Board of Education Regular Meeting February 4, 2026

001Yes. >> [clears throat] >> No way. >> All right. It's 6:00. We will call this February meeting of the school district board of directors board. And we'll start with the roll call. >> Mr. Iverson >> here. >> Mr. Lynch here. >> Mr. Madi >> here. >> Mrs. Sh here and Mr. Taylor >> here. I now will take my >> Ice to the flag of Americice for all. >> Very good. We have an agenda here, [laughter] >> but we need to approve the agenda. I move that we approve the agenda as published. The rights to move things around if we need to accommodate topics and time. >> I'll second that. We have a motion and second. Any discussion? >> Mr. Iverson. >> Hi. >> Mr. L. >> Hi. >> Mr. Max. >> Hi. >> Mrs. Sh.

002Hi. >> And Mr. P. >> Hi. >> Motion carries. Then we have minutes from the January 7 regular meeting and the January 21 special meeting. I motion to approve or correct. >> Mr. President, I move to approve January 7th regular meeting January 21st special meeting. >> I have a motion to second. >> Have a motion to have a second. Any discussion or any changes? Anything? Anyone? All right. Mr. Iverson. >> Hi, >> Mr. Lynch. >> Hi, >> Mr. Mackey. >> Hi, >> Mr. Shik. >> Hi, and Mr. Taylor. >> Hi. >> Motion carried. All right. Then we have the consent agenda with resignations, new hires, transfers, substitutes, online mentors, and January claims. Need a motion to approve or pull out. >> All right. In the interest of moving things along, let's see. What are we

003doing? Consent agenda. Uh, I move that we approve that consent agenda as it was presented. I have a motion. Do we have a second? >> I'll second. >> Any other any comments or questions on any of those items? >> All right, >> Mr. Iverson. >> I >> Mr. Lynch. >> Hi, >> Mr. Maxi. >> Hi, Mr. >> Hi. And Mr. >> Hi. So, the consent agenda is approved and um anyone signed up for public comment? Lawrence, you're ready to >> This is when you get the filibuster. >> No. No public comment. All right. On to the district reports and Eric's going to take us through financial investment quarterly reports and later the cash up. Uh page two on the court of the financial gum on where we are here today. So far we have spent

00440% of our budget on expenditures and we'll receive to date only 16% on the revenue. Um we'll have next week we'll receive a little over 200,000 in public tax which is about half what we had in prior year. be a little leaner even than I thought, but we still when we get to the cash rate, we're still in good shape. Page three shows the expenditures by type as usual. Salaries and benefits come in just around 80% of our total. Then the rest of the slides show our various bank accounts compared to December 31st of 24. direct you to slide seven which will show the balances by institution still everything within Colorado just thank San working capital and then our interest hearings here today those have dropped from last year two points one rates have obviously

005come down in that time period but also we draw on trust bills So we have less in house that >> Eric because of having draw down on that is that kind of have a negative effect of when you when we get money and put it back in that's going to be at a lower interest rate than we were pulling out of the >> interest rate stays stays steady. regardless of the balance that's in there, but because we're receiving less state money on basis, we're having to fill out maybe >> okay, we're losing interest because of that, but we'll be able to fill back in later and and have a reasonable amount interest from March and April 3.8 interest rate range. At that point it sound like we decided not to do another reduction. So we

006should see similar rates but we will have $8 million in the bank instead of 1.5 but we will see return for me. You also report on's order too like that's attached to this. >> Correct. Um but you they have their own board of their own finance. Um I don't know if it's director role. I don't um how is that collaborated or what is your pulse on that budget the reserves the grants? How much activity do you actually monitor your reports on? >> Really very little. Uh they work very independently on it. I do work with Lori Deman's the outside accountant on that plus their business manager on as we pass through money and we have ACH or the monthly PPR any tax sharing anything that's been ideal from that but I don't oversee your or

007have any involvement really there >> okay >> this is this is here for for your knowledge if you care to review it really only rolls up under our umbrella when it's time and look at it across all. >> Okay, thank you. >> If there's other information like with Emily and Derek and pull that together, this is what's important to their board and their >> Sure. No, it's just it's good to again see the relationship the meetings that occur, you know, the ability to ensure that um that there's, you know, just good relationships within their board, that school, and us as again, we're going to be continuously moving forward with other conversations related to funding and billing and dollars. And so, I think it's just good to know that that's an ongoing conversation that you are

008a part of, that you do have meetings or that it is reported to you. So it it's uh I think it's just good to have people know that that is something that the district is involved in. >> Yeah, I think with Emily monthly in person we save more money on other issues for parents and things. And then the sequence of cash flow slide two shows you where we are today with January's actuals. Again, January's revenue came in about 50% of what we had objective and revenue expect. So based on those averages, I'm hoping that that varies expenditures don't go beyond what we have here at just under two million. We should be right around one million after February February in positive sh >> the first yeah we get two property tax payments in many in

