there. It is extraordinary for a college like ours. We were discussing what kind of college we are. We're not quite still a community college, but we're not a four-year college. So we decided with Nathan's help today that we're a two-plus college. For example, you can earn your bachelor's degree in nursing. But for a college like ours to have a medical campus is really extraordinary. What we're envisioning with the investment that we would like to make with District 11 is a second medical campus to really focus specifically on young people in District 11. We know that a couple of things about District 11 that

021I just want to highlight. You all have been a great partner to work with. We've had tremendous amount of success with the D11 Promise. We're having a lot of success and working really well together on a teacher program. And we see an opportunity here to continue to expand that partnership. The hospital's core operations are in District 11. Their administration is here, their main hospitals are here, they exist right here in your district. And many of the young people who are our number one targets that we want to serve, who sit farthest from opportunity, are right here in District 11. The opportunity to break cycles of poverty and to create professional opportunities for young people through a program like this. I couldn't tell you how excited I am about being able to do that. And so

022I hope you will come on this journey with us to be able to make that happen. Just finally wrapping up, healthcare, one of the fastest growing industries in the Colorado Springs region. We are a major hub for healthcare. If you don't know, and I've spent a lot of time in our hospitals, people come from... western Nebraska, from New Mexico, from all over southern Colorado for health care in Colorado Springs. We are a health care hub for a very large region. So we anticipate and certainly the hospitals continue to anticipate more investment and more opportunities, more professional jobs here. In the 15 years that I've been president at Pikes Peak, at no time has there not been construction of new hospital space underway here in Calriss Springs and that continues today. When I sit and visit

023with our CEOs, they will tell me that their number one concern and issue is how they're going to staff those hospitals. They're very comfortable with being able to build these great facilities. But the care really comes down to the quality of employees that are there on the floors and making healthcare happen in a professional way for their patients. So I think I can take questions now, but I just want to finish with this, that I have, as I just mentioned, spent a lot of time in our local hospitals. So my wife was in UC Health for... nine and a half weeks this year already. So she entered just after January and she just got out last week. And I would say about two-thirds of the nurses that I encountered. in her room were Pikes Peak

024State College graduates. I encountered some extraordinary District 11 students. Gabby, who came out of Mitchell High School and was Lisa's nurse for 20 or 30 of those days. And she was fantastic. She was phenomenal. I was so proud. seeing our nursing graduates in those spaces. So we recently won an award called the Bellwether Innovation Award. Pikes Peak State College won it for the Promise programs that we built. We featured a student from from one of our local high schools in that that came through the Promise programs and she actually came out of Sierra High School but the opportunity that we see for young people who again sit far from opportunity to be able to engage in a program like this, go to a school that when they graduate, the day they graduate, they can go

025out and earn a living wage in Colorado, and then we're providing a path forward through D11 Promise that they can become RNs and then BSNs. And that would make me so proud to be able to do that for young people in this district here in Colorado Springs. I'll just wrap up with great appreciation. It's been just a real journey. Pikes Peak has been a wonderful partner in, first of all, bringing the Promise Scholarship, first to Mitchell and then across D11, in the MOU for our Teachers College last year, which we've had a lot of positive energy. We have 20 kids signed up for your next concurrent enrollment to really launch that in this next semester. What is really unique here is the district was certainly... a little overextended last year in the opening of CSST

026because it was our higher ed partner, UCCS, who gave us the space, but we were making the capital investment. What really makes this a tremendous opportunity, one, pikes peak has already done this and joe's a living example and two they've got a pretty large number up there that we want to flip that relationship which is how do we rethink some of our district 11 space that somebody else is making a significant capital investment in which really gives an accelerant again to try to meet the varying demands of the portfolio district that we run which is this is in high demand we see it at csst we've had great success nathan has been traveling nationally and had people come to visit what would school be like reimagined were Workforce and opportunity is really at the center

027of it not just singularly the diploma So I think we stand here ready to answer any questions on timing and other things but specifically to our Pikes Peak partners on Their journey a little bit on what's worked and challenges they've had at their campus up north So before I turn it over to the board for questions So the context because there are likely a lot of questions that you do have about logistics and other things So the context of this conversation is that the only thing we are doing as a board, if we're doing anything tonight, is we are simply expressing interest in the project. And at that point the team would kind of go and start to actually dig into the specifics of how this would be accomplished. Answering some of those logistical questions,

028Superintendent Gall or anyone as appropriate, could you just give the board a very brief overview of kind of what the next steps for this would look like if we are interested in pursuing this and we want to do that in fall 2027? opening target. Yeah, we have to connect again with the state through your vote on expanding the Innovation Zone. The Innovation Zone was pitched to the state with CSST. We have some slides here. Nathan, you want to go over the timeline a little bit of what that looks like? Yeah, ultimately the state approved zone with multiple schools but we would need to go back and probably rename the zone because right now the zone is very CSST specific and so that we'd have to go through a process of renaming which I believe would

029come from a resolution and then and then be able to move forward with the process from there And we would come back to the board as we've done with any other charter or innovation school with what we call an ESA, which is an educational services agreement, which is just the contract between that governing body and you all as the overarching governing body that owns that contract. So we obviously have done some preliminary work to bring this to this space here. And so we're ready to meet all those timelines. major thing for us would be to identify the appropriate space using the utilization and capacity report that was submitted to the board in October would generate most of that opportunity for us. All right. And with that, I will open it up to the board for

030questions. I'll start. Thank you for the visit. I got an opportunity to visit your facility this morning, and your staff did a great job taking us around. And I will make a comment on that. But first, I'll come to my questions. In the first slide you talked about a $5 million investment from your end. Is that going to be enough capital to get that program up and running or is there any expectation from District 11 as well other than space in terms of financial commitment? No expectation from District 11 in terms of financial commitment. We believe $5 million will build out the nursing ward and simulation spaces that are similar to what you saw in our nursing program today. And our expectation is that that's our expense. It would be... CONCURRENT ENROLLMENT SPACE, THE COLLEGE'S

031SPACE THAT STUDENTS WOULD BE COMING INTO. AND SO WE EXPECT THAT THAT'S OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO BUILD IT OUT. OKAY. AWESOME. AND THEN, I MEAN, WE DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT FIGURING OUT OUR BUDGET TO ALLOCATE MONEY FOR THIS PROJECT AND APPRECIATE WHAT YOU ARE BRINGING IN AS SEED MONEY FOR THIS PROJECT. THIS QUESTION. IT MAY COME TO SUPERINTENDENT CALL. I'M SURE THE COMMUNITY MEMBERS MAY COME AND ASK US ABOUT IT. SO WHY IS THIS PITCH COMING AS AN INNOVATION SCHOOL, AS AN INNOVATION SCHOOL ZONE, AS SUPPOSED TO A TRADITIONAL SCHOOL? YEAH. GO AHEAD. SO FOR US, THINGS THAT ARE REALLY IMPORTANT AROUND THIS, ONE, THE FLEXIBILITY OF HOW WE OPERATE. Training program like this for example will require clinical hours of students And so we may not be always operating just a standard school day

032And so we mean flexibility around that the accreditation process is really important to this and so that might be different than what a normal Traditional high school might look like if we're going to put five million dollars into the the creation of this we would like at least a voice in the governance of how it operates so as i do now i sit on nathan's board i would hope to have that pikes peak would have a seat on the board in healthcare high school as well Perfect. It answered my question and hopefully for the people that are listening in the audience as well, if that's a question, you answered it. The first cohort of 300 to 400 students, that would be starting in 27. That's the goal, the size of the school. It would phase

033in much as CSST has done, normally one grade at a time. So we'd be targeting the 75 kids to 100 in that first year, depending upon word of mouth and advertising to be able to get there. So it is to fit the niche space of the size of the school, but there's not an anticipation that in the first year you're right at that total number. But would that be incoming freshmen that year or would that be like? So my understanding is most likely incoming freshmen. But at the same time, we could offer concurrent enrollment classes for juniors and seniors who are prepared to be able to come in and start in that first year as well in the college's space. Right. So some of them that have taken. Freshmen and sophomore classes, basic classes, that

034they may be able to transition as a junior into your program in 2017. Correct. But during that interim time, we imagined, while those freshmen and sophomores are coming along and learning the basics, that we could offer concurrent enrollment classes there. For students who are already prepared who are already juniors and seniors who have taken the necessary background courses to be able to be successful might be a smaller cohort But that would be fine. We typically do better and like to start with smaller cohorts and grow as we get some momentum And then first year with just the nursing program and then subsequent years with the dental and the EMT programs as well. That's all I had. If this goes well, we would really like to add to it. Okay. As far as comment goes, that

035was impressive. the cure that we got this morning and getting to experience. And some of the students were in class. We were able to walk into the class and see the students engaged in the classrooms. And the simulation models were there. It simulated what was happening in real life, including touch, feel, smell, sense, all of those kind of things. You can transport it into a park and things like those. So you did an amazing job demonstrating that. Thank you. providing this type of opportunity for our students. D11 community is more to the central and south. That facility is way up north. So a lot of our students may not have the access to get there. So having something within District 11 boundaries, a location where they can go and have this type of life-changing opportunity

036for them that they can graduate out of high school and get a $60,000 job and then go for three or four more semesters and possibly get close to $100,000 job. all pretty much covered. at no expense to the student because of all the various resources that are available. It's just a life changing opportunity for so many of our students that don't have that opportunity right now. So I am fully sold on it. He pitched this to me this morning, five minutes, and I said, where do I, you've had me after that five minutes, but then he took me on the tour. This is something from my perspective, always wanted that pathway, that full healthcare pathway. We may have bits and pieces of that in District 11 right now, but this is something that is going

037to complete that healthcare pathway. And thank you for bringing the $5 million investment as well. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. I would like to echo Hart's comments about the tour. You guys were phenomenal. When I saw that, I mean, at one point I actually said, where do I sign up? It was amazing. I mean, I've seen a lot of schools in my time, and just, I really don't have the words, and that's amazing. The idea of being a core teacher, as I was for 30 years, how do you get the core subjects in? Because it's not just a health care high school. Is that what you call it? Correct. I mean, there has to be four subjects. So how does that work? Yeah. Well, that would be the high school's part of

038this. So I would just say not quite my lane. Okay. Our lane is really delivering the college level courses, but maybe Nathan would want to say something about this. So you really do the college classes with the high school classes. It's really you've dovetailed those together. So you do the math, science, English, social studies classes, and then really the college classes probably operate more like electives for those kids. And certainly this happens for college students as well. If you come to a health care program at Pikes Peak, you're still taking some of the core courses as well. So it's built into our curriculum as well, but we look a little bit different with taking high school classes and building those around the concurrent enrollment college classes. Very good. It was really well done. Thank you.

