001Yeah, I really don't know. Taylor >> here now I can't hear. He u his his speaker is not coming through. So he said here and we can hear him on this side. >> All right. stands with all. All right. Then we have agenda for tonight's meeting. We have motion. >> I will make the motion to approve the agenda of the necessary to accommodate. >> Motion second or anything? >> Mr. Mr. and Mr. Taylor. >> Hi. >> All right. Then we have minutes from the regular board of March 4th to approve a motion to approve or amend. >> I move to approve March 4th, 2026 regular minutes meeting minutes. There we go. >> Motion. Do we have second? >> Any corrections or additions to the minutes? Anyone see? >> Mr. Iverson Mr. Taylor. >> Hi. >>
002Good. Then we have the consent agenda retirements assignment substitutes as well as I know we talk more about it but noteworthy to see Donald's name there and just really wishing you the very best and the party can say more So we we need a motion to approve all those consent. >> Motion move that we accept the proposed public content consent agenda as >> any discussion. Mr. >> Hi, Mr. >> Hi, Mr. Mr. Taylor. >> Hi. >> All right. Now, we're at the point of public comment. Anyone sign up, please? >> All right. Then we're moving into the part of the agenda. Some discussion items. proposed change. These are just discussion items trying to get everybody up to speed on these things high school schedule changes. I presume we need action for the high school. All
003right. To you then Mr. All right. Can I cast on if I cast? >> Um, you will, but that's okay. >> Yeah. Stop. Okay, get you guys up to speed on um some work we've been doing at the high school this year. Um looking at a new schedule. Um we actually pretty much committed to a new schedule, started collecting student requests for next year and um bumped our timeline back a little bit because obviously there was a lot of work that needed to be done and agreed upon um with our new schedule. But um feel like it's good to start with why we felt we needed to change the bus schedule. Um first and foremost always looking for ways to have for better outcomes for kids. So improved outcomes anytime you know every year you
004want to look find ways that you can you can increase that. some of the things that um that come up with our semester schedule is um just so you better understand what we what we have right now kids take four classes in the fall and they get four different classes in the spring kind of like the college model um the high school level I don't know that that's perfectly ideal um you know the typically in high schools you see your core classes. Um kids are engaged in that content from September through May or August through May, whatever your schedule might be. So um one of the things that um was a key driver in this was a need to have core content all year long. Um on a semester schedule, there's there's times where I'll
005just use a freshman that takes math in the fall of their freshman year. they could go a full year and not take their second math class till spring of their sophomore year, which is a full year in between classes. That's a that's a big gap. Um and there's already you already have drop off in the summer, but when you do summer and then fall and then you know it that's there's a big gap between um content. So there having having your content from September through May eliminates that gap. Um, the other issue that comes up is, you know, we're coming up on testing testing month in April. So, we'll be administering the PSAT, SAT tests to all of our kids on April 15th. Um, and you've got some students that had math or English in
006the fall. Um, then they've had a break January, February, March before, you know, they take the SAT. And then you've got kids that started taking English or math this spring and they've got a month and a half less instruction before we get to the SAT. So that creates an issue. And then the other the other issues are AP tests. AP testing happens in May. Um, and there's always a jockeying with our AP teacher, AP teachers on can I have my AP class in the fall because I can get the full course in, but then there's a gap between when that course ends and they sit for their AP exam. The flip side of that, if you get if you take your AP class in the spring, you don't get the full time to to get
007the full content. So both of those although all all those things cause issues when you don't have have you know kids engaged from September through May. Um this is anecdotal or anything that progress learning is a is a platform we adopted this year that allows us to give full-blown practice PSAT and SAT tests. So, we gave a couple of those this year to our um freshman, sophomores, and juniors just to give them an opportunity to practice um sitting for the for the PSAT and SAT. And when we gave that test in October, the first one, um it was kind of fun to talk to kids as they were coming to the common area after the test and I'm asking them what scores they got. Well, I did really good in English, but I didn't do
008so good in math, but I haven't had math since last fall. and you know so then that you know they they were recognizing kind of that issue of not being enrolled in a math class right now and having to try to take a math test. So um all those you know you know are issues in that felt like it's there's a big enough need for us to start looking at u some sort of year-long schedule. Um, so then you we kind of dug in as a staff um and decided, okay, if we're going to look at a year-long schedule, what things do we want to prioritize? Um, and came up with basically these kind of four buckets. Improved student outcomes, student supports, time, and then teacher benefit. Um I'm not going to read through all
009those, but these are this is kind of the thing that we measured um the different options that we looked at as far as about schedule for next year. We measured them against these things. Which schedule would would best fit um as many of these as we possibly could. Um from there um you know adopted a scheduling committee to kind of start looking at options. It was representation for each department. We met on Mondays after school. Um and one of the first things we did is we started looking at other school schedules. What do other what do other what do other schools do with their bell schedule? And these were kind of the three most common things that we saw. um just a traditional seventh period day. Um there's an alternating block. So that's still the
01090minute block period. It's very similar to what the middle school currently does. Um you'll have four classes on Monday, different four classes Tuesday, and then you just alternate back and forth for the full year. So kids are engaged September through May, but every other day. And that was actually a schedule that the high school was on prior to CO. Um, and then the other one that that we saw pretty often was what I call a hybrid. So it's a seven period day. You can go to seven classes on three days of the week and then the other two days a week they were longer like 90 minute periods. Um so we we re we wrestled with that as a committee kind of measuring these things versus the you know the the priorities let the staff