009March is usually I would say we'll get some of the 16 amendment I think yes we'll get All right. Anything else? Are we doing that? >> Any question? >> I guess we were we are looking at the the zero cost law or whatever. >> Yes. >> What that means? >> Yeah, I have the documentation. There's a a pro for spreadsheet in Excel that they provided. I'm building out the public this year so that for next year background, a little more data to fulfill that would I guess ultimately tell us how much repairs we could use for something else. Correct. If we wanted to put into capital or whatever, correct? Okay. Anything else? >> All right. Thank you, Eric. Well done. Um Rick's going to update us on progress against this year's goals. And really, this

010is the kickoff of the superintendent evaluation process. You want to think of it that way? Um I'll just go ahead and say a little bit about that and then kick it to you. So this is just a chance for us to hear, you know, based on gold said, where do we stand? And then between now and March, you'll get that survey on superintendent performance as a little direct. So similar to last year, I'll reach out to you and ask if you have anything you want to add to what we did last year. Kelsey will help much like Jane did last year or anything like that. So she's out until next week, I think this week. So, you know, you know, 10 days or so before and then in the March meeting, we'll have executive sessions

011and do that and talk about ongoing contract evaluation and then contract. So, this is Mr. on progress. >> Sure. If I don't touch on something that you're really interested to ask um this list has been around as long as I've been here saying these are things that really make a difference organization research best practice. So, I'm gonna kind of frame some of our actions with this list in mind. You'll see a reference, but we've been working on three primary goals. Uh again, big goals that we're going to review, I think, again, April, but uh making sure that we get high quality for all students that all standards and curriculum with the hope of improving student performance and then also student engagement. And I'm going to talk about structural engagement strategies and also the elimination of

012distractions as well. And we have a couple other projects facilities master plan and then talk about health benefits. Um this is really our report card and we won't get a new report card till the end of the year but um like a good report card it has some green and some opportunities for improvement. We're staying focused on that. Um you've seen that over time over the last four years starting 2122 was the year before I got here that we've made decent progress. We're still lagging behind state averages which I've said before about saying it's not good enough. We'll continue to work on this. Um we've had growth in in both uh achievements. We've increased number of kids or exceeding expectations decreased uh the number of students who are well below expectations. That has been the

013case in both math and ELA uh third through grade. Those are all healthy indicators for the system that's changing. Um, in the the in the high school, we're looking at PSAT and 11th grade SAT scores. One of the trends we're starting to see is that nine and 10 PSAT is uh creeping closer and closer to the state average. You look at non- minority students almost touching the state mean score there and all students those and I think that's due to the efforts of of the high school and also the students that we're moving on with the high school. That's some good growth for the last couple years. So that should continue to reap this benefits and uh reading and writings uh and in math also you see a similar closing the gap there to the

014state uh and and our younger our younger students there. All of that is really the summation of our work on why do we have an instructional model? Why do we get coaching with individual teachers, principles, why do we look closely at curriculum, uh why do we care about the assessments that we use? This year, the high school has added uh PSAT and SAT assessments. So, they're progress monitoring before we get to the assessment. Um, it's really been a great improvement overall for the school. There seems to be good enthusiasm from teachers looking at those scores of working together even outside of their content area. And uh I happened to be near a few high school students right after they took their PSAT and they were talking about what they got for a score and why

015they thought what it was which is good to hear students uh being concerned about their performance as well. So it's been a decent change there. So really that data is not going to be updated for us in a significant way until the end of the school year. Those top four bullets are really those are important things out of course. Um the the bottom three bullets are uh the next two are really about students and staff and what are we doing to intentionally build a strong collaborative culture among kids and among adults and are we doing that in a way that's that's purposeful. So, we've been measuring our collaborative culture with um our staff through the TLCC survey uh teaching and learning what are the last two C but it's a statewide uh assessment that we've

016been using in Colorado for a number of years. Happens on a two-year cycle and it really gives us some good benchmarks. We've been using these as kind of a proxy for progress on >> learning conditions. >> Thank you. Um it gives us uh feedback on how we're using our collaborative time which is predominantly our Friday time, how in general we're distributing time to resources and really like the question that's about uh staff's belief in their ability to change outcomes for kids. We saw some initial vot. So, we'll be looking at those and that survey is active right now and they're pretty good. I think you get results as soon as uh all the districts you mentioned high school this whole district. This is for the whole all staff. >> Yeah. And we saw we seem

017to grow. Um so that's that's important. And I think we'd also want to look at this. If uh we suddenly saw that we went from 91% of people think it's a good place to work to 80, then we should start asking questions like you know what's what's going on there. If it goes to 89. >> Um I also believe that these are good indicators for retaining for retaining the staff that we have teaching and learning conditions >> conditions. Yeah. >> Thank you. Um, and so I do think that when people are talking loudly about >> the teachers and so sorry just to clarify your survey that you're giving all staff itself has this timeline or you implement the timeline. >> This is the timeline of the survey itself that's conducted by the state. >> Okay.