039Thank you. Yes, I also enjoyed my visit today. What I was impressed with was the care of the students and the modeling in the classroom. And I'm wondering, I'm still trying to understand what it looks like as far as you're saying three to four hundred people. Would that be the limit or this would be for the high school part? And also what age groups would be there? Would it always be just nine through twelve? Or do we have kids moving through campuses? Do we have kids coming from other high schools? I think they're great questions. I think the idea of an immersive medical high school is really kind of one of the advantages of this experience. I would imagine maybe starting with 9th, maybe 9th and 10th, just from a master schedule building as a

040practitioner. From a master schedule building standpoint, it's much easier to do it with a smaller number of grades instead of having to really max your teachers out to offer across too many grades. But yeah, I mean, it would be a great problem to have if we had more students that wanted to access this program than we have space. And do we expand that space? Is this something we replicate somewhere else? I think that would be a great problem to have. And then we've had some early conversations about maybe a middle school that could feed into some of these that might be science-focused around medical or technology as well. So the capacity could go above 400? Tim, that's pretty far down the road. What I would say is what the city has seen is kind of

041a settling that a traditional high school is seeking to be a thousand plus to find its way to balance the budget and offer that very diverse. set of experiences and what I'll just call niche school experiences seem to be very comfortable in the 300 to 400 window. You had SEVA here earlier getting their charter renewed. How many years now? SEVA in District 11, 20 some odd. Very comfortable at 300 and some odd children. You end with... the balance of very strong visual and performing arts in comprehensive high schools. So there seems to be a nice balance of choice of some families need and want a very immersive experience that leads to the actual certification, CNA, RNA, LN, BSN, all the way up to an actual career. And other kids want to dabble third period. Which

042is I'd like to learn about what a medical pathway could look like. We see those things existing at the same time just like orchestra exists at Coronado and SEVA exists down the hill. We're not really seeing them as necessarily competitive. The need of the individual child lands. To Nathan's point, I do see more schools over time in innovation spaces as really the economy demands. One of the things we talk about, Lance and I will say, is we normally hand students to higher ed and then they spend a year to remediate them. Because they weren't ready and then higher ed hands them on to the local economy who then spends time to remediate them because they're not ready So what if we put the three of them together to make sure that kids are ready? That's

043really the goal So as far as the the high school experience you might have a student that comes and takes one to two courses there I wouldn't anticipate that. I think all our students at CSST are full-time CSST students. There are already existing partnerships with Pikes Peak on concurrent and dual enrollment for kids to be able to do those singular things. There could be some economy of scale where we're sharing some of that simulation space, but I believe the original vision here. almost people are students yeah yeah to be able to get through the curriculum and meet the goals i think they would have to be fully in and again like detailed school plans have not been built out this is an initial pitch to the board to evaluate interest on our end so uh

044other questions from board directors charles yeah yeah thank you guys again for the tour of your facility i thought it was a great setup really cool opportunity, especially as a young person, next generation. I think, you know, there's a really big need for health care. I live with my great-grandparents. I know with the CNA role, that's a really popular thing, but I think you can invest a lot more into that. Looking at the annual salary, it says around $60,000, $65,000 annually for the LPN. Just looking up on research on the average minimum for standard living for a family of four, which in that needed category is about $100,000. How would you link that for students that may be going into their senior year renting out for apartments? How would this help accommodate them with benefits

045and resources? Well, so there's a lot of different numbers out there about living wage. We spend a lot of time on this. I would say our core mission is to put people who come through Pikes Peak State College into living wage jobs. We use the MIT living wage calculator for El Paso County for a single person, and that's a little over $50,000. that's that's the benchmark that we pay attention to around what salaries are for the job training programs that we provide and that's a single person versus what you're looking at for a family of four there's a lot of different numbers I was just curious to know because I know with coming out of 18 necessarily going to have a family afford but the rent is a big thing here in Colorado Springs. I

046want to make sure that if we are providing this that they do have a stable income but also livability to be able to produce outside of their job. I'm curious to know too because I know we've been building hospitals out of the wazoo here in Colorado Springs. I was curious to know, I know we're not too far in it yet but Could we possibly look in the southeast region area of the city because I know that's a big area where you know there's a lack of health care providers and Positions like this. I think that would really help in diversify your guys's vision of what I think is possible for Colorado Springs Well, part of the vision has been for a long time to create opportunities for people that are not in the north part

047of the city, that aren't close to our current healthcare campus, to make sure that that was accessible to people. We don't know exactly where, but part of this has been from the very get-go. It has to be accessible to downtown and south populations that we're not going to build something like this on the north side of town. We've already got that. And I'm curious to know, what sets you guys apart from, like, UCCS's campus with their nursing program and the opportunities that they have? But with you guys, it seems it's a little bit more efficient. the time and cost is more beneficial for the students that apply into this. Well, we're certainly lower cost than the UCCS program. And we have this scaled model so that you can come in and earn CNA, LPN. RN,

048BSN, you can't do that at UCCS. Basically, it's an all-in. It's a four-year program at UCCS to get an RN. It's a two-year program at Pikes Peak to get an RN. And yet our NCLEX rates, which is the test that people have to pass to become a registered nurse, we have the second highest in the state last year. In many years, we've had the highest in the state. And I think that really comes from the hands-on work as opposed to more theoretical. approach to teaching nursing. I'll double down and add that one of the wonderful things about District 11 is we have three institutions of higher learning within our boundaries. UCCS, Pikes Peak State College, and Colorado College. In this idea of innovative spaces wouldn't it be really wonderful if our higher ed partner for

049three different programs were three different institutions for us to really get the power of Some kids are certain they want to go to UCCS some kids are certain they want to go to Pikes Peak Some kids aspire to go to Colorado College having the opportunity for district 11 to you know, monopolize the fact that all these higher institutions are within our boundary can be an enrollment difference maker for us. And so Pikes Peak, there are obviously many other partners that could come to the table for this. Pikes Peak has the established program already. Copying success is the best way to ensure future success. So thank you, Joe, for what you do. I'll just jump in there, Charles. In comparing, the cost to the student that is a huge our students are their debt, if you

050look at their debt at the end of the track, it is, they're debt free. And with the Promise Program and with the tuition support they get from the healthcare organizations, the latter, they're employed as they go through the latter and taking advantage. I think that's a big benefit. No loans. If they go directly to UCCS, I don't see, they cannot say the same thing unless they're financially wealthy. And on top of that, there's no other program, medically speaking, that compares to what we do. No other program in the state. They can't touch us. So if you're interested in a career in the medical field. Pikes Peak State College is where you want to go. And as you were talking about the other colleges, maybe they're best in those other areas, but we are the best

051in the medical field. What's the name of the building you're housed in, Nathan? The UCCS Cybersecurity Building. Right. So putting the School of Science and Technology in the cyber lab for UCCS and then having a partnership that is a medical simulation with Pikes Peak is taking the advantage of the strengths that both those higher institutions bring to our community. So I'm going to stop us here, and I think just in the interest of time, because again. The full operational plans have not been built out. There are hurdles to be kind of crossed at the level of the state. This will come back to the board later for, you know, planning. It'll go through the whole non-action approval cycle. But I am going to stop and I'm going to get thumbs just for a clear signal

052to staff. And again, this is not a vote. This is not us approving a school right now. This is just authorizing staff to say, we are interested in this. go start to figure out some of those details. So can I just get a quick show of thumbs from the board if they are interested in, all right, perfect. So Mike and the team, you have our agreement that this is something we would like to see pursued. So we would love for you to come back and bring us a full detailed plan. Great. Thank you all. We really appreciate you listening and we really appreciate the partnership. It's a great opportunity for kids in our community to have a whole new pathway open to them. So thank you. We appreciate you. Thank you. As we transition, we

053introduced last board meeting the idea of the guarantee. If you'll remember, the 12th grade guarantee was every kid has a plan. And so this is a hyper-specific example of how we can make that guarantee to folks that those plans aren't just the whims of 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds, but getting them the actual experience. Okay, next thing we have tonight is a update on the bond conversations that have been occurring in our community So with no further ado, I will turn it over to Superintendent Gall and Dr. Brandon Comfort Board and the community. It's great to give you all an update again. Our goal here is to provide the board and the community with very rigorous planning and processes These are all pretty decisional for the board and the community to make the decisions I just

054want to be clear that we feel great responsibility in making sure that our plans are very tight so you all can be informed to make the best decision. Nobody here wants to walk into a buzzsaw and go into a space where the community is not ready for or responsive to the needs of a bond, but we want to make sure that you all have the adequate information available. And so as part of a very long series of conversations that we've engaged with, I turned it over to Dr. Comfort and team to give you some new information. Yeah, good evening, board. I'm joined by Carter James with Fox Signal. He's going to do a part later tonight on where we are with kind of our overall campaign and polling strategy. I'm going to start with project