011kind of look at these against their priorities. Ultimately the place we landed was an 8 period day. Um so this this is um the bell schedule for next year. We'll start school at 8:00 in 3:45. So 45 minute periods Monday through Thursday. um and still have a a period of time before lunch to do advisory or RTI. Um that is the the schedule that that we landed on and I'll go through a little more of um some of the things that that we felt were important. Um I'm going to say double blocks. Um so you understand what a double block is. double block is a kid can take, you know, for your CTE classes, art classes in a 45 minute period, uh, courses that require significant amount of setup and clean up. If I'm a
012if I'm in an art class and it takes me five, 10 minutes to get all my supplies out and I paint for a while, I've got to have time to clean up. There's not enough time to really get some great work done in 45 minutes. Um, same goes for, you know, building trades, automotive, any of those kinds of classes where you've got to get in into the class, get your stuff out, do your work, and then you got to clean up afterwards. So, we felt it was important to have um double walks so that those are courses kids can take and they would get full credit in a semester amount of time, right? So, I'm going to switch back up here. So a double block essentially be like that first and second hour would be
013a block that a kid might be in their class. So they would be in there from 8:00 to 9:35. Third quarter can be a double block. Things like that. Other things that are going to be double blocks um workbased learning kid that's going to leave campus and do an internship for 45 minutes does not give them enough time to do anything meaningful. So, um, a double block is another opportunity where a kid could do an internship. Um, the other thing that would be different for us, we will have some half credit classes. Some of our electives, we've identified, you know, a number of those that can be offered as a half credit. Um, so those would still be a semester long, but during that 45minut period, and a kid would earn a half credit for
014those classes. Um, all of our core classes are all going to be year-long. So, they would be, you know, they'll start in September, end in May. Um, and those are all full credit classes, but they all be in that 45 minute time frame across the full year. Um, questions on that before I move on. I know that's maybe hard to wrap your head around. >> Sean, with the double block, will any of those be assigned or allotted to online classes? >> No. online classes. The on the supplemental online classes will fit in the they'll be part of these half credit classes. >> Okay. And then regarding the workbased learning, um I guess that I can see why that would go into the time span of a double block. I wanted to that will now have
015to be set up when to ensure you get a double block starting at semester. How are you securing that prior to students coming in? >> We're well, we we're collecting the the uh requests now and if a kid knows they want to do workbased learning, they can apply to do that. We can also do schedule changes in the fall, but if a kid decides, you know, I I really would like to do internship here. We could look at their schedule and, you know, remove a couple electives or something like that to get their schedule fast. So, >> so hypothetically, student A is going to be like, I'm going to internship at Sunset Ranch. >> Yep. >> And we're like, great, the internship doesn't start until October due to potentially whatever they're going to be doing
016for us. What do they do in August? >> No, we we probably wouldn't let them internship to to earn a credit. Yeah, that's one of the criteria that you need to be, you know, one of the conversations I have with the kids in the workbased learning is it needs to be Monday through Friday for 90 minutes. It can't just be, you know, I go to I have my workbased learning three days a week and the other two days a week I do nothing. So, we want them they're going to internship at Sunset Ranch. We want them to start mid September. >> So, they would start in September and then >> is that how it's been happening? Yes. The workbased learning right now is Monday through Friday. >> Yes. >> And that's been verified when the
017kids are there. >> Like you have >> Well, there's Yeah. We asked employers if the kids don't show up to let us know. >> Okay. And so what if for whatever reason a student isn't doing well? What would then go into their schedule? >> Well, it probably depends on time of the semester and things like that. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Hey, keep going. Great. Thanks. >> Okay. Um, so some key points that um I think it's important for you that we're not going to need to change graduation requirements within a period of day over a period of four years. Kids will still have the same number of opportunities to earn a credit as they currently do. So there will be no need to change graduation requirements. Um, our teachers currently see teach six classes.
018So they will still teach six classes. Um on the 8th period day there'll be two planning periods for teachers. Two different 45m minute periods u for our core areas math, English, science, social studies. One of those planning periods will be common. So that's going to allow them um to be able to meet together as a department during the school day. Um sometimes it's hard to find or chisel out that time for for departments to meet together uh within the school day. So, um, two planning periods and then for our core teachers, they'll have an opportunity to meet together on whichever period we assign is their common planning period. Amanda, it looks like >> I think I'm Can you explain to me? Sorry, I think I'm confused about the teaching. So, if you're a core teacher,
019>> all teachers are going to have two planning periods. >> Okay. But yeah, but if you are a teacher overseeing a double block. >> Yeah, they will teach three double blocks. >> They will teach double blocks. >> Yeah. And one of those blocks either that go back. >> So they're but they're not having to prep for six classes. They are prepping. >> They prep for three in the fall, three in the spring. >> But our core teachers, they prepping for six in the fall and six in the spring. Well, they'll have because they'll have that same those same classes all year. >> Oh, okay. So, maybe that's where I I'm being confused with >> I'm putting a semester timeline in. >> So, double block teachers will have three classes that they prep for per day.