018So we don't have the ability to do it at a different time. >> We do a different survey that doesn't have these exact questions. And so for the purpose of comparing apples to apples, we're just looking at the same question across time. We do a survey through Panorama, which the staff survey offers that has similar but not adaptive. Um, this is data that Heather shared with y'all earlier this year, just looking at our ability to both retain and recruit staff. I think what is important here is that we we hear people out there that are concerned. They're wondering about our turnover rate. Is turnover too high. We're below the state average. We got close to the state average last school year, but for the most part, our current number is kind of a manageable. Um

019we're always sad when when teachers decide to leave us and we also know that teachers decide because they have family things they want to go to local study. Um it's not um we're not in a bad way when it comes to retaining staff. We're doing quite well and I do think that those HR initiatives have been implemented really do help uh helping on board people one-on-one making sure that we understand whose roles and responsibility they are supporting teachers through lensure. We're still in a situation where we do capture uh a few teachers come to us on either emergency lure, alternative lensure and Heather is really up your game and helping direct people like let's do lure make sure and those numbers have come down I didn't put that data up here those numbers down over

020time one thing I noted this year which was unusual compared to other years is that we didn't have any alternative special education uh especially uh we're one of a few there are not many districts that are are so largely due we've got good advertising people getting out >> and are we doing any exit interviews on teachers who we would like to retain but they by choice or is there any trends or information that is pulling from that >> yeah I don't think Yeah. Yeah. Everyone is getting an extra. They don't all complete them, but right now we haven't seen any significant trends like I'm leaving because Rick does. >> Are you the only one that reviews those? >> No. Principal. >> And then do they come to you? >> I have not seen. >> Okay.

021>> All right. Um we talked about this but I have an update in this part just looking at the idea of intentional culture building and social emotional sports for students. So this gets to the removing distractions. We've had last year we had a significant decrease in behaviors and some behaviors that I think are very distracting and that cause people to say I don't feel safe here. So we saw decrease in bullying fighting harassment and this threats and suction. um this year looking up to January the 25 26 year just total reported incidence is that bottom red line. So comparing back to the first year we did this in 23 24 by January um we have reduced the number of reported incidents by so that to me says we have clearer systems in schools about how

022to manage classroom behavior. We have clear systems in schools about how principles are going to manage behavior. I mean there's more time on learning and less time out of the classroom dealing with Israel. But we're making progress on it and so it's improving. Today I met with the assistant principles we were talking about two of their other projects attendance phones and uh they reported that they feel this sense of less incident to deal with because teachers manage especially elementary school a lot so it gives it more time to focus that has been I think a big point for us I mean so much right like what am I doing? Um I did want to ask just related to the decrease in drug alcohol and tobacco tobacco. Again amazing numbers to see reflected here. Um the

023tobacco incidents from 57 to 20. Is it tested or assumed? >> Um those are incidents when we know it was tobacco. >> Okay great. and what type of practices what changes if you can't tell have gone into make such a drastic decrease. I think there is a misconception of drug use sometimes in schools and that's a thing that parents are very fearful of. So it would be great to maybe frame a little bit that this is a really impressive number and so to give kind of credit and understanding of how we are able to decrease drug, alcohol, tobacco, I realize the instance are probably not high in themselves but we are still data showing that that is even increasing. So what have you done or your building leaders done to make that happen? >> I

024think there's two two things that are primarily. One is just diligence that they're acutely aware of the places in the store where it could be happening and they're looking which also includes looking through people's bags which is like most often they have less not smoking in room so to speak you know vapes just don't let off the same o cigarette smoke that's not necessarily what um and I think the other we had We run a version program for students who look at problems to backbone and so they get like a a class on the harm that can come from that's ineffective just by we had a repeat offenders and I think kids are smart enough they know they're going to start like this happened at parking lot of high school uh we started watching the

025parking lot more closely it started are getting caught more often. It's decreases the amount of times they try to go up to high school. You've seen watching >> any change of behavior and habit with the SRO's in our high school. >> Uh not that I could name in relation to this particular this year. We've had a change here at the middle school detectors and we're looking at installing them in the high school next year and I think that will have a big and SRO has been very involved here. that data is not uh I did exclude cell phone data from this chart because the cell phone data just blows blows it up and because there really isn't cell phone data in the two previous years I I took out to say like hey let's just

026compare data this is uh districtwide by week our uh percent of the student population that's involved in having some kind of cell phone that is the top of the scale is 5%. I would be happy to be under 5%. I am relieved that we are mostly around 1% or below. I believe that the last few weeks that we collect data have shown both at the high school and cross schools a slight decline. Um if someone had predicted said hey draw the graphs you think you'll see by January that peak in late September and early October I would have held a lot longer but you could have [clears throat] a battle with kids to see who is going to stick to the rules or out and the principles are saying to manage level. So, that's really

027been encouraging. I did say D was really uh reluctant when it first came up like, hey, we should really do this. And I thought, oh my god, this is going to be so much work. I'm glad that the board said, "Hey, we really should not took a little work up front to write policies right mostly mostly in seem like some from a chart going back the high school too, right? Peel that out." >> Yeah. And it's about between two and two and a half% of high school. So it's still pretty pretty low in look at just the high incidence group. >> Yeah. I'll continue to track it for the rest of the year. Um because I'm curious now like is this our tolerance level or uh Shantel and I were talking and I was talking

028today and she was ripping through the cafeteria under the table where you surely see a kids are instead playing games together. They're hanging out here. They're being loud. Sounds like we've been uh addressing chronic acidism. Um actually, it's since I took this slide with this picture about a week ago, it's improved by about 4%. But we're monitoring it across the uh the district. Chronic means that you have missed more than 10% of the days. So the year goes on that's you know four days but it's basically missing you can't miss more than one day every two weeks that would keep you there. And so the students that we have any green up there that 52% of our student population is holding at 93% of their bedroom which is great. The yellow is anyone between 93