055selection, how that's been going out in the communities, because our communities have been very busy thinking about how to transform their buildings. And then, as you know, our capital program manager, Jennifer Hotelling, is with us as well. Okay, so a little bit on timeline. As you know, we've spent a couple of years collecting data and building some plans, but we got pretty heavy with that in November, December, and then in January we identified our community-based liaisons. We did some training with them, developed some messaging toolkits. In February, we started to hold regional meetings, really start to introduce this idea to the broader community. And then really into February and through this month, our schools have been identifying projects. We'll show you a little bit about how that looks tonight. I got to visit three different

056schools last week with different community events. And it was so cool to see the amount of excitement and momentum. One of the communities I got to go to was Rudy. and it was like the first time in my career I thought I might leave doing something like this because they were so happy at what the principal was talking about they might get to do with the money so we're finishing that up now most of our schools will have identified their projects by this week there will be a little bleed over into after spring break and then into April we will bring um back a place of here's all of the projects here's the district directed projects here's the school chosen projects kind of a cumulative bond project list for the board to review carter will

057go over his part of the the timeline a little later just a couple of snapshots from some of our pictures if you've been out and about you've seen schools have engaged their community in variety of ways. I was at North for a basketball game a couple of weeks ago and their bond liaison had a big printout with a QR code and was forcing every single community member who stepped in the building to engage in whether they had anything to do with North or not, forced them to give feedback on what they thought that the school should look like. We have a lot of online tools that are out there. We have community meetings that are happening kind of across the gamut. Here's Martinez. We'll show you the updated public-facing tool tonight. And so what we've

058been able to do is actually take some of our project concepts in their old version and have a slider on the screen that shows you what that might look like if it were renewed or redone. And so this is Martina's kind of engaging their community with what it might look like if Martina's were to renovate their gym or fix their parking lot or mess with their hallway. And a number of schools have done that in similar ways. We've given schools and bond liaisons tons of resources, so much so that I think many of them felt like they were prescriptive schedules, and we had to tell them these are just ideas. You can engage your community in how you want because they were feeling like they had to meet my timeline to the day. But we've

059given them lots of information and then gone out and supported communities as late as of today as they're continuing to work to engage their community. Okay. I want to go over a little bit. I actually thought we would get more questions about this than we have. But I did want to go over how we built our allocation model in terms of the school allocations that they get to have choice in. Remember, lots of this funding is going to district-directed projects because there are some things we have to get done as a district. But in terms of the money we turned over to schools for their autonomy, the way we built that allocation model was basically based on four criteria. First, we looked at facility condition and for facility condition we combined, if you remember back

060last month or two months ago, we talked about this different data. We combined facility condition index, which is basically a measurement of the building, its bones, its systems, and educational adequacy, which is really about the experience a student has in a building. Safety, security, natural light, all of those different metrics. We combine that to create 50% and then the other 50% was the school's utilization, not enrollment, but utilization. We do wanna maximize the amount of kids that are impacted by the bond. And so we put those two numbers together to kind of create a norm score. And then we regionalized it. We were very, very cautious that we did not want this bond to benefit primarily only one part of the community. We wanted to make sure to Director Johnson's point earlier about what about

061the southeast we wanted to make sure that this bond was Beneficial to all parts of our district because it has been such a long time since they've seen any significant investment And so what that kind of turned into is by region, we assign different ranking and different investment levels, right? So it wasn't necessarily based on the year your school was built. It was based on your building condition and your utilization for your region. So in each region, there was an elementary school that, based on utilization and building condition, received the highest allocation, and then there were tiers below that. That turned out to kind of look like this so in every region There was an elementary that received a seven million dollar allocation, and then you'll kind of see how that cascades down again Then

062at the middle school level for where there was two middle schools one received a ten million dollar allocation the other received seven And then for high schools we had fifteen million dollar and twenty million dollar allocations what you'll see over there on the left is the district directed project so on top of Palmer Phase 2 on top of homes on top of the paying off of the COP we also have a hundred and fifty six million dollars of other district directed projects so these are things like air conditioning these are things like roofs these are things like boilers these are ADA accommodations these are things we have to make sure that with this size of investment we address a lot of the old deferred maintenance and we balance that with what each school community wants

063to see $750 million is a lot of money and we want to do that in a thoughtful way. And so we reached out to kind of districts across the state, districts that are larger than us, and we said, hey, as you've passed much larger bonds than our bond initiative, how much were you able to spend reasonably in a period of time? And the largest of districts said, hey, we can spend about $400 million in two to three years. Remember... When we pass a bond or we approve any type of measure like that, we have to spend 85% of that tranche within three years. Otherwise, the federal government is worried that we're saving money to collect interest, and that's called arbitrage, and that's a no-no. And so we want to tranche this. These are our rough

064thoughts right now. $300 million in the first tranche of a couple of years, then $250 million, and then finally $200 million for the third tranche. Now, there will be some projects that cross over. right the rebuilding of homes will not all happen in tranche one because it can't it's too fast so we will design some of those projects in tranche one and then build them out in tranche two but i show this to say we're starting to organize what it would look like across all of these different tranches to to stack and rack projects now we don't know all of that yet because we don't know what schools want to see or what they want to have happen but we are starting to build that organization we will obviously bring that to the board for

065your review as well when we're ready for that. I want to kind of do another quick walkthrough of the tools that the community has access to so that you can kind of see the level of transparency and data that's out there. And so this is the bond kind of front page. Most of this was there on the original version, but this is where I said we took some examples of projects that we see across the district and we built in these sliders so that if we say, hey, what does a classroom modernization look like? We took an existing D11 classroom and we overlaid that with what it might look like if we invested heavily in there. This one's really, this is just about windows. Same building, same classroom, but we just put in windows. And

066is that significant of a difference? These have been very popular with the community because you just don't, you've never seen what it can look like. And so until we visualize that for them, it's hard to, it's hard to really make sense of. We've updated our FAQs. And then obviously what we're going to go to here is explore your school's data. Remember every single school's educational adequacy. and facility condition and allocation is publicly available to any member of the public. It's on our front page, it's on every single school's front page, and so you can go in as you've seen before, look at that school, look at some of their statistics and demographics. look at their facility scores in terms of facility condition index, you'll see we built in some hover buttons above those. So if

067you don't know what that means, you hover over it and now it gives you a short description of what that term means. And so we've done a lot to try to add clarity for the community who doesn't live in the facility space every day. Next, I want to kind of show you what the capital planning tool looks like. And so this is, if you are the bond liaison or the principal, you get to go in and you get to see the allocation. And then you'll see a big long list of projects the district has done in the past five or six years. Because we don't want you thinking that you gotta spend money on something that we just updated. Then you come down and you start to have concepts based on the funding available. And

068you can decide, hey, I wanna put in new flooring. but i only want to put in new flooring in this part of my building because of a variety of reasons well we have modeled the price for that for you and so they got to go in and really play around with their allocation and as they choose things and prioritize them they see their allocation reduce there's a section on the bottom where if they if we don't have the type of project they're interested in they can put that in they can invite our capital team out to go do a possibility, feasibility walk. Hey, we want to add a new gym and we have $5 million. Is that feasible? And so Jen's team will walk out with an architect and say, hey, here's what we can

069do for $5 million. We've had a lot of schools take the advantage of the capital team on that. And then finally, what it looks like after they submit. So this is now what our team has access to on the back end. You choose a school, you see what their allocation is, and then you get to see what projects they chose, how they prioritized them, additional thoughts that they had, additional questions that they had. And so it's a really good thing. We now have over half of our schools have already submitted their project list, and so we're able to go in and take a look. I will say most schools went a really small portion above their budget. I think everybody wants to maximize the dollar. Well, actually, here's an example right there. They went $50,000

070over that million dollars. But this is proving to be a really good tool for us to start to organize what project schools want to do. This is another thing, obviously, we will bring in front of the board so that you can see what's happening at each school after we've compiled all of this information. OK. I'm going to turn it over to Carter and then we'll open it up for questions. Yeah, good evening everyone. I know I've had a pleasure meeting some of you separately, but for those I haven't, my name is Carter James. I am a partner of Fox Signal Strategies. We're primarily a public affairs slash ballot measure consulting firm. Me personally, I am a bit more Midwest born and raised, but I am located in Los Angeles for the last two years. I

071have over 250 different campaigns I have worked on majority of those being ballot measures With a good chunk of those being up in North Dakota I want to go through just briefly what we have done with both Perkins Eastman as well as the district what we're doing currently and kind of looking forward where we go you will see we're lacking a lot of in the weeds data and I will just say off the front that's intentional We are not going to come to you with a template. We're not going to tell you what the strategy is until we hear from the community. And the first step of that community input is this poll that we're going, that we're currently rolling out. We're in week three of a community survey. And I'll get to that on

072my next slide a little early. But I just don't want you to look at this and be like, where's the data? The data's coming. I just don't want to preempt it by... rushing ahead. So as Dr. Comfort mentioned, we have already been training with the bond liaisons. We have started the most critical part, which is the schools know anything about a bond measure. The most ineffective way to go for a bond measure is if you show up on the ballot and no one knew it was there. Not going to be effective. You want your teachers, your parents, and kind of the extended community to know. The second is kind of the project list. As we just saw with that dashboard, every school has a pretty long laundry list. The general voter isn't going to know

073details about how many windows they want in their school. They're going to want kind of bullet points, and that's the bullet points we're testing in our survey, but we've also kind of narrowed it down as a district to figure out air conditioning and AFAC repairs. That's a general bullet, not something that's detailed in the finest line because the general community doesn't really need to know that in the broad sense, but they have it available. The third is kind of early stakeholder outreach. So we have the first group which is kind of what we call our internal stakeholders That's district that staff teachers parents kids the external is the business leaders and especially with the bond measure like this with the district that has so many career and Technical training programs. We want to hear from

074businesses what they're seeing where they think there's a demand or need We want to make sure their voice is included as we slowly start to build what we expect the bond measure could potentially look like So that's kind of the work we've done, and as you can tell, all that's still in continuation. But the work we are currently doing is that one, that voter opinion survey. So we're probably going to wrap up here this weekend. I don't want to get into too many details of it since there are still members of the community who are responding to it. It's scientifically better if they don't know much about it. It's about a 13-minute survey. We ask a lot of good questions. We ask opposition arguments. We ask supporter arguments to kind of gauge how messaging works.