020>> Correct. >> Four teachers will prep for six classes per day. >> Correct. >> Same class. But the prep stays the same. So, >> yeah. >> And and all teachers felt like that was >> Yeah. And it was one of the schedule priorities when we set out to start this was that we wanted to make sure that those in those contents that there was I mean adequate time for those kids to to to learn the content or be engaged in the content in those areas. Just clarify the the folks who are teaching block classes teach six classes. They just teach three in the fall and three in the spring. >> Correct. >> People are teaching single block classes teach six classes. They just teach all six all year. So everyone has six preps. Yes. >>
021They just last different lengths of time based on the amount of time they have a semester to teach. >> Yes. >> Yeah. Um, so are certain classes designated as double blocks and they will be everyone that takes that class or would there be a mix of somebody's in there for an hour and somebody else is in there? >> No, when you sign up for that you that is your double block. Yeah. And that's why that um the scheduling method gets a little a little bit complex, but that's why half credit classes are important because if I'm in a double block first and second period, you only have one hour left for the you know, first and second for first semester, then second semester, you know, we don't want to like pigeon hole and say you've
022got to take another double block class second semester during that time. There'll be half credit classes that they can then sign up for the second semester that match up with that. >> But if I'm a student sitting at a double block class, everybody around me is drawing. >> Yes. >> Yeah. This is not an uncommon structure for have double block classes by seme classes. We we we got to our what before Christmas break and then from now I mean from January through the end of the year we've been working on the how. You know we've got the what now how do we make this thing work? Um one of the things teachers are working on right now for all the yearlong classes to make the double blocks work so that kids can make sure you
023we still we don't want to eliminate kids to have the choice to take the things they want to take. So all of our year-long classes are going to be what we call AB. So English one, first semester is A, English one, second semester is B. So all kids have to take A and B, English one. But English one might be 1 A might be second hour, but my English 1B might be a different hour second semester because I might have been in a double block. and I might have to have one be in a second hour so I can take an elective that I want in one of those other periods. Okay, hard to wrap your mind around a little bit. But one of the one of the things that I think is valuable about
024the AB classes when you have multiple teachers that teach um algebra 1 or English one or geography or whatever this guarantees fidelity from in first semester that all kids have to be at the same place at semester. So there's got to be fidelity between the experience that they get a final to make sure all of our kids are in the same place because most of our kids will stay with the same teacher, but there will be some that will may have to switch to a different teacher for second semester and we want to make sure that when I go into that other teacher's class, I'm at the same place all those other teachers are all the other kids are. So we are working on um you know identifying what's going to happen the first semester,
025what's going to happen second semester, all of our classes, what are those finals going to look like so that we can um make sure there's fidelity between across the the different teachers that teach content. Okay, that's that's a bit of a lift. Um so we're working on the AB classes this year. Um, we've still got to nail down advisory and academic support time. Um, probably going to it's probably going to lean a little heavier towards academic time because kids are going to have less time in class to do their work. Um, they're going to need a little more time outside of class to to get work done. So, I I feel like that little period of time before lunch that you saw on the schedule is going to be utilized a little bit differently by
026kids because that'll be a time for them to get their homework done. Um, but still hold on to some of the things that we find valuable in advisory. Um, we still got to, you know, accomplish our IAP career exploration and goal setting and things like that. Um, which is typically done in advisory. So, we'll hold on to some of those. We don't have that nailed down yet. Um that's some work we've got to do in the fourth quarter. Another thing that's come up is um there's been a want to maybe look at how we do eligibility. Um we have a required eligibility by Chassa, but then we also get to identify our own above and beyond Chassa's eligibility and how we're going to manage that. So those are a few things that we're still working
027on as a staff before the year closes up. um questions on those things >> just one I don't know know that how this solves or hopefully doesn't create problem sometimes in the past the problem that if you fail something early it's going to be hard to ever make it up >> right >> so how does this >> that or address that >> yeah and thank thank you that I left this off this list that that is also another thing that we haven't nailed down exactly if a fails A, what happens with B, those kinds of things. Um, that's, you know, we've got our, um, staff PD day coming up in a couple weeks. We're going to spend some time working on that. Um, we are going to have to look at some quick recovery models
028um, so that we can keep kids on track. Um, we don't want them to get um, behind because they failed something their freshman year and now they can't accomplish that in four years. So, um, >> yeah. So, I appreciate that you have kind of >> Yeah. Yeah. And we and we will lean on um expertise from districts that already have year-long schedule similar to this and double blocks and the use of expertise for them and how to how how are they to we've got I've got some of those ideas that we need to work on that with the staff. Make sure that we're in a good agreement on how to do that. Okay. That's good. Thanks for bringing up. Yeah, that's that should be on this list. Um I guess the last thing I would
029like to do is just publicly do another thank you. uh the committee um there was 10 different Mondays we've met after school to get to the place we are to all the things that we discussed and looked at and comparing schedules and what's going to be best for kids and what what works for teachers what do we prefer and how do we find that right mesh um for everybody um staff we had four early release Fridays um where committee shared and we got feedback from staff and we had some staff vote um to ultimately land where we did before Christmas break. So, um, and the staff obviously we've been working the spring on some early release Fridays and we have, um, still have a lot of work to do between now and end of school
030in May. And then I left it off, but um, counseling department, especially Trisha, she had to, um, rebuild Infinite Campus with the schedule um, and and had to lean on Infinite Campus training. and I had her reach out to people that have similar schedules and how do they build that? Um it was a lot of work on her part to get that built to the point where we can now collect um student requests and and build a schedule for next year is >> anything else. Thank you. A >> lot of work um it's going to be exciting and a really good thing for Have you heard from kids? >> Um, ironically enough, a lot of kids are excited that the classes are going to be shorter. That's the most of the feedback I've gotten from