029and 90. were like should be aware that they're getting close to being chronic and then uh the 35 which as of today was actually 41%. Chronic absentee is so students that are missing more than 10% of the days. That's quite a range. Uh you know like I may not have as much concern for 89.9% that I have for kids that are in the low 80s and upper 70s. So we're working on creating the environment that kids want to be here and participate with us and engage and we're also working on accountability by increasing our communication home uh helping clarify what that this come out of this data which are um interesting to note. The elementary school and the middle school data both has the family school embedded in it because that's how we count our

030enrollments. Our family students, family school students do count for our overall chronic acism and their attendance rate is much lower than the typical school. I think that the whole family school has we're here for you. So Sarah and I have talking Sarah Blakemore who's not running school just talking about manage that um we didn't pull them out of the data just because we wanted to see what the real number was to the state. The other thing is um this data is broken out by demographics and uh chronic absentes and brain are uh Native American students is 50% and we know that majority of our American students from Mexico so that pretty consistent that's a difficult journey to make on a regular regular basis. So we're working with our families in Mexico on um they ask

031a question like how committed are you to attend certainly having such a high chronic abit school we I did report earlier and we worked with the tribal council of alternative uh means to help with transportation the result of that survey said it to me that people would respond to the travel council offering some kind of reliable transportation. Um and so I gave that back to travel not this fall. There is a request buses up but until our own routes are reasonable size we're able to capture all students. I do not want to direct resources capture students who are attend Rick. Can I just Yeah, you know that 42.5 I I know it's trouble. That's pretty troubling. And do you think that is extra impactful to high school the Native American population or is there anything

032you can directly attribute to that? And the second second idea is and I assume you must have thought of this that if we can work on if we just look at the high school bringing that orange down substantially if that's possible and make that work you would expect SAT PSAT scores to go up. I mean, if if we're doing our job teaching the kids and they're more often expect those schools to go. So, one thing helping another. >> Yes. Um that the absenteeism rate accelerates the closer you get to your senior year. It's are choosing to be there less. Uh today, although today uh Miss Jordan and I were going through their attendance records, we also located a couple of um I would just say like accounting challenges like we have students that are off

033campus in the morning for uh either a work experience or um they're reporting to a classroom for an online class and uh we don't have accurate, you know, we should be marking them as present if they're showing up at their work. So, we're doing some work there. I don't think that's enough to bring that down by um 12%. I I still think that we got to work with seniors and make and all high school kids and make that the experience they're having at school is meaningful enough that they're going to show up there. I will be curious to see how the schedule change for next year if that will um make a difference or not like oh yeah my on Wednesdays I don't like my class so I never go on Wednesdays but now they

034have next year they'll have classes same classes every day so maybe that'll change but we're keeping an eye on it. Um, we're our last year's chronic absenteeism rate, I believe, was 39 and a half and I believe that the state rate was closer to 29 or maybe 28 and a half. And so, um, our opens that the measures that we put in so far really do get us closer to that 30 30% that we cut um, you know, about nine or 10% out of the rate of chronic absenteeism. I don't suppose you have any historical data going back decades on do they measure chronic absenteeism going back because it if 30% is like the average of the state you know then okay even but that's kind of shocking to me even but maybe that's you

035we were all kids maybe that was the case state of Colorado I just don't know it I don't know >> yeah the state records right now that are online go back about five years that seems to be what they I don't I don't have an opinion or have actual data to say what it was going back. It's a pretty low threshold to be honest, like 10%. If you're a family who likes to travel and you pull your kids out of school for a couple of weeks, like bam, your child is now chronically absent. I'm not as worried about that. So I had a discussion at the state level with folks just saying like seems like you ought to be able to differentiate this between some and they said for them it's flat out you're either

036in class learning or you weren't and they don't differentiate. So they're very emphatic about about that. So if you have excused absences um you're still absent you're still missing on that learning experience. So >> um >> and there's like no local control over >> that term. So we are uh kind of boxed in by the terminology and the language used to be able to kind of adopt or create something that will support um and learning engagement type of experience for a family. Um okay. Is there do you have any uh I mean related to the high school and the large number related to graduation rates? gradu our our high school graduation rate is above the state's average by three or four percent. We do really well. >> So we have >> we don't have a

037lot of dropouts% chronic absenteeism and it has it's not affecting graduation. Their ability to pass classes and graduate is not affected. >> It would appear not. >> I love statistics. One thing that we don't have, and I'm not making the argument that we should have it, but that is in place in some high schools, is there is a maximum number of days you can miss before you would lose credit. And it's built more on a seat time principle as opposed to a knowledge principle like I missed half the seat time, but I can still pass the final. question is you got brilliant our final that week. Um or is it just like you weren't here enough so you don't get credit? Um that practice was more prevalent in the 80s when we just said you