075We also gauge the project list. So that way we know what projects the community generally supports. It is not a political survey in your typical sense where we don't know, we don't care what someone's party registration is, we don't care what their likelihood to show up and vote on other measures are. We don't know about that. We want to know what they think about the bond measure. Part two kind of has to happen after that voter survey, but it's building the strategy. For example, one avenue we're currently looking at is a large portion of teachers and parents actually don't have updated voter registration to be in the district. So they may go to class here or they may have some type of outreach. They may live here. They just haven't filed that post service form

076so they get the ballot with them. That's a really simple thing. It's kind of strategy we're trying to grow to make sure, especially when we look at the previous ballot measure that failed, every vote counts. And, you know, we want to be able to boost our lead what we can. The third is that kind of engagement planning. That's the bones of what you would expect to kind of. where you would expect us to be. I know when I've listened in virtually a lot of questions about messaging and town halls have come up. That's really where that rolls out. That's where we go and talk to apartment complex associations. That's where we might do a community town hall at a gymnasium. We want the community to come in, share their thoughts because, you know, a neighbor

077who might not have kids still might have traffic concerns who drop off and pick up. So we want to make sure the broader community feels involved. What's coming up after this kind of initial phase is the research really wraps up. We're going to be collecting feasibility reports. We know what we're going for. The second step is your more traditional information campaign. It's not persuasive, both legally as well as fundamentally. That's not our goal. The community engagement is we want that extended voter that someone who just gets their ballot and they vote the same day and they don't listen to ads they don't look anything like that. We want them to receive something from the mail from the district early on either in the mail through social media through something like that where they know about

078the bond measure before it shows up. We want them to know this is not us just coming to you for the first time asking for money. We exist. We're trying to establish a line of communication. The third is where we will work more with you. That's the proper board work session. That's where we would come to you and present both the ballot question, the simplified project list, or not, sorry, the Fulbright project list, as well as the resolution to actually forward to the county for the election. Then August, really early August, we may look at a different date, is kind of that final deadline for the board to vote on if a bond measure is going to go to the ballot. That is where we are at and I know Dr. Comfort and the superintendent

079Gall have really kind of demonstrated for the last few sessions now that this is a community feedback focused effort And I'm happy to answer any questions. I know we got about 12 minutes left on the clock. So Yeah, I don't believe you have a chance at the end of our update. Yeah turn over for questions questions from the board So once we get the information back from all the schools, will this be coming up in the next regular board meeting for updates on that or will that be in the future? Agenda item I think we'll work with president carry on a timeline that makes sense I don't think we will be wrapped for the April 1st board meeting Because I well I would hope that schools are Caring about their project list over spring break.

080I'm not sure they will so we might have to come back in a work session Or a special meeting some something thereafter. Yeah, and just out of that we will present the survey results as well I do want to acknowledge the incredible work that's gone in when I reviewed the previous bond ballot measure that the district went for and I look at the quality of how we're interacting the companies that we have partnered with I imagine that's Perkins Eastman's tool is that right on the ability to do drop downs that sliding visioning opportunity for people to understand it gives people the chance to think differently about the buildings that they work in and that their children attend in a positive way instead of in the constant negative narrative that often older buildings do have. A

081lot of times bond campaigns are about, you know, stained ceiling tiles and it's great to be able to see What does educational adequacy look like? What does that mean? What does daylight mean to a child in a learning environment? So it's been super exciting to have those types of partners here, which I think we're learning a lot from is that some other institutions have thought very deeply about how to communicate the basic value proposition of where do my tax dollars go? because this is a request to the broader community. And so I think the more explicit we can be in that and yet responsive to what that feedback is, probably the most common question is, can I build a gymnasium or a cafeteria for a million dollars? And the answer is no, but we can

082show you ways to reimagine a cafe gymnasium with a million dollars that might be just as functional and beneficial. Ten years ago you could have. Yes. Not anymore. So yeah more as a comment As the old liaison for this bond discussion just update the board on this we have been periodically meeting with dr. Carey and Carter is looped into it's a 30-minute conversation every other Friday You provide an update and you got to find out that your survey went out And you also get an update on what's happening at the schools as board members I think Melissa is forwarding you those Discussions that are happening at the schools again a reminder if it fits in your own schedule, please do attend those discussions I do want to again footstomp and emphasize what you mentioned this

083is an opportunity for the community to engage in one of the schools that I was at there was some confusion that the district is going to choose the projects for the school itself but that's not the case we are asking community feedback and input from the schools to participate at this discussion so at the grassroots level we have that kind of That kind of you know feedback that is being provided by our community Just to superintendent call or to you at this time The three tranches that you talked about tranche one tranche two is there still some discussion? Superintendent call about attaching some kind of metrics to tranche two and tranche three or is that? Yeah, I'll let Carter dive into that. I'll say that I think we're trying to cover that with the guarantee

084work. Ballot measures traditionally don't do well with the specific language of a metric in there. Yeah, so I kind of have two different answers for that. One, we are including a subform of that in the poll, so we'll kind of understand the broader communities. One, their understanding of it. Two, their support of those kind of requirements. I will say one of the biggest hurdles of any type of ballot measure, specifically a school bond measure, is you have to inform the voter and when you're explaining you're losing, but that is just the nature of bond measures. You have to explain it. And if you kind of do something that's a little out of form, a little bit more difficult to follow for someone, you may lose some percentage. So that's something we might have to explore

085if the poll comes back a little bit closer than we would want. We might have to see if that could be an impact. I don't have a definite answer for you now. i would have to kind of wait to see what the community says yeah yeah i'll answer it more broader terms d11 is here to regain its trust with its community that has been every ounce of what we've tried to do for at least the last three years and i would assume and even the superintendents before me when you lose over 10 000 kids in 20 years while the population of the county has doubled it's not just about aging neighborhoods and populations it's that people are not choosing to come to district 11 schools There's an underlying lack of trust. For some people, we

086might not be able to overcome that. For others, it is already happening. I certainly have lived a very positive experience in the last week or so in hearing very specifically from certain communities how they feel or don't feel about some other decisions that have been made on some other projects. Those are people demanding an excellent experience for their child. And we'll work find a workaround to overcome some of those other challenges But we're starting to hear a voice in the narrative from the community that is now pro d11 now I think the other data to share is 17% of the electorate and district 11 is registered Republican 16% is registered Democrat and 61 or 62 percent is unaffiliated And so most of these conversations will be on the extremes of the margins, because that's how

087most of the political narrative goes in our country right now. Yet the opportunity sits in the middle. The opportunity sits in the middle, and we believe that without making them necessarily corollary, but the idea of what you heard earlier of a medical pathway high school, that that might only be 300 kids, but now people who have opted out might be saying, had that been there when my kid was going in, I might be interested in that. We have been a very binary system. for a long time. The strategy behind a portfolio is there's a school for every student in district level portfolio. You come pick. And at this size of the bond, every school is a winner. Every school's winner. There's not finger pointing across our own aisle, which again has been a goal in

088regaining trust. And how do we have board meetings where we're celebrating the excellence in the district and not constantly infighting with challenges that do exist? I don't want to shy away from the challenges, but I appreciate that we're polling for that. As we have said from the very beginning when we started this last spring, as goes the data, goes the decision here for the board to be able to make. There are no idiots at the table here. Nobody's trying to be a martyr for a cause. We don't want to spend money that is going to not work. We want to make sure we're being responsive to the direction of the board as you hear the inputs from the community. My only request just speaking of data is that you keep me in the loop with

089when survey findings are completed and when some of that initial analysis is done as Board president I've kind of been shooting for this operational tempo of one regular meeting in one work session a month. We're about to go into spring break I would like to pass on information to the board at the earliest possible opportunity So when we do have you know when we do start to get those results back and we do start to kind of put together the reports please let me know so that I can send them to the board immediately rather than waiting for the next work session. Absolutely. If that makes sense. Yep, we definitely commit to that. Okay. All right, thank you so much to the team. And I think Dr. Comfort probably shouldn't go too far on that.