031kids. I haven't really got out and pulled the kids, but usually when I'm meeting with a a student or a parent, um, you know, some of them are excited that 45 minutes versus the 90. So that's it. A little bit of feedback I've got from kids. Yeah. >> Appreciate it. Thank you. >> Yeah, you're welcome. >> All right, then we will move on to Jason. >> Thank you very much. I will say on that schedule that was almost identical to the schedule that I ran the last 12 years about kids attention spans. It's very real and uh but I appreciate what they've done to address the need for some classes that are just um you have my written report but I'll go over a few things. Um so in the last month we did complete
032our fire reinspection. We've been hammering that for the last four months, putting a lot of time and effort. Want to say a public thank you to our principles who work really hard to support us on this. Want to thank our teachers for um working with us on the things that we needed to comply with on that. We went from 139 pages in the initial report. Uh we did that down to 34, which still sounds like a little bit there, but a lot of that comes down to big projects that we didn't feel you should be engaging in right now. you know, that we're hoping to not be in these buildings anymore. So, if you start looking at, you know, fire code things that could cost the district hundred,000 or $200,000, now is not the time
033to be doing those things in the elementary school and middle school. So, um really appreciated Taylor Bamer, who is the uh fire inspector that worked with us and a very common sense approach and recognizing that there are simply some things that, you know, as a taxpayer herself, we shouldn't be throwing a ton of our our money at. that we came a very very long way in the last uh four months and we'll continue to work on addressing those things as we go forward. Our asbestous training was completed uh last week during spring break. Now this is a really small kind of tip of the iceberg piece of the overall asbesus works that we're doing right now in working to bring the district back into compliance when it comes to um the asbestous hazard act um
034and other laws that go with it. Um, when we hire either custodian or a maintenance personnel, they are required to receive this two-hour training within 30 days of their hire. If they potentially work in a building that has asbestous, um Dan um has been on that team for 12 years, I believe, and he had not trained yet. So, it was time to get him his his asbestous train. So, we got through that went really well. All of our codings been trained. Um, and then our maintenance team received the additional 14 hours that they can actually do smallcale asbestous work, which is another piece that will definitely save us money if and when we have those opportunities come up. Appreciate it. Matt Valdez, the gentleman who ran the training. He's also the guy that is running
035our asbestous management program. Um, we will be completing those plans this summer. So, by the time that our state inspection comes up in August, we'll be in full compliance at that point. So, and really looking forward to meeting that guy again uh this score around fully prepared. So, baseball field, I mentioned last week that we're uh putting some time and effort into um our baseball field in addition to the entire sports complex that we're out there. And I'm going to take a similar approach with our baseball field work that I did last year with football field where I'm going to kind of chronicle the work that we're doing and what fields look like over the course of the season uh so that we can see how that is progressing. Uh over the last month, once
036again, we had really good weather that allowed us to be able to be out there working on things. Uh the team has been practicing on a daily basis. We had our first home game on March 19th. Uh team's been working on recutting our infield lines so that they're nice and crisp down the baselines. Uh we did get our order of red infield clay in and we put a bunch of that down. We installed a full green wind screen the entire width of the outfield out out there. And then we've been doing some of those basic things like applying revive broadleaf pillars so that it'll hopefully withstand drought conditions a little bit better than it did last year. Uh we are also working on the other fields that are out there. So I provided a picture
037of what the practice field looks like. I mean that one last summer was completely completely dead again because of nice weather this winter. We were able to get it airrated. We to get granular fertilizer down on it. Put broadly killer down on it. Now we're reviving it. Uh, and it's definitely it's actually getting pretty close to where we're going to have to cut it here pretty soon, which is really good news. The summer, as long as we keep water on it, and I have every reason to believe that we will, uh, that practice field will be in really good shape. Got the progression of baseball picture starting uh, back on February 26. That picture might not have been fair to that particular one because we were just coming off of ice and snow off, but
038it definitely looked pretty rough. Uh you can see by opening day it was looking a lot better than just a couple weeks after opening day. Uh already it's another two or three shades greater. So um pleased with the work that's going on out there. We still got lots of work to do on it. Uh but I'll keep you informed of what we're doing there. >> Was there your own speed? >> There was so there's 400 no 550 ft total of fence out there and there was 100 foot of wind screen on it. So basically the two sections right in center field and I they did that because that the purpose of the windscreen is so the batter is not seeing business back there. Right. So they put the windcreen up right behind the pitcher mount
039so that the batter could at least have pass. Um yeah so but it it looks like a real baseball field now and ball field should have that wind screen all the way across. Um so and next year we'll look at things like I'd love to be able to do our softball fields the same way. I think they could look just as sharp. Uh, moving on to the book tech kitchen. Uh, we do have progress on that. Eric and I met today with Restoration Management Company who finished the cleaning process over spring break and now they're actively working on getting um, worker together potentially starting over there by the end of April. I do have a commitment from them that they will be done and out of there by August 1. So, start our classes fall
040that kitchen will be fully restored ready to go. Um, and knowing that the kitchen was 28 year 26 years old somewhere in there when this fire happened, I think it's going to be really nice. Um, I hate to take advantage of a bad situation, but it it would be a nice improvement for I think where that facility was. Wanted to bring your attention on something that we're working on right now. Uh, this may or may not happen, but it is something that that I'm Oh, shoot. Get this up on the screen. One second. Next time you do well then I'll hold >> um POA contacted me about a month ago to say that they are going to be doing a bunch of fire mitigation on their lands kind of wherever they have green space try