038can't miss that many days in a in a semester. >> Doesn't matter how >> correct, you just can't do it. Even if you had a 95% average, you miss the eighth day or 10th day, you're you're done. Um, and that'd be something that the board could entertain. I mean, it would take, I think, considerable discussion, a lot of research before we've made a decision like that, I would assume. But people do it. Um, yeah. Do do you have it broken out in the high school 42 between the kids coming from New Mexico? That how much is that skewing that number? Kids have to travel a lot for >> Yeah. Uh, I could I'd have to pull it up, but it's it's a it's not as many students as it is in the elementary school. >>

039Yeah, that's where the bulk of our students from New Mexico are in the elementary. It's a smaller smaller population >> in itself is a conversation to have support. It's why we are not pertaining for for the betterment of that community or perhaps within what we do. But um yeah, I would caution us to lean too heavily into assumptions of the 425 without being able to provide further information that would allow us to maybe pull out something that of interest to have further discussion about um because I think it can come back again to many conversations or wonders we've had within the high school thus far to just again be able to say this actually has nothing to do with this or we are maybe overlooking what sort of other things I think it's the number

040is large enough I think possibly to have further discussions if warranted at this level and maybe you could look into that to see if you'd be willing to share any >> yeah I think this is it's a year-long project we're just this data is pulled at the end of first semester we have more time so let's you know keep an eye on it see if it gets better or worse If it does, that's figure out figure out why is what I hear you saying. >> Be careful not to make assumptions. So >> it's just saying that's a big number and therefore it makes you say what's underneath that. >> Yes. >> Yeah. It's a big number. It was shocking that as a district we were at 39 and a half% chronic absenteeism across the entire

041district. It was shocking like how can we have that level? Um and if it's a discussion we want to get into later. They have all the districts ranked and it's very interesting to look at what districts have really high ranks and what districts don't have very high ranks. Look at their school size. >> It's on the state uh it's on CDE. They have a big uh they have an absenteeism landing page and there's a spreadsheet you can download if you want to look at it. I can also find it send it to >> Thank you. So what I what I think we have here at the end is we're doing a lot of things to make the instruction high quality uh to make sure that the material is high quality um and to make sure

042that we have uh the best learning environment possible. And now towards the end here between absenteeism and the cell phones and the other disruptions is us trying to remove some of those disruptions so we can further get students to engage. I think that's going to be a good combination of strategies uh for us going forward to increase outcomes. One uh area that I just want to talk about it's a was a project this year. It really wasn't a big thing but every year's it's been every year. says I've been here. We have to dig into health insurance. Um to part of Eric's soul this year. I'm sorry for that. Yeah, he does have a little PTSD. I was even there was even some insurance people back in my office yesterday. Um but what what happened

043this year is different than what's happened in the past. uh and that we set out uh with a goal to greatly decrease the cost of insurance to our um employees and we were we were successful. Um we actually lowered employee premiums by 40%. We um all the money that we saved as a district we reinvested into insurance. We have uh no premiums, no cost premiums for any single employee or every or any uh couples that teach for us. So basically, we cover their premium costs there. That's a big benefit. Uh we recently had a a teacher that we were trying to hire. They're sad that our salaries weren't competitive where they were before. They were extra sad when we told them, "Oh, and you got to pay us $250 a month for your insurance." and

044that needed to change. And so, um, this helps add a benefit to to our staff by saying you no longer have to pay that out of your pocket. It's like giving our those those of our employees that take insurance a raise because they're not having to invest that way. We also were able to either maintain or lower um the deductible. Um, and we did that by starting HSA accounts or giving everyone the opportunity to start an HSA account and seeding those with $1,000 for singles and $2,000 for a couple um to help lower their deductible cost. Um this just a significant shift and uh as we get into next year and Eric and I will be talking about this in the upcoming month where we have uh budgets are getting tighter and tighter for the

045state. These are the places that we're going to have to look to save money so we can continue to be competitive in our salaries and uh really offer something uh beneficial to our staff. So I I felt it was a project that went went well this year. I see a question. Look, >> I just it says all plans are an HSA. Isn't an HSA in itself the plan? >> No. >> I got an HSA was a plan in itself. >> It is not. We have we have a high deductible plan and an HSA is a health savings account which you use to offset your medical expenses. uh it has a bunch of tax codes going on what exactly you can spend that on. So you could use your HSA to pay down your deductible or

046invest in things that are uh allowable. >> The high deducted >> okay maybe that's what I was like I seen where you just like there no HSA option for implants and then there's HSA. So maybe I'm just that some plans included. Sorry. Or just wanted to clarify. >> Yeah. Yeah. High deductible plans. >> HDHP is what it's called. And we've had an HA in the past, which um is really an account that the the employee contributed some money. We contributed some money, but we tracked that and people weren't spending all the money that they were contributing. So, a few people were benefiting greatly and some were losing money that they're investing that by switching to an HSA. If you choose to invest in your HSA at your money, you get it. When you move on

047to another place, you get to keep it with you. If you hold on to it to your uh ready for uh Medicare, then you can actually use it to pay your Medicare premiums. And so, it's a real asset. Uh instead of that, the uh HA was real liability for us. switch budget. If it if it all paid out, we would lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, this is more positive. Of course, the other project that we've been working on this year is a facilities master plan. This is just uh a rough uh in your spare time. >> Yes. just when I get a few minutes, I think about this. Uh, and we're on on track with this chart in saying that um in it says now in November 17th, we actually didn't use that