090Yeah, I'm just going to say goodbye. I'm sorry. I'll be right back. All right. That does bring us to our third item of the evening for the work session, and that is a quick update for a proposed alternate salary schedule and alternate pay scale. And while we're waiting for Dr. Comfort to come back, I will just very briefly kind of give some context here. This was one of the ideas that was developed at the first retreat of the new board in January. So one of the documents that is on Diligent is kind of the draft that we put together as a pay to scale tasker. The goal here to develop a kind of modernized salary and professional development structure that is not simply tenure based but also rewards, you know, leadership. different responsibilities, things like

091curriculum lead or content lead or dean or department head. This is a model that my own workplace uses. This is a model that charter schools use frequently with the intention of trying to attract and retain high quality educators. And I said this at the retreat. I said this when we first kind of put together the tasker, but I'm just going to say it again. For the cameras, the explicit directive to Dr. Comfort and the team is that this is a voluntary schedule that exists in addition to the current salary schedule. This work is not intended to eliminate step increases for tenure. This work is not intended to move the district towards a pay for performance model. That is not what this is about. This is about trying to provide a... alternate option for teachers who

092are interested in leaning into roles of more responsibility roles of more leadership with the operational details being developed by dr comfort and the team and with that i will turn it over to superintendent gall and dr comfort yeah uh thank you uh president kerry this has been a great opportunity for us to really think about how do we continue to promote excellence and the quality of instruction and while celebrating every member of our team at the same time. The pay scale option here gives us the chance to acknowledge that the sector has shifted in the last really generation. We have many super eager and achieving staff members who don't plan to make a Jill Haefeli career in 29 years in the classroom, which again should be commended 30, sorry, 29 and D11. Thank you for

093that. And so we want to find a way that we can be giving people an opportunity to... be rewarded and or promoted in spaces where they are contributing differently and showing an extraordinary amount of effort for the work that they're doing. A couple of things to also add to Director Kerry's comments because I know how these conversations go very quickly in the wrong direction. This is not pay for performance. You will see there are no student outcomes in any of the things that we share here. This does not pay for performance. This is a way that we can accelerate individuals who are putting in an extraordinary amount of time. We love every one of our staff members and we hope that they see themselves reflected in the work that's here and not... as if they're

094being ostracized one way or another. It's a great opportunity for us as a district to really double down on a D11 way. What does it mean to be an instructional staff member in District 11? What are those expectations? What are those known supports that can happen? And again, if I relate this back to the 3812 work that we'll be bringing to the board in more depth in the work session in April. What then are those expectations of parents and students in that same space? None of these things sit in singularity. They all come together in a coherent and aligned strategy that says being a part of District 11 as a staff member, as a student, as a community member, as an alumni, or as a future member is probably the best opportunity not just in

095El Paso County but along the Front Range. So, to Dr. Kampfrich. Okay, very excited to present this tonight. I think that the primary objective here is expanding opportunity in alignment with district strategy. A quick data point for the board, we on average have 10 to 12 educators a month or 100 to 150 educators a year who move laterally on the pay schedule. So that's either they got increment credits or they got a degree. All the things that I'm sure Director Jorgensen or Director Haefeli and myself did in the classroom. That was the only way you could move is you took credits or you went and got advanced degrees. But to think about, we have 1,750. teachers and only 100 to 150 on a yearly basis are making that move over. So what that tells me

096is that there's not enough opportunity, that the value proposition for getting a master's degree is not what it was. It's potentially not worth the cost and the nights. And so I think expanding that opportunity is a really great additive of this salary schedule. Okay. So basically what we're doing is we're adding an opportunity, the model of instruction pathway, to President Kerry and Superintendent Gall's point. This is in addition to. This does nothing in any way to stop, slow down, change the existing opportunities that exist in the salary schedule for teachers to move horizontally. If you continue to get increment credit, You will continue to move over if you get a master's degree or a PhD if you continue to do those things you will move as you normally have this adds an entire second opportunity

097Which is basically the model of instruction pathway So this means you're completing district-led training on the model of instruction and you're gonna see we Overlaid the model of instruction pathway with our existing salary schedule as a note there You'll see the model of instruction is a zero cost option to our educators to move over They don't have to pay for increment credit. They definitely don't have to pay for an advanced degree. As long as they align with what you'll see here in a few slides, they will be able to move horizontally, in most cases, at a faster rate than in a traditional salary schedule. So entry points and how it works. First, to clearly state, it is teacher opt-in. Nobody will be forced into the model of instruction pathway. It is optional and it is

098you can live in both at the same time. You do not have to pick a path and then you're in that path forever. So on a yearly basis, if you are moving on the model of instruction pathway, great. If you're moving on the increment credit or I got a master's degree way, great. Our talent management team will continue to evaluate that on a monthly basis and move you on the salary schedule as needed. So again, you'll see a key principle that our teachers are never required to switch pathways. We're not trying to force somebody into a decision and then say, well, sorry, you're in the credit system. You have no option ever. Or, oh, sorry, you're in the model of instruction. You can't get out of that. It will always be up to the teacher

099in terms of what is making the most sense for them now. The intent here is to incentivize and reward teachers for leaning into the model of instruction and the district strategy for teaching and learning. So I said we aligned it with the existing salary schedule. Our existing salary schedule has nine lanes. And so the way we built this is three levels, each level with three steps within it. Or steps are the wrong word because we use steps differently. Three segments within it, right? Level one foundation. So thinking about level one or lane one of our salary schedule, it's about certification. You're getting certified in the foundation level of the model of instruction. That's foundation training and credential learned. The next step is demonstration. If you are certified and now you're applying those skills and it's

100observed and validated, now you're all of a sudden in lane two of the salary schedule. The third layer is leadership. If you're coaching on the model of instruction, if you're mentoring, if you're leading practice and peers, then you now are on the third lane. And that repeats two more times, moving from foundation to intermediate and then ultimately advanced. So this perfectly, as you'll see on this next slide, overlays with our existing salary schedule. So again, remember. You will continue to be able to move horizontally if you choose in the ways that our teachers do now and most teachers do. But if you choose to engage in the model of instruction PD and then the demonstration and then the leadership without any cost or additional increment credit or degrees, you will be able to move horizontally

101on the salary schedule. So if you think about this and you're a new teacher, you can in a much shorter period of time and for thousands and thousands of dollars less. get to what is right now a master's degree lane of pay by getting to the intermediate certification level of the model of instruction. Here's what the criteria for each track kind of looks like. So again, certification is really about completing district provided PD, passing some competency assessments, and then ensuring that you earn that credential. Demonstration is that it's observable in your classroom practice, the level one certification. and that when classroom walkthroughs are happening it's observable, that it's verifiable through the instructional team just like we do now with walkthroughs, and that you are a model classroom or open to being a model classroom for

102peer observation. I think you guys have heard from Dr. Frye the significant benefit that we are seeing from model classrooms. And so this is an expansion of that. And then that third criteria is really about leadership. So again, if you're leading peer learning sessions or coaching cycles, if you're mentoring, if you're contributing to district-wide initiatives related to the model of instruction, you're a certified model classroom. You're now in the leadership level of that designation. The other thing is who's monitoring. We will have a combination of internal and external validation so that we can make sure, because it is pay, pay is involved, that we can make sure that there's high fidelity and inter-rater reliability so that if we say you're a leadership level of the advanced course, then that really does mean that you are.

103It's not just because you happen to work at one specific school and more teachers tend to get approved at that school. So we'll have a very rigorous validation process to make sure that it's equally applied across the district. Phase two, a question would be, well, what if I already have a master's degree? As a reminder, or as a clarification, no teacher ever goes backwards, right? So if you have a master's degree and you go through level one certification and then you're a demonstration classroom, right now... you are still paid at that master's degree. Ultimately, we want to be able to pay you for that. Even if you're at a master's degree, but you go through a certification or you're a demonstration classroom, you should get a stipend for that. This is where PLC leads and

104department leads come in. We need time to build that model out. We do not want it to negatively impact any existing stipend process. And so that's what we're saying will be phase two that we will build out next year with feedback to make sure that we are providing additional opportunities and recognizing those existing stipend processes. We've already, just so the board knows the background, we've already started to build out FAQs and notification letters and processes and procedures because clearly this will be a new opportunity. We want to make sure we have as much of that built out as humanly possible. So we just showed you kind of a screen clipping of the FAQs that we already have going so that you know we are thinking through a lot of those what-if scenarios as we would

105look to implement this new system. And that's what we have to present, an additional opportunity that we think will significantly expand teachers' opportunities to move across the salary schedule. Again, hopefully in shorter duration and at zero cost in comparison to whatever they pay now. Brandon, before we turn it over to the board for questions, can you just detail what you kind of see as the next steps? both from the board level and from your level, because there is a lot of operational minutia that would have to be built out in this process. Just speaking purely for myself, I don't think the board needs to have ownership over the operational detail here. Nonetheless... You know, I want the board to be able to kind of set clear expectations and guardrails. You know, I want to make

106sure that as you're building this out, you're talking to organizations like the EEG, that you're talking to principals, area superintendents, teachers, et cetera. So in your view, what's the kind of timeline for, okay, when does, you know, when is this built out? When do we consult with these groups? When do we bring it back to the board? Can you just kind of... Yeah, I think I'm going to ask Dr. Fry to join the table as well. And so I'm going to let Brandon give you a little more detail. Go back to the phased in pays with the pay scale underneath it. Right there. We're in the final throes of codifying not just what we believe is the model of instruction, but then the professional development that goes around it. In summary, but not in totality,

107Carol and our other academic leaders in partnership with our area superintendents and principals have been all in this year on new to teaching, alternative licensure, and or early identified having challenges in the classroom. Those are all spaces that are very easily covered by what does a foundational set of skills relate to for you as you come into District 11. And so we see all of these coming together, that professional development. has to be what we say is that foundational opportunity. That doesn't mean that you have to opt into this. If you want to go the very traditional way, particularly for people that have been in the system for some time, by all means continue to do that. I would never say to somebody getting a master's degree is not a worthwhile endeavor. What I would

108say is for the limited amount of time and dollars that you have, particularly as education is an underpaid sector writ large, it would be even more beneficial for what we're seeing for outcomes for children if you were to be participating in foundational and intermediate training. And so this, and I'm asking Carol to come forward representing dozens of other people that have done this work, is the work that we're trying to bring to bear. The pay scale gives us an opportunity to actually activate it. Everybody who works harder deserves more money. The stipend program is broken and it doesn't. reflect the amount of time and work that people put into those spaces getting them committed to these basic foundational intermediate and advanced and you saw in brandon's other slide that there are subsets of existing positions