041to keep those those areas safe and of course we have actually I have a project this picture uh our property over on Vista Chart. Go. This is a picture of where our property is over there. And you can see that there's two areas. The thinner, longer strip is is our property that butts up to the green space, which then butts up to properties and houses. And that particular long thin strip will not be disturbed when we build a new school out there. So in other words, that's brush and trees that it's just going to be there. And um it is getting pretty overgrown. There's a lot of scrub oak that's um grown up in there. Tree branches are, you know, kind of right down on the ground whereas when they mitigate it, they kind of
042they they spruce those trees up just a little bit higher. Uh the other larger rectangle is right out in the middle of that area. Those are all probably trees that will be going away when we build that property, but um right at the moment they are a little bit of a fire hazard. And if you walk through that area, you're going to find some remnants of homeless camps and and different areas where people have have gone in there and um there's some remnants of some old campfires as well. So, there's been folks at some point there that have had um active fires um and just in walking through it made me a little bit nervous to think about what could happen between now and then. So, I did ask that PPOA go ahead and put
043us on their RFP for that project. There is no commitment given at this point. I just am curious what the numbers will come out to. They have received a fire mitigation grant that will cover 50% of any mitigation that's done on their land and they were able to get that grant extended to us as well. So if the overall cost of the project is $10,000 to mitigate that area, it's approximately 14 acres that we're looking at, then the cost to us would be $5,000. So it appears to me to be a pretty good opportunity to potentially get this done. Um, make sure that in what could be an extremely hot, dry summer that we're not contributing to that fire danger. And I also think on the idea of being a good neighbor to the people
044that are over there that we want to make sure that our property is kept nice. So, I'll let you know on that if we do end up moving forward with it. Um, last thing is not on here, uh, but something I did just want to bring your attention to so that you know, um, that this is going on, this is a possibility. This may be as important for your individual family homes as it is for the school. uh I was in a meeting earlier this week with LPA LPA, excuse me, say it uh beginning of this week where they explained that for fire mitigation on their end, they are considering going to what they call a public service uh excuse me public safety power. >> This is actually no I cannot help you. Uh basically
045what they'll do is if they get the wrong conditions so very very hot dry conditions and then if they get a forecast for a lot of wind um and extra heat that they are reserving the right to turn off electricity. Uh this is something that Excel Power Company has been doing on the front range quite a bit over the last few years. LPA shared that they've kind of been watching those processes on the front range and of course we know about Marshall fire that happened in Boulder area a few years ago and they really do not want that to happen here. um especially though the drought conditions that we have. So basically we we kind of all whether it's at our homes or in our schools have to be prepared for the fact that we
046could be looking at some multiple day power outages that we would have to deal with. So things come up questions like well you know how does sewage and sanitation work? Well it really depends on whether they have a working generator or not. Some of those sites do some of those sites do not. Um, from the school side of things, the question that we have to ask is if this happens during the school year, are we able to move forward with having classes on a day when when the power is out? Another question that comes to mind is how do we protect our food storage food, you know, freezers, coolers, so that we're not whether we have kids at school or not, you know, not dumping thousands and thousands of dollars worth of food. Um, so
047this is something that currently um we need to do some work on or I need to do some work on to make sure that we're prepared for this one way or the other. Uh, right at the moment, the high school and this 78 building are the two buildings in the district that do have emergency generation. Uh, both of them are set up to power emergency lights only within those schools. So they're the generators are not hooked up to the freezers or the coolers. they're not hooked up to be able to provide power for classrooms. And you know, some of the decisions we have to make is is how big do we want to make this? How much money do we want to spend? You know, for instance, on one side of it, if we wanted
048our entire school to function exactly as it does right now on emergency generation, you know, if you would take a generator about the size of a a box car, a very, very large probably million dollar piece of equipment. On the other side, you know, you have to ask questions of all right, that's a bare minimum. How do we protect our food? And that's where we get a little bit closer to where this building as it sits right now, just a very very easy, you know, switch of some wires and add a couple transfer breakers in and we can wire our freezer and our cooler into the backup generator that is in this building. And that's directive I've given Dan to go ahead and move forward with because it's really at no cost to us and
049it just makes sense. It's using the what we have. So, we at least have one freezer and one cooler that's ready to go if for some reason this was to happen sooner. The high school also has a generator that's set up to power emergency lighting within the school. And we're working now on figuring out, can we hook that generator up to the cooler and the freezer in that building so that we would have two sites where we could get all of our food to. um there's a really good chance that we'll be able to make that happen on that generator over there, but if not, then we would be looking at at putting in a transfer switch that would allow us to bring in a portable generator um and be able to power up those
050areas. The other consideration at the high school that's on my mind a little bit is that that's also a Red Cross shelter. So that's an area where there was widespread evacuation. We could potentially have a lot of people showing up at the high school, in which case we might need to be able to be prepared to have some more outlets that are running. Might even want to be able to set that kitchen up to where we could cook meals out of there and have them for people that are staying there, which that of course would fall inside of a potentially put in a transfer switch over there. So, I think like many things I've looked at this year, there's kind of a short term and more of a long-term side to this. On the short
051term, I want to make sure that as we go into the summer that we at least got the middle school cooler and the high school cooler up and ready to go to protect our food. And then as we do go into some of those, you know, capital project improvements, looking for next year, I am looking at gathering some numbers on potentially what it would take to be able to make that high school a little bit better emergency shelter if we needed to use it in that event. So, talked way too long tonight. Um, but that's kind of what we what we've got going any questions. >> You know, I I don't know. Um, >> I don't know, Kelly. I don't >> Yeah. So, the elementary their emergency lighting is on the exit signs. So, there