048specific date, but by the time we've gotten to the March here, by the end of February and 26, we've had a site selection. Um, we've been doing community engagement and we will continue community engagement there. We have begun the best grant application. I'm going to talk about that in detail um later. And so we are on track uh for a fall 29 uh potentially a fall 29 move in if we if we keep up on this. And of course that depends in how things go the best way. But overall, I would say the facilities master plan has been a success. U we seem to have good momentum in the community. We have heard a lot of positive feedback since our last meeting. And so um yep, feels feels good to report like that's going well

049instead of we're scrambling to figure that out. >> So I think that was it for the update. Yeah. Are there specific things that people have questions about? >> Very good. Any any questions? Any that >> I just wanted to ask the PSAT and is that for all students or just specific groups of students on that do a graduation track? >> All students. >> Uh like third through eighth grade uses the CMS Colorado measures of academic success. All 9th through 11th graders use the SAT. That's what the state selected. They used they had the ACT before but they now they moved on to SAT all students. Anything else anyone? >> Very good. Thanks. Thanks for that. Um I mentioned how the evaluation process will go up. One thing to note there, I know we have to

050thank you for including the policies there um that guide that they're a little out of date, I would say. And I I I'll suggest some edits and we can bring that back next time and approve the policies that match what we do. There's a couple things that have changed since those were written about 2012 or the last there. One of those things changed is that we're working off of a three-year rolling contract and back in that day it was still just one year at a time. And so I think part of that five month lead time that it has built in is based on it's just annually. So we we now evaluate annually and we update the contract annually but it has a threeyear horizon on it. Right. So I think if we get the

051policy to match more goal setting happening in April not August instead of in August you don't implement in September. goal setting happening in April evaluation happening four months before the end contract something like that sense to me and that's that's a track would be on suggestions on that we update that policy I think next all right then we'll go on to capital improvements you >> well that's a fact follow [clears throat] Okay. So, over the last few months, um, I've spent a lot of time kind of dialing in and I wanted to zoom out a little bit this month. We're seven months into the fiscal year. So, I thought it was a good time for us to just kind of do a little bit of an overview on the capital projects that we've done. Um,

052I am not going to go through this bullet point by bullet point and spend the next hour going over this, but I did want to kind of go over just the the basics of what you're seeing here in the color coding. Um, so on this, I zoomed in here and this is just the top portion of the sheet. I'm going to kind of tell you what you're looking at. Um, and then I'll, you know, take questions on other bullet points that might be there. So, basically, green means that it has been completed. Um, good example of this, all the OCR stuff that was completed. So, the the big parking lot work at the high school, all the toilet repairs um, and a number of other projects um, that were attached to the ADA um, audit

053last year completed. You see kind of up at the top that drop down ceiling that was done at the elementary school that was completed last summer. So as you look through this and you look at the green stuff, those are the things that have been completed. Yellow means that we are actively in the process of getting that done um and working on. Uh so very good example, the shot clock you see kind of about halfway down the page on my screen. Um we've purchased those shot clocks through Dacttronics and Nevco. They're being shipped here and they'll be going in and being placed. but I didn't feel that I could check those off as complete till they're actually arrived and actually um in place. Another good example of that, um so you'll see at the high

054school fire sprinkler heads replacement, I think I went over this or maybe it's in this month's report where um our high school sprinkler um heads were recalled back, I believe in 2002. The government money ran out to replace those in 2007, and here we are in 2026. So, we're going to get this taken care of. Um, but that's one where we're going through the bidding process right now. I have two bids. I'm waiting on a third one. Soon as that third one comes in, we'll decide who we're going with and that work will be completed this summer as soon as our kids um are out of the school. Red are things that we have looked at and for one reason or another I've decided that we're not going to address right now. Um at the

055top of the sheet um you see from 23 24 new wall mats uh floor and P for the multi-purpose room in the elementary school and then down about five or six rows there's another elementary school goal point from 2526 again wall mats and in conversations with Mrs. finding we determined that that was a duplicate um from those two years and the elementary school has um since that went on there come to other solutions for that so we don't need to spend that money. So um that's something that we won't be doing. The fume hood repair that you see there um there's one at the elementary school and one at the middle school um were budgeted at $20,000. Um when we brought Chuck out to look at those it was actually 50,000 at one school and

05680,000 at another school to replace those hoods. Um, and if I knew we were going to be in those buildings for the next 50 or 60 years that I would I would probably be happy to update that. But I've I've begged the fire department to allow us to hold off on doing that until we know for sure what our future is in those buildings so that we're not spending that kind of taxpayer money on something that we're going to be abandoning in just a couple of years. And so, um, that's another example where just right now we're we're not going to do it. U white basically means that I just I simply haven't addressed it yet. So, um there is 2324. It says grow dome sidewalk completion. There's a portion of the sidewalk over by

057the grow dome by the boat tech building that was never completed. Um the concrete companies have told me to pound sand till spring and so I'm waiting till spring to call them up and we will go to work on that. So, um something that'll get done. I just I can't document that we have completed it at this point. um down just a little bit further um where it mentions asbestous abatement and radon abatement system um those are another two that for instance under the asbestous abatement there's no number given for it and that one is going to be a very very pricey one so I need to get more information and that may well be something that goes on a subsequent capital uh project when we either a know whether we're going to be in