109in the district that are very easy to categorize into there and there will be ones that we don't know quite what to do with the guarantee is there won't be any losers in this space and that what we hope is that the momentum we've seen in professional development now translate into actual things that have sticking power. Just surviving March 16th, which was our last PD day, which we might call a no student day, shouldn't be the goal of March 16th. It should be how can I be advancing my own profession in effort to deliver a better experience for students in my classroom. Carol, anything you want to add on the foundational work? No, I think just that, good evening, by the way, just that we continue to see really positive trends in how connected PD

110is to district strategy and how connected that is to what's happening in the classroom. The superintendent brought up the 16th, which was our last PD day, and I'm just excited to share that as that data rolls in, what we're continuing to see is that every PD day we've had, the trends continue to be more and more positive. When we started this school year, we had teachers reporting at about 78% that they found PD to be meaningful in that space, and of the teachers who've already completed that survey from Monday, we're at 90%. and so we are really seeing teachers want the pd that we had i was reading actually as i was i'm getting caught up here i was reading some stuff from teachers and one of the teachers who went on monday shared the

111only feedback she would have is that she wished it had been all day because she needed even more time to engage in the content and then brendan sorry if i missed this a moment ago do you want to speak to kind of your envision timeline yeah uh I will echo what Dr. Fry and Superintendent Gall said. We're building a coherent system that's connected. And so the build out of the actual instructional model and it's then supporting professional development, that's the real work here. Now that's the work that is well underway and has been underway for the course of the year. I think we can build the infrastructure for the salary schedule really cleanly and pretty quickly. The one caveat is going to be what Superintendent Gall talked about, which are what are the entry points,

112right? And who are their entry points? for. As Superintendent Gall said, nobody will be harmed in this. Nobody moves backwards. Everybody can continue how they continue. And I'm not yet certain that we will have an entry point for every possible potential teacher in the system. If they have been doing some aligned PD but are not yet a model, you know, there's just a lot of those what ifs. And so I think that's what we'll need time until the end of the year to build to ultimately bring back to the board. And then would appreciate any clarification on if it is an expectation that we address any and all potential entry points, that's going to be the one sticky point that we need some more time to work on. But in terms of the early entry

113points, that will be pretty simple. seamless. Our induction will be modeled after this. Again, you're going to see a much more coherent and aligned system. Very good. So before I turn it over to the board for questions, I'm going to take the president's privilege and just go on a very miniature rant here. I love this idea. I remember my very first year on the board, I pitched something like this in an email to Mike only to be told that ideas of this nature have been kind of kicked around the system for, you know, even before I was on the board. So I'm thrilled to finally see kind of a proposed product and I'm excited to see. what you kind of think through as you're bringing this to fruition. The intention here, and I'm saying this

114as a teacher myself, is really to try to both reward and encourage professionalism through the teacher core. With full respect to people who go and get degrees and get PhDs, I have a PhD myself, I'm not that convinced it makes me a better teacher. What does make me a better teacher is, you know, a deliberate approach to the craft, Work that I do to support my department at my own workplace Whether that's building out curriculums as a curriculum lead or designing assessments like those are the things that actually move the needle for students and There is a joke that has been said on camera many times that you know the most frightening thing a teacher can hear is oh I'm from central office and I'm here to help because Teachers know that administrative leadership does

115not always have an understanding of what is going on in the classroom and the needs there. And so the idea to have a salary schedule where what advances you is not necessarily college credit on something that may or may not improve your teaching practice. What advances you through the salary schedule is a demonstrated capability in teaching and a... commitment to leadership and advancing, you know, the mission in your own department or workplace, whatever that happens to be. I think that's a fantastic idea. And like I said at the beginning, this is something that where I teach at the Air Force Academy, this is something that we do. My department head, my supervisor, has the same teaching load that I do. And it is extraordinarily valuable to have, you know, someone in a leadership role who

116has that hands-on experience with students. you know, the same days as all the people he's leading. And I'm not saying that, you know, you're going to build that out in exactly the same way, but the general concept of can we ensure that teachers are rewarded for their craft and for their contributions to their workplace, I just think that's fantastic. So two thumbs way up from me. But with that, I will turn it over to the board for questions. Jill, the silence freaked me out. I'm trying to figure out how to say this. Without pulling a Jill. Okay. How does this new program ensure that leadership selection processes are transparent, merit-based, and free from favoritism? Go back to the slide about validation. I'm going to throw my answer. The idea that qualifications matter more than personal

117relationship with the person that's making the decision. That's my question. Yes, so I think we completely agree often systems like this fall short because of that because the Reliability of the verification process is flawed and not intentionally, but it's like no I know that person I've taught with them for 15 years. I know that they can do this whether Regardless of if it was demonstrated or not. So that's why we have this mix of internal and external validation Obviously, what's happening in a building, we need to hear from that building coach and that building leader. And we need to hear across the district from other people who can come in and help validate. And we need to hear from an external source who doesn't have established relationships or any of those things and is coming

118in just for the pure sense of the observation. And so this is something that is non-negotiable to us in this model, is that it's a combination of all of those sources. The local source, the regional district source, and that external source to make sure that as much as humanly possible we are addressing exactly what you brought up. If you were to hear my team, they hear this from me all the time, that is my one biggest point in this. It's really actually easy to overlay a strategy over a salary schedule, but when you're messing with people's money, you have to make sure that it's fair and transparent. Yeah, I want to add just a couple of pieces. We built some intentional tension within our own system this year. We have area superintendents whose responsibility is

119principal management, which is usually supporting principals of what their role is in day-to-day management. And then, of course, we are proud to say our building leaders are our instructional leaders inside those four walls. At the same time, we built out a regionalized academic director system that reports to Dr. Fry, which then takes a slightly different tact that says, I'm not quite seeing what it is that we say that we want to see in this building or in this classroom at this time. So we've built in our own kind of internal and external opportunity right now to make sure that we're not just walking the walk, or not just talking the talk, but that we're actually walking it as well. The key word on there is demonstration. I'm proud that in the model of instruction work

120that we're bringing is that when we walk into buildings, we will have a top level and then a more detailed level. It will be a combination of certainly the infrastructure or the inputs that happen in that day, but also the demonstration of seeing it in that space. Just seeing a learning objective written on the wall doesn't mean that a child. understands what the learning is that happens that day. So it's really the combination of demonstration and then that it's not insular. These are not principal stand-alone decisions. These are decisions that we have an entire team that will then vet, will give us the opportunity to make sure that we're there. And we're happy to then measure that over time and get some inter-rater reliability as well to make sure that we're not seeing trends, you

121know, towards one school or another. We manage those things through HR very closely. I would just add on that some of that precedent is already in the works. So when you think about the model classroom initiative, that goes through several layers of verification. So it's first nominated by someone at the school level. It's been verified by a member of the academics team, and often it has been secondly verified by another member of the academics team because they often go in tandem or in pairs to do those visits. We then calibrate that team by doing walks together every two weeks to ensure that when we're in a classroom, any one of the members of the academic director team could speak to the same things about what they're seeing in those classrooms. Did I hear you correctly?

122Somebody has to be nominated? They don't just apply? It can be both. We actually get them several different ways, but often it's by referral. Okay. And we actually have an almost there list. Yeah, so I think this brings to, and I don't know if your question was getting here, but what happens if someone says, you know, I think it's this, and we go out, and it's not quite that? What that, then, is an opportunity for us to do coaching, right? It's an opportunity to build a relationship and say, hey, this is where you are, this is where you want to be. What does that look like in your practice? And so we have a list of individuals who are in that pipeline, and many of those are actually teachers who went on the model classroom

123day and who then came back and said, oh, I understand now that that's what a model classroom looks like. I'm implementing these three things. Can you come back in two weeks and see those in action in my classroom? So this kind of thing is a protection against nepotism. We believe so. Thank you. Any other questions from the board? All right. If you can go back, and I'm going to go slide by slide with some clarity questions so I do understand. I'm sure the community may have some questions as well. That's good. That's the first slide that I'm talking about. Slide by slide? So much for the two minutes of questions. You have three minutes left. Great. That's fine. Or you can answer all the questions that come from our community. When you have those two,

124if you are a current teacher that is going to be, let's say, in the 10th year, you choose a pathway. They can choose that model of instruction pathway or a higher education pathway. They can always live in both. Or they can choose both of them? Absolutely. It's always going to be a what is best for that teacher in that moment. So even if they're in the model of instruction, even if they're getting certified and they're demonstrating and leading, but on the side, they're like, hey, I'm really going to, I want to go do this training. And they get certified. If that bunts up their pay first, great, they're going to get that. Okay. If they get it because of the model of instruction, they get that. Again, that's how we do it now on a

125monthly basis. And so we're just expanding that opportunity. So it doesn't force a choice. What was that number you shared, 150? 100 to 150 teachers a year move right now horizontally, so this should expand that. So this accelerates teachers' ability to expand their salary outside of waiting for budgetary authority for steps. So if they choose the model of instruction, they can still earn a master's degree and get that. 100%. Awesome. And in the slide, the zero cost for educators, that's... JUST A COMMENT FROM MY SIDE. THAT'S PERFECT. THAT REDUCES THE IMPACT ON OUR TEACHERS. GOING ON TO THE NEXT SLIDE. The certification and the demonstration, all of those things at the foundation level and at the intermediate level, those are two different things, right? Or the certification and the training that they receive at the

126foundational level. Yeah. Each level, you have to be certified demonstration and then leadership. So we give the same guarantee to... Jill's comment to avoid the well, of course you were did great level one So automatically you're going to do great level two you have to actually then be recertified and demonstrate to actually get that opportunity Is it the same training that they receive? It's a change in practice obviously becomes more challenging. Can a teacher get three steps in one year? I don't know. Okay. No. You probably know. Okay. Now, those are some of the what-ifs we have to build out. What if you have a hyper-eager teacher? But, you know, the demonstration and leadership, that takes time. You might be able to go quickly through the certification. But to really demonstrate and lead, I don't

127think we're going to be willing to rush that. And these foundational training. the first step or anything like that. Does that happen outside of our professional development days that are set aside? These are combinations of the time that already exists. We're not asking teachers to... Come on. We're asking them to utilize the time that's already built into their schedule in their calendar to advance the opportunity for our children to achieve Okay, that's cool. That's awesome And if as a point of reflection, I think you can remember part in your time on the board the great investment We've made a new teacher orientation and how much that has shifted from here's your computer. Here's your login Into this idea of what are the basic pedagogical? ideas and expectations that we have for you in the classroom.