052is some emergency lighting that would go on in the hallways if we had a, you know, things go out. There's also some natural lighting in the classrooms, but that particular building would be pretty dark um in the event of a power outage. So, um, you know, same sort of thing over there, ranging from you invest the money in a generator, you know, that would go in. I I think Dan said this one here was somewhere between $50 and $100,000 when it was installed here, which honestly that's not horrible considering we don't want to be there in three years. It's a it's a shame to have to spend that money there, but at the same time, those are the kind of things you have to think about if this is a guarantee that it's going to
053happen. So those cannot be transferred. >> What's that? >> Like if we purchase one for the elevator hypothetically, couldn't it be transferred to the new building? So it would not be a >> loss possible, right? Portable. >> That's what I'm saying. We don't have one. it's got to be transported in and I you know could be moved. So theoretically, I was just curious to make sure that >> potential grants or something related to the high school to upgrade that based on >> that's a good idea. classification sorry for emergency. >> I also think when we do build a new school whether we bring in you know existing generators that we currently own or whatever we do there like we need to be thinking about this in mind because that would be a pillar of that
054community up at the top of the hill. So when I think about, you know, emergency shelters, it would make a lot of sense that, you know, the high school would probably be a shelter for everything, you know, this direction and then that that big decade school there would probably be something that could be used for, you know, that side of town as well. So um definitely want to try to address this positive way that this is a problem that just hasn't existed in the past, you know. That's you know you'd have a little power outage. Lights go out for a little while and you get them back on. It's not the end of the world. Uh LPA services over 2,000 miles worth of electric line in their grid. If they shut the power off, they
055can do that with a switch. Is that they turn the power off? In order to restore that power, they have to go over every foot of that line. They have to inspect every single transformer. and they're saying that will take days to get it turned back on if they have to do this. So, >> how did this come about as a piece of knowledge reach out to us and say, "Hey, we're we're thinking of these contingency happen now." >> So, they reached out to a number of their big stakeholders um companies and entities that are in their grid that kind of need to know. They reached out to Rick ago maybe that Rick wisely said I think one of us needs to be at this and uh so there was probably 60 70 people they
056didn't it was a tabletop exercise this last Monday where basically they just went through the scenario of okay this is what's happening how would you react to it was interesting to see the kind of spiral of events you know this goes out and then well that means some of your um uh cell tower are going to go out. Some of them have backup, some of them don't. What do you do if the sewer goes out? You know, in their scenario, they actually projected a fire in Posa Springs area. They specifically said, "And Pagosa Springs High School is being used as your, you know, your emergency. We don't have lights." They turn the lights off and we're using it as an emergency shelter. You really really got to thinking. I'm I'm really grateful that they're that
057they are informing people in advance of what's going on. I know uh Rick and I have had a few meetings with where we've been frustrated with entities that wait till the last possible minute to communicate with us what's going on and they say surprise deal with it. Right? And this is something where we've been kind of given the gift of time where we have time and opportunity to figure out a plan on when this happens, how are we going to address it so that it has little impact on the kids especially as possible. Just a quick side note is interest the day that becomes free of the tri-state contract 50 years system from the beginning of time for people their own power sources secure I was on the board for nine years working on that
058one objective didn't get done while I was there but it's done as of today so a huge increase in renewable energy and a huge increase in independence and I think some of this you're seeing better governance where they're you know responsible for ourselves in terms of power and decision making center not at the mercate all of our power used to come via giant transmission line from the coal plants nearest all the now Do you feel like it's a high priority to upgrade the generator or system up there? >> I feel like we are providing a community service by being the Red Cross spot. So in conversation with the sheriff's department, Red Cross, see how are they going to help us help that? Um, I don't think that it should be solely our responsibility to jump
059billion dollar generator in there. So, we will start working on this. This meeting just literally happened within the last week. In fact, Jason and I haven't even found the time to sit down and review it. We'll begin to explore and see >> see what our response is. They coincidentally I was in Denver this weekend with a friend who works at Jeffco and they are dealing with Excel Energy turning off their power and typically what he gets is a phone call at 7 o'clock at night that says tomorrow looks windy. You're going to lose power to these 15 schools and then they are trying to figure out if they're having school or what where they're providing transportation. How are they doing that? And so I like the idea that we're going to have a little bit
060of time to think about that. I I can't recall the time that we've had such crazy strong winds that have gone for multiple days, but the thought that if they do shut it off at all, it's going to take them at least two days gives us something to to operate on and see how >> I mean it's a real I think the good news here we really like we are not in a bad spot right Now, back this building is really set up to where incredibly quickly it's ready. So, the high school does have a good generator with it. Just have to do a little bit of planning to see if that generator will power those required things. Um, sheriff was there and he did talk about how, you know, the portable generator idea that
061rather than anyone whether it's us or the town or the county spending that kind of money on a generator that, you know, they were very openable. We just have to make sure that our infrastructure can support that that comes down for that transfer switch which my understanding is you're looking at less than 50 that again that's a big number but the high school's going to be there for another 50 60 years I don't mind investing in that facility over there and ultimately we can get this done and be in good shape from now and foreseeable future then that's a good thing. >> Thank you. Now we're cash flow update picture has started to roll in. You can see there in the red circle cash balance amounts as rebounded. See just over 8 million in taxes
062in March. Number shows a little bit below 7.2 right now. We did have to draw down for March, April. We are in good shape. April's tax number should be released tomorrow. We get one April then we'll get two payments in May. Jason screen sharing just do anything else. Look at the actual documents. Yeah. That's two stripes. >> So I'll continue to update this through the end of the year. Next month I will have recorded financials yesterday. And just a quick budget update, state budget update. The joint budget committee made their draft bill this morning. It was about a week over. They still were looking at 1.5 billion for next year to be medicated several expenditures are taking the brunt of those cuts for next year. They are looking to drop the state reserve minimum from