058this building or not or b just exactly how much that's going to cost but I'm not going to dive into that this year and run the risk of of um really um scratching something that's going to cost us an awful lot of money. Okay. Um when I look at the overall here um oh there's one more I want to touch on the purple um backfield irrigation system at the elementary school. This is a project that I desperately want to engage in because last summer we were putting between 15 and $20,000 a month on that field. This particular bullet point was put in there to address the irrigation system on those fields with the hope of having a more um costefficient system that would be more just efficient in general and cost less money to operate

059and less money on those fields. You will notice that there's not a number um put there. Um that's one uh you know you're looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars to be able to go in and really redo that irrigation system. So, um, and the other piece of that is that if we're not going to be there in a couple years, that that would be another expense that would probably be unfortunate for us to make. So, I colored it purple because I wasn't really quite sure what other to color it because I really want to do it, but at the same time, it just felt really irresponsible for me to dive straight into that right now. Right now. Um, can I take any questions about kind of this first portion of the of the report?

060>> The birding. the bird abatement. Yes, absolutely. >> I don't know what that is. >> No, that's great. And I I did the same thing when I saw I was like, "What the heck is this?" >> So, at the high school, um they if you look kind of at the So, where the wall meets the sophet on that entire front side of the high school, you'll see kind of a brown smudge across that entire thing. And what it is is barn swallows that nest up there every spring. And if they can be addressed before they lay eggs, it is legal and acceptable to use water to knock down those nests. If they lay eggs, then basically you have to just live with it for the rest of the year and then knock the nest down

061afterwards. Um the I can't remember what the estimate was that we got, but it was this huge monthly amount um that we are going to attempt this year before they have the opportunity to lay eggs. We're going to try to wash this out of that school to keep them out of there. Couple people have told me, "Good luck. There's no way." Darcy's back there smiling like, "There's no way." And you might be right. >> You show up in the morning and there's like thousands of them flying in circles. They go down to the baseball field. They get the sand in their little mouths and their little feet and they spit it on the wall. And like it's so cool to just come to school every day and see the progress of damaging. It's not damaging

062the wall. >> No, it's just they're just spitting dirt on the wall and I'm making these these awesome little like mess. >> And yeah, and then but then there's a day that Philip's there or you know, not Philip anymore and he's just power washing them and I'm like crying. No, >> it's really cool. You should definitely go. Well, maybe Jason will get it taken care of. >> Well, I say I would. It's one that I want to live through before I spend almost $50,000 on it. Um, I am hoping there's a way that my team and I can can handle those without and like I met just the other day met with the the orcin guy just on kind of what the options are and you know there are things ranging from mounting spikes to

063the side of the building to right ugly right and that's kind of why we wanted to stay away from that. There's another one where you actually mount a it's an electric wire that goes all the way along that edge there and it emits a signal that the birds just don't like um that they kind of within a twoft radius of that that wire they they kind of supposedly don't want to be around it. There are little pucks that they can um mount to the side of the of the building. And all of these things immensely expensive, like thousands and thousands of dollars to do this. And um we'll see. That same day that I was meeting with them about the birds, I also met with with Orcin about our prairie dog problem over at the

064high school, which honestly I am more concerned about the prairie dogs by a lot um than I am about the barn swallows even though I don't like the mess that the barn swallows leave on the um on the windows in the side of a building. And so, you know, looking at what it would cost to maybe redirect some of those funds that were there for bird abatement in trying to deal with prairie dogs, which I mean truly are a safety risk um to our athletes and um disease issues and whatnot. So, that would be something that I'll I'll update you on later, but yeah. No, it's a good question and I kind of smile and chuckle because that's what I did when I looked at it the first time, too. prairie dog on there some

065>> I there's a very good chance next year you're going to see prairie dog abatements on on this >> well you know there there was a day last summer when I I was accustomed and I was like we're gonna deal with these prairie dogs and then I drove down to the Matt building and there was this little guy standing on his mound right next to we've got this big sign right it says maintenance and transportation he was just standing there as proud as can like that little guy owned the place. Um, >> no. [laughter] >> No, I'm from horse country where horses break legs and >> seen some cattack. >> Well, so yes, about three weeks into the job, I walked into my office and my office was decorated as catty shacks. So like pictures

066of Bill Murray all over the place and >> I have a quick question. >> What it's come to? >> Yes, sir. the the fume hood thing. Is there any safety issue there? >> So the fume hood thing so basically our fume hoods at the elementary and middle school are made out of galvanized metal. If galvanized metal gets hot enough, it puts off a toxic fume, right? So when Steve Vorhees was here, and of course he was a fireman, he addressed this issue by disconnecting the gas lines in the middle school and the elementary school. And now they only heat up food in these warmers. So Todd cooks the food at the high school and then they bring it down to the elementary and middle school and then they use these warmers to heat it up.