128This build out this year of what Carol and team have been able to deliver and I know we shared in the last few MARS reports particularly for those that are participating in multiple coaching opportunities the feedback is we actually want more and so this gives us a chance to codify that that says the more that we invest in the profession of education the more professionalized our educational experiences will be particularly as received by the student. The goal here is we are a 32% math achievement and a 44-45% ELA. Those numbers are not going to change without transformational ideas that say we have to think about this differently than anybody else has thought about this. If you go to the normal slide scale, that works. without our foundational intermediate advance. It works in the average school

129system for the average child in the average part of our city. We are unfortunately not in that space anymore. We are the hollowed out urban core of our city that each year has increasing concentrations of needs in schools that the existing strategies alone are not enough to conquer. That's all of my questions I had. Thank you. I yield my time back to the former president. I'm in support of what you guys said, and I'm looking forward to what you further develop and if that's going to come in front of the board, the model of instruction that you are talking about and the more in-depth analysis. Can you speak more to the relationship, or if there's a relationship with the EEG? And I'm understanding that's where... I want to wait for you to be done. We'll

130just start there. That gives you enough to tell me overall structure. Yeah. So our process is we bring the concept to the board for your kind of this makes sense. We will run it through the EEG for their feedback. They will have feedback into the development of the entire infrastructure. But I think we've learned that it doesn't make sense to bring them things if. If it doesn't have legs And so yeah, this will run through their feedback to make sure that we're not missing anything They give us some will bring you another initiative for how we view substitutes and paying teachers They gave us some really great feedback about that. So it will run through them. Thank you any other questions from the board kind of Really quick very quick please go on the on

131the agenda today It shows there's a guardrail and it says this work should not eliminate step increases for tenure or move the district towards a pay for performance model based solely on test scores is that should not or will not it says should not but just pulling up the language and i realize it's it's it's just a word that was that was in the tasker in the basket i think yeah i think yeah yeah down below that it says yeah yes yeah i think that was real i mean you That's that's something the board kind of gave thumbs on if memory serves should versus well I think you can see in what dr Comfort is presenting. There is no indication that there's any paper performance or test scores here They took this as well. That's

132all I need. All right. Thank you so much team. Dr. Comfort. Don't go far Our fourth and final item on the work session agenda tonight is the preliminary budget development assumptions We heard a little bit about this downstairs and now is kind of the time well where we will have the opportunity to kind of robustly have a discussion on this here in public session and with no further ado I will turn it over to dr. Comfort. Yeah, I'll jump in just to reframe for the community that You heard from Amy Atwood our legislative liaison. This is a tough budget year This is not just a tough budget year for public education. This is a tough budget year for the state of Colorado. The billion dollar gap that they resolved last year is now a larger

133gap for this year. We are working very closely with our legislators. I appreciate the board members who took a significant amount of their time about three weeks ago to go to Denver for them to hear from us what are some of the ideas. We are not legislators, so we are certainly at the tail end of that whip. Brandon and team have been working not just this year but for several years to position this district to be on strong fiscal ground that we can absorb the challenges that happen at state budgets because as you'll see as he shows a series of years some years are good and some years are not good. If you look at the local news, there are neighboring school districts that are declaring budget emergencies on last year's budget. I can't imagine

134what they'll be declaring on this year's budget. We are not in that position. You will see a PBDA now that has us on solid fiscal ground that makes sure that we continue to prioritize compensation, particularly for those closest. for those that do the learning and the teaching in our system. And without further ado, I'll give you Brandon for the details. Okay, I'll first, as Ms. Atwood said earlier, this is still very early in budget development. She said the long bill hasn't even been introduced yet, so we will obviously be coming back to the board in the month of April with more specifics. But I was not surprised with what she had to say. That's what I'm hearing from local school districts, and so that budget outlook is how we're basing our budget bill this year.

135In terms of our priorities, our priorities have not changed. These are based on feedback we've heard from the board over and over again, which is first of all, make sure that new money goes towards compensation. And I'll show you a slide in a bit that shows we've done that and more the last couple of years. That's why we've been able to lead the region in most cases. That we will prioritize schools. We've done that significantly over the last couple of years. You'll see that in terms of how we've addressed our central office staffing. And then largely, the overall strategy of moving from 60% of our investment in instruction to 70% of our investment in instruction. If you go to my office, my family found in a... antique store a budget one pager from district 11

136in 1963 and so it's really cool because they they actually were communicating to their community in a super clear way it was cents on the dollar and it was since stacked up right so what you saw is well some of the categories have shifted over 60 plus years They talked about instruction and then everything else. At that point, this district was spending 68% of their overall budget on instruction. Now, the budget was like $10 million, but they were spending significantly more. And if the board members who have been here for a while can remember, when we first started overseeing the budget, we were spending about 57% of our budget on instruction. And that number was the same as it was two decades ago. And so the board has tasked us with making significant changes to

137how we build this district's budget and so that's what we've brought you the last couple of years and that's what we will bring you again yeah and just to foot stop this both for the public and for our new board members i don't remember the exact timing of this jill parth or jason might um but the 60 to 70 shift i don't remember what we said over a series of years that was an explicit direction from the board saying we would like to invest money as close to the classroom as possible somewhere in the order of 60% seems to be standard for school districts, but we would like to increase it to 70 as a you know as a target for where our priorities like Apologies. No, I appreciate the additional context. So as a

138reminder top left there is our staffing Level as an overall system on the top line in comparison to our enrollment and so you'll see obviously we've widened that gap significantly. We've started to close that gap the last couple of years, but that is a forever growing thing for us to overcome. You also see some overall guiding academic data as a system. Well, we've made progress and we should be very proud of that progress. We are by no means where we need to be and so we will continue to use the budget to drive our strategy. because that's what it should do. It should support the strategy of the district, not force the strategy of the district. When we think about how we've been optimizing our budget, I want to show you or kind of remind

139the board of... some data about staffing. On the right, you'll see our school staffing levels over the last five or six fiscal years. And so what you'll see, while we've gone through some up and down budget years and some enrollment years that change, our school staffing levels have remained pretty stable. That's intentional. That's by design. That's by request of the board. When you need to make difficult budget decisions, make those as far away from schools as possible. And so the graph to the left is the example of that. you will see that we have made some dramatic shifts in our central office staffing to right size that level of support over the past few years. As I've said to the board before, this is something most school districts talk about, but very few do in

140terms of actually right sizing their central office footprint. Brandon, can I tag in here for a second? Nobody likes to see, you know, staffing go down. That always has a cost in terms of people's livelihoods. We do understand that. You may have seen in the news that the Air Force Academy itself is kind of looking at cutting civilian staff in a major way. So that obviously makes me nervous. But can you go back a slide or two to, yep. You have before referred to this accurately as a graph that I called out as being the scariest graph in public education. This is the problem that we are trying to solve. The problem that the board has tasked administration with solving here is you have a system where student enrollment, which is what drives our funding

141levels, has gone down over the last 22 years, precipitously in some places, while staffing has gone up. No sane system does that. At least no sane system that has the intention of being fiscally solvent in the coming years. So this is a problem that absolutely has to be solved. And one of the things that the board has said time and time again, even in my time here, is the... way that you actually deliver value to students and families is in the classroom. It's not in central administration. Central administration does a lot of good work in kind of building the context and the architecture in which teachers succeed, but the classroom is the ultimate deliverable to students and families. And so now go forward one slide please. And this reflects the priorities that The board has

142set over the last few years staffing levels at schools. You will see that as a very flat line Central Adam and FTE that's the place where we are attempting to make cuts both in terms of our own need to right side the size of the system and also in light of Let us just say not very prudent decision-making at the state level. Sorry to grab the mic again, Brandon So this is our sustained strategy, and as we look to this budget year, which as the superintendent said and Ms. Atwood said, are going to be our most challenging, we're going to continue to lean into the same strategy. So when we think about our resources, I always think about it in three buckets. Where do we allocate new money? Where do we align existing money? And

143when we need to reduce, where do we reduce? In most years, we have at least some money to allocate. As you heard from Ms. Atwood, the optimistic view is no money. As she said, there could be a cut. She didn't mention it's losing some steam, but remember there was a conversation about removing the SO tax, the specific ownership tax. It's another $7.5 million reduction to the district if that were to happen. That's lost some steam, so I even apologize for saying that on air. But there will be no money to allocate, not just because of the state, but also because we're going to have to right-size our own enrollment. traditional enrollment decline as our overall portfolio grows. So we're really going to look into the align and reduce categories, and we're going to follow the