06315% to 13%. There's questions about legality of that just being done as they want daily. Oh, there was a 3.1% cost of living increase for all state employees, employees about 35 million was not requested. So now that The budget as it is roughly almost today that I hope to have an update most certainly right now there's no update other It does have a 30% implementation of the new formula and threeear average English last month roughly 34 year period based on past. So, first Erica has been on top of this and keeping us all very grateful for um we also just recently asked our operations budget folks, so school budgets and operations to pull back 5% of the initial allocation um just in anticipation of some enrollment uh maybe enrollment decline with run experience and and
064just that last minute idea that the long bill doesn't actually include the things that they say it's going to include. This is really up to the last minute before we we hear and so it's entirely possible that they'll still do things because they haven't said it yet. They qualify remove u tax. Yeah. And so that could mean a change of funding for us as well. being we're cautiously approaching this budget. >> I see. Yeah. Thank you. >> All right. You're going to give us a little update on land. >> Yeah. I just wanted to fill in the board the public that uh things are progressing well with our best grant. It's been fully accepted. Uh we have been scheduled for a presentation to support that. There'll be a presentation to the best forward on uh
065May 12th. It's a little later than I was expecting. I was expecting to be the first week of May, but May 12th. Um we just have a few minutes in front of the best board to answer questions and explain our need. So we'll begin to work on that presentation. aren't able to support us. This is what you can typically expect from that. And of course, we're waiting for our state uh support from Meg to give us the details of what that presentation will exactly contain. Just some things to keep in mind. Uh there are 57 proposals. I think there were 93 I want to say or 91 or 93 districts or entities that said they would apply for a vest grant. 57 of those has actually gone through. 12 of those are for what I
066would call large dollar projects either full school replacements or remodels and additions. U I think of those 12 Five are renovations and seven are replacements. We're consider school replacements. >> Does it show me what the school's asking for? >> Does not on this particular document. It does lay out. It's a three day three days that the best grant will sit best will sit proposals. We are on day one session one. We are the second proposal listed on the list. I had thought that's got to be alphabetical but the rest of this isn't alphabetical at all. I thought oh well you know they just jammed all the and they did put the big dollar projects up front so all the replacements and the additions of stuff are happen I don't know like my personal opinion if
067being first is good or not good. Um, it could be that we're so persuasive, they don't want to listen to anyone else's argument. And it could be uh that because we spoke first, they forgotten entirely what we said. And so they'll disrupt the last one. I don't know how that works. >> You always want to be first or last participate. >> It'll be Bob and I and then representative from RTA. RT love to be there to speak about all the construction and all of those partic which I I've heard back are good positive things we've done the initial uh surveying of the land and of the sites to highlight that is that public >> the list >> the feature >> I don't I don't know the answer to that question I could find out though
068I I just yeah >> it's virtual that part I do know originally they said they would be asking us to all come to Denver and now they're virtual so that's a group of people although I I think Bob and I come off really well in person so I was hoping that we'd be able to do in personal. >> So yeah, um on a plus side for the joint budget committee, the JBC, which has been, you know, deciding what they're going to cut, what they're not going to cut, early on this year, they said we're taking $50 million from the best grant fund, uh which would deplete the best grant from $200 to $150. You remember that we we talked about that through the impact that came up as one of those things. Just this past
069week, uh JBC voted to absolutely not do that and they have instead decided to take the $50 million for what they call the permanent fund. I'm not entirely sure what the permanent fund is, but it's not our money at that point. So, I I didn't go digging into it. The relief for us is there's still around $200 million that the best grant could uh allocate and that's a combination of cash awards and seal certificates of participation where the best takes on their certificate you get the resources from them. So that's that's a real positive um especially when you consider that our ask is roughly a quarter of their total aotment. Um we're we're very grateful to have that million dollars back. Any questions about that process right now? Um just one last thing un unrelated
070to the best grant but on the district website now there is a um a facilities journey uh layout. You can go on the district website, use the same ASD facilities journey button. That's there at the very top of the page. And there's a graphic there of a young tyrant with a backpack traveling through the mountains experiencing several different crossroads and their experience talking about what decisions we made along the way and how we landed, what we did with selecting a prek8 building on the site that we're on. Um, this is part in large part to work with Kelsey and uh, Lisa Scott and McPeek who have been really working hard to simplify that journey into a message that's digestible. And so, um, we have someplace to direct people who will inevitably draw conclusions that are
071untrue about the process. So, we thought we'd have a good documentation of what what the process actually was. So I encourage you to check that out. I heard from a reliable source that he did a really nice job at the last meeting talking about this without not a lot of presentation just what you know has quite well. One influential person who really wish was swayed by the safety issue that's just rering. So that was a great that was great. I did get heckled by the crowd in in a very kind way but openly heckled. Somebody's spouse came by defense though. So I felt a rough crowd for you know time old >> right now we are having to engage in a hiring process here update us >> yeah wanted to give everyone a chance to
072review the process we've used it before um you know I it's it's not uncommon for for schools to have to replace administrators and we're certainly very thankful for all the time and energy and work that Sean and Shantel have put into that building and uh sorry to see them but you know retiring is a pretty happy thing. It's hard to be too sad too sad for them and so we will >> Yeah, that's right. So we will um we will engage in the same process that we've used in the past to hire a principal. I just wanted to put it in front of you publicly listed on a document so the community looked at it. Um uh this be an opportunity to ask questions about it like what about this part? What about that part?