144same strategies we have the last couple of years. We're going to look to, when we can, find ways that in the MLO, where the general fund is currently supplementing, to right-size that by using new MLO money, then freeing up existing general fund money. And then when we are, this is going to be a budget of reduction, when we reduce, we're going to do that primarily and significantly as far away from schools as possible. So this will be a mere budget strategy as it has been the last couple of years. And obviously we will bring the board much more detail as we know more detail from the state about the potential budget that we can expect. I want to just kind of end a little bit with taking kind of a look over time with the

145board. So this is our previous four existing fiscal years and then what we project for next year. And so what you'll see there is the top column is basically the available resource that we had at our discretion. That's after we get all of the money and we do all of our transfers, that's the money we have. And what you'll see basically in every year is that we gave not just the amount of available resource, but more than that, largely into employee compensation. This is why, as the board said a couple of months ago, we want new money to go towards employee compensation. I never have any fear about that because we've done that consecutively. And in fact, in most years, we've significantly gone beyond that. And so that will draw your attention then to FY27,

146where we are expecting no new money. We do have to have a conversation about what compensation will look like and what resources are available to the board. And I did put in there the rough estimate for the potential benefit package that the board will consider in April. As you can see, Well, it maintains the percentages for our community, our staff, and that is a wonderful thing. It does come at a much larger cost to the district than past benefit packages have. And so in a year in which the allocation is less and that cost is greater, that's just going to force us to be more strategic and continue to lean into that. Where do we realign and when we need to reduce, where do we reduce? But I will say, as I believe the board

147has advocated that they will bring the consistent percentages for vote, our community does need to understand that that comes at a cost this year. That that's not a low amount of money that we should shrug our shoulders at. And this is after our benefits team and the benefits committee did an incredible job getting the rate down through a new RFP But that will be a significant cost to the district again when we are anticipating no additional resource So we'll the budget we will bring to the board will balance that but again that does need to be marked as a really significant contribution from the district Couple clarifying points here non-recurring is not shown here, which is also a good chunk of competition that we put and then the other piece is just that if we're

148moving to the three million piece the other way of reducing that cost would shift the burden to our employees and so We look at this, you know, it's kind of darned if you do darn if you don't approach So just to give you the frame of reference if that were to stay in line with the 1.5 million and we gave a higher raise, then you're still dealing with higher insurance benefits. So it's, you know, do you want a higher raise and do you want to pay more health insurance or do you want us to cover more health insurance and you get a little bit less raise? And so that's what the board is going to have to decide here. So, you know, again, we're going to get emails either way. You didn't give us enough

149coverage on our health insurance premiums or you didn't give me a big enough raise. So in these times of zero money projected. I'm very thankful to our team that positioned us in this position while the state continues to make less imprudent decisions as Director Geary mentioned. Your promise on competitiveness in the county? Yeah, I will say openly that I will make sure that the board has access to enough total compensation to include benefits and our non-recurring compensation that I don't doubt that we will not be near the top of the region again. Everything that I'm hearing from regional CFOs. who are nobody's expecting new money next year. So the question is really, are they going to go and make reductions in their central office to the ability that we are to provide compensation? I don't

150think they will. And so I'm hearing very modest things from them. And so I will ensure that the board has for your decision the opportunity to still provide ample total compensation for our employees. Dr. Comfort, do you have any more in this? I don't think so. So with that, I'll turn it over to the board for questions. I'm not going to say anything because I already talked enough, but I would particularly also like to start with our treasurer, Jason Jorgensen, in case you have anything you'd like to add. I guess I jumped in a little too soon there, but that's what I would share. It's just, you know, we're positioned well, even given the cuts. That we're going to be able to have something that's competitive among others. It's not going to be perfect for

151everybody But we are balancing What we are given from the state and we have a great team in the finance office. That's managing all this So thank you very much. Dr. Comfort On the screen, just for clarity's sake, on the slide that is in front of me that I pulled up, the district share of benefits. says 3.4 million and on your slide it says 3 million. So you may want to figure. It might have not got corrected on the post-test slide. I don't know what the right amount is. It's actually not, I mean, they're an estimation. It's like 3.1, you know, it's an actual number, but yeah, I hear you on that. Okay. Good catch. I'm sure you will find the right amount when everything falls into place. Just as a point of reference, this

152slide, even like what Jason talked about, if we can have prior what the board gave us not recurring compensation, then it becomes like a comparison as to what we can do in the future. And then I'm sure you will look at the... contingency funds that we have and bring a reasonable recommendation to the board as far as what this year we can offer from the non-recurring person because we are going to be tight on the recurring side of the compensation but if a recommendation comes from you and Jason as well working with you to the board that would be good and then just again this is for going back a couple of slides this is just for the Yeah, for the, for this, for the sake of the public that are looking at, I already

153pointed out to you that other graph that is on the right out there doesn't align. We fixed it. I'm not sure why it's not. It doesn't just for the public sake. You may want to go back and fix it. Okay. Whatever it's, whatever they see tonight, it will be the right graph on the right. I thought we fixed that. Yeah, no worries. But thank you for the work that you're doing. I mean, I think. superintendent called mentioned about some of the other neighboring school districts having some budget problems and financial problems. Thank you for keeping us solvent and not having to go through any of those any of those type of decision making that we may have to do. Other questions or comments from Google? I guess I have one last thing. This was an

154idea that was mentioned downstairs and I just want to bring it up in public session as well. I recall a forum when I was first running for the board where there was a question of like, okay, if we're going to do a, you know, array structure of some kind, does it make more sense to have it be done as a percentage or does it have it make more sense to be done as a flat dollar amount? And, you know, that's a challenging question because it impacts different people differently. And to tag on to something that Jason said just a moment ago. where we have this trade-off that the board is going to have to make between do we want to be putting money into benefit cost or do we want to be putting money into

155direct salary income? There's a sense in which right as the board this is our responsibility to try to make this call with with the prudence and the wisdom that we have but there's also a sense in which the ideal point of that trade-off is really contingent on the individual teacher and So one of the things that I might just suggest that we consider doing this was not my idea to be clear Someone else said this downstairs. I'm just saying on camera is seeing if there are any kind of options, not right now obviously, but further down the line in future years, for allowing employees some manner of say in kind of their own, you know, compensation. Do I want more money in terms of benefits at this time in my life? Would I rather have

156more money just in terms of raw cash? So I would just ask the board, we've already tasked staff with a lot this year, so I don't know that now is the right time to do it. But is there any appetite for writing this up as a task for Superintendent Gall and the team at some future date? And if we want to say, sounds like a good idea, let's not tackle this one yet, that's totally fine. I just wanted to bring it up in the public session. Quick question to Brandon. Remind me again how many of our teaching staff partake in the health insurance? Yeah, I think it's about 60%. Yeah, so to your point, Dr. Carey, 40% of our staff might go, cool, you're paying for robust benefits, but it doesn't help me. I'm getting

157my husband or my wives or whatever. So I think... It's up to what what my team can handle but I would like to see something like that where I'm a young 23 year old teacher my I saw my parents ACA right for another three years and I got rent as Director Johnson mentioned I got to pay for all these things and manage things I'd rather take a four grand a year pay raise or whatever might come out to right to forego having that benefit so I'm TRICARE and you still pay my benefits, right? Yeah. That's got to change. Or you budget your benefits. Yeah, budget my benefits. That's got to change. So for people who have alternatives, I think we, to start next year, once we get through hiring, I think we can take a

158tasker that will have us prep for the 28th budget year to build that we could be introducing options. I'll just call it the Social Security Tasker. Do you retire at, was it 64 or 72? Was it the earliest? 65. 65. People should have choice as long as it's not a loss to what people currently have but I think giving people choice will have them have flexibility of what works best for them and their family needs. Adding on to this, in my time on the board this has been a discussion in the past and one of the feedback that we have heard is that District 11 provides Really robust benefits compared to other surrounding school districts. We are on the higher end with the benefits but other school districts end up maybe paying a little bit

159more in compensation and from that perspective they don't know where we are at this point in time compared to other school districts, but then the younger teachers who do not want the health insurance benefits end up going to other school districts where they get better compensation and then more family-oriented teachers who have an established family. COME TO DISTRICT 11 BECAUSE OF THE BENEFITS THAT THEY HAVE THAT EXTENDS TO THE FAMILY. SO THIS MAYN'T. WE WON'T PIT ONE GROUP AGAINST THE OTHER. NO, WE DON'T. I'M JUST SAYING THIS WILL END UP. WITHOUT FAMILIES AND SEVERAL PEOPLE TOO. YEAH, THE YOUNGER FAMILIES AS WELL. YOUNGER TEACHERS. I THINK WE CAN TAKE A TASKER AS SOON AS WE GET THROUGH SCHOOL OPENING. SO I WROTE A NOTE DOWN. LET'S REVISIT THIS KIND OF ONCE WE GET THROUGH THE

160NEXT CHUNK OF MONTHS. Because it would not surprise me if this ends up being a bit of a complicated ask. I know from talking to my friends in kind of private industry that this is something private industry doesn't even do very well. Well, pensions are based off of the net average age and net average health of participants and all that thing, too. So I'm not under any illusions that this will be simple. But I think probably once we get through the closing of this year, rigorous planning for lots of things over the summer, I think let's bring this up again. Because I think... I'm hearing a lot of agreement from the board that this is an idea worth pursuing to the extent that you know state statute will allow us to any last thoughts just

161a curiosity is this in some way being presented to the budgets of committee as well tomorrow okay yep yep they'll get the same presentation tomorrow Okay. With that, we will call this special meeting to a close at 7.52. I hope everyone has a wonderful spring break. And I will see you all on April 1st, hilariously enough. All right. Have a good evening.