073I will tell you that I'm going to discuss this in detail at the high school on Friday. Uh Sean's invited me to be there for the start of their professional development time. I'll be collecting some feedback uh from high school teachers and also getting a list of interested folks on being on the interview committee. So we'll do that this week. It's likely that we won't start um the actual interview process till the very beginning of May. I want to give the the posting a chance to be out there get interest people there. We've already started collecting applications for both the principal and the assistant principal positions. So they started started to come in. >> So the positions are posted. >> Yes. >> Okay. You're saying this process will begin in May that we're seeing right
074there. >> Correct. That's correct. >> Anything else? >> Who would be the hiring supervisor? testing. >> So it says finalist identified by the hiring supervisor and superintendent which made you think it was two separate people. >> It happens when the u assistant principal that would be both of us but in that case I play both principal hiring supervisor and all right. So then lastly in discussion we have a set aside time for a board week for April 16 Thursday we'll be meeting to plan the agenda. Uh I think when we talked about during our process of superintendent evaluations thoughts that's really timely prompt we're thinking about planning for next year. somebody discuss during that process I'll reach out to each of you talk pretty much >> anything to add >> yeah just one thing Eric
075and I have been discussing we like to use a chunk of that time to talk about um budgeting and specifically how we currently treat our reserve budget and how we might do that differently in the future. Um and so I I want to we'll use that time to to look at that how we might allocate those dollars. So that that was our one ask. And then I think when we do align or set out strategic priorities, which I believe is the bulk of the work, we'd also like to align that to budget allocations so that we can demonstrate that the dollars that we have are going to support those things and also discuss, you know, if there's a strategic initiative uh that has a lot of dollars, what are we going to stop doing in
076order to do that thing? little clear that those are the only two things that right now are top of mind and then we certainly have the time to explore further other areas of interest. So we'll all talk together agenda. friend. Um comments from the Lord things you've all been to like to share I'll chime in and say we had the couple of getting our feet on the ground will be responsible for so it's progressing our next meeting from Monday I believe >> do you have a regular meeting day the time on >> we're meeting on the second Wednesday of the month was conflicted with some other and so we moved it out to the second or first Monday, right? This coming Monday or thought was the second Monday. Yeah, it's the 13th. >> 13. Anything
077else? Close it out. >> Yeah, just a a couple of updates. Um, one, I meet regularly with the assistant principles to go over our attendance efforts, our phone efforts with reporting out on those. Today's meeting uh we are going to be doing a pretty large overhaul of ours policies that might bring to the board in May to be reviewed. Our policies are very uh friendly to not being in school and we've done we've made a lot of efforts within those policies this year to increase attendance and decrease chronic absenteeism that you know right now the chronic absenteeism dashboard says we're going to land about where we landed last year. So, we're going to need to do some work on that together and discuss like what's fair and reasonable and how we're going to interact with
078families and communities on that. So, I think there's a good healthy conversation there. I don't think there's any disagreement that being in school uh is beneficial to your education. Uh nor is there any disagreement that spending quality time with your family is necessarily bad either. So, how do we balance those things and set that up? I will just as something for you all to consider in case you want to do a little research on your own. One thing that we would like to entertain is uh a mandatory percentage of attendance to receive credit at the high school. Right now high school is uh it's really struggling. The older students get with us that engaged in chronic absenteeism rates are in the 40% tiles and higher. mid 40s and part of that is students just telling
079us look I passed the class why do I need to to be there and I think there's real opportunities for boss learning there there's more to being in class other than just passing it and so that's some work that we want to do want to engage the high school staff and some discussions around that certainly want to work with the sack at the high school and high school administrators it's something that we're considering to encourage um or not even require kids to be in school. What's a what's a reasonable amount of time? So, that's all stuff that we will start exploring. It's weighty. So, I thought you should be thinking about it now. Um we've been meeting with Boseies pretty regularly on determining local assessment. You know, we send Boseies a certain amount of our
080general fund dollars. Last year, that amount was about $233,000. uh roughly and that covers expenses related to administration of the Boseies and to uh specific services that we need that just the IDA funds that the Boseies receives directly from state federal government doesn't cover. So um we're trying to encourage I have been encouraging the Boseies to create a predictable way by which that dollar amount goes up and we've been working with other superintendent leaders and looking at the rate of inflation that the state uses to determine how they impact the student base rate which this year is 2.3% and using that as a number where both get a slight increase that coincides with the increase. What we were experiencing in the past is some years supposedly say I think we're good this year and then
081two years later they said to us literally we need 10%. I can't make a 10% jump in that amount in one year. That's just not peaceful. Um so this year we will be experiencing a 2.3% increase which is a very five $6,000 for us. And so we'll um but we're going to continue to work on that and our our hope there is to fully fund our Boseies so they're able to continue to provide this level of service that they do and make it predictable so that when we're coming into budget season both knows what they're going to get and we know how much what we're going to spend. Losies have been great working on it. Scotty and uh Royce have gone back gone back gone back on board and have done some great work. So,
082it's been productive. That's where we are right right now. My last thing is really tongue and cheek. I was just thinking maybe to discuss something really controversial so we could fill the room again in here when it's just us. >> No, we're not doing anything. >> I might sign myself up for public comment. Just say some wild crazy thing. the NASA conversation melody right now. You know, you know, I thought of you when it when launch >> 50 years since we tried it. So many people know that about you. >> Sorry about that. Thanks, Tim. >> Were you able to hear most of that? >> Yeah, it was a little uh choppy, but pretty good. Yeah. Thank you. >> Okay. All right. Well, good. Hope kids feeling better. >> Yeah. Thank you. I felt like
083I worked pretty hard to have that happen.