067Those hoods are never getting remotely close to hot enough to actually put off an oxy or a toxic fume. The problem here is it kind of depends on who you ask to how big an issue it was. So back in those days, they basically petitioned to the state fire inspector and were able to get, you know, passage that no, we don't need to replace those hoods. Local fire department still wants those hoods replaced because they're not up to code. And that the conversation that I had with the fire inspector was I'm not going to argue with the fact that those do need to be replaced. They really do. But based on the way that we use them, there is no safety risk. Um, and if we're out of these buildings in a couple years, then

068it's a it's a whole different story. Now, if and I don't even want to say if on the bond, but if we were to have to be here for a really long time, then I would be a proponent for let's get those taken care of. Let's bring them up to code. Let's have the right stuff in there so that we have a nice school with nice stuff that we could cook here if we wanted to. >> Thank you. Anything else? Anyone? >> Use purple any like the purple? No. Well, the purple represents my quandry. It was just like, what do I do with this? Um, okay. Um, I'm going to quickly move on and I I don't want to take up the entire evening because we've got other more important business to go over. Uh,

069but kind of in light of the the bond that we have coming up and the conversations that we have about why it's important for us to look at building a new school, I did want to detail uh the water main break that we dealt with on January 15th over at the elementary school. Um, just kind of I'll tell the story by showing some pictures. Um, basically the administration showed up and found water bubbling out of the pavement. Um, there it was not the fountain of youth. It was that water break. We had a little bit of a glacier flowing down from the elementary school. Love this picture right here. There's a sign right down below that that says don't slip. And it was put there a long time ago, but uh I it just kind

070of tickled my funny a little bit uh with that glacier that was going down through there. >> Um had contractors come out. They unearthed the line where it had broken and you can still look good. So there should be a line going from here all the way down to here. Um and what had happened was many years ago there was a repair that was done there. This is the sleeve right here and that repair failed. And then when the repair failed then we had had the break. contractor said there's a good chance that it had been leaking for many, many years and then now finally it just kind of gave way. Um, finished product. This is what it ended up looking like after they got done with it. So, you can see the white new

071white PVC. By the way, the copper lines that you see to the left of that white PVC, that is all um geothermal line from the town. And you can't really see it from this picture, but they're actually doglegged a little bit. And the contractor conjectured that there's a pretty good chance the last time that this was fixed that they probably hit those geothermal lines with a backhoe like kind of bumped them a little bit and probably pretty lucky they didn't break. You'll see here this is the new sleeve that they put on to address the break and then they back filled it all in and now it looks like this right over here. Almost like nothing happened for a mere $12,000 um to do that. And I think you know the timing of this whole

072thing as we look at you know why it's important for us to look at building a school. This is a perfect example of aging infrastructure. This is not something that you can see from the outside of the school. Um there's lots of cosmetic things that we can do to these schools to make them look better. We can put a coat of paint on them. We can get fresh furniture in them. But there are things going on inside the walls and there's things going on underneath the pavement that you cannot see until something goes bad. Um and the time frame when these buildings were built, building codes were very different. Uh the materials that they were using were very different, lots of corrosives and what we had happen there last month is something that I believe

073is going to happen with increasing frequencies. So I think this is kind of a cautionary tale and and definitely something that I will be telling people about going forward when someone asks me, well, why exactly do you need to replace those schools? Well, this is a great example. Um, and that was a big chunk of money that came straight out of our budgets that hurt, you know, because it was money that could have been spent on something else, uh, but went into that pipe. So, >> that's a that's an amazing photo of that huge gap like the splice was there and then it's just it's gone. >> Yeah. Um, so imagine, you know, two pipes that are being spliced together and you would think you would want them to be spliced together very close, right?

074And then of course the sleeve goes on the outside. The contractor told me that those two pipes when they were put in were gapped out about this far and then the sleeve just went around the whole thing. And they did that because with the PVC like and of course working in the ground you you have to be able to kind of maneuver the two ends to be able to get the PVC in. And the tighter fitting the PVC is the harder it is to do that. So they just kind of you know they slapped it down there and then relied on the splice >> in the middle. >> Uhhuh. to be able to fix it. And so, um, so I mean I my question is how many other places like that between the street and

075our school are like that. We know underneath this building there's all kinds of problems. Um, so it it just it's kind of an awareness thing that that we have to know is is there and we will spend the money on to have to to deal with it. So, okay. Um, last thing that I'm going to touch on. Um, we are spending a lot of time right now on fire inspection. So, as far as kind of actively what my team is working really hard on right now is really not a capital improvement um but fire inspection and and what has made this year's fire inspection particularly challenging is that this is the first time in six to seven years that our entire district has gone through set fire inspection. I think there was a number of

076years where there was some back and forth as to whose jurisdiction it was going to be to inspect the schools. Um the schools kind of fell through the cracks. Well, now the fire department's working on getting back on top of that. And so, um, quite a few things that we were and are addressing, and I've kind of listed in here some of the most common things, but this is our schedule, uh, that we've put down that we are we're kind of eating that elephant one thing at a time. I think I ended up with 60 or 70 pages of things that we have to address districtwide, and I'm taking that very seriously and working very hard to do it. Um, so more more details on that if you want to be bored out of your

077mind with extension cords and uh outlets and whatnot. So >> meaning those are things you already know from the high school inspection, >> right? >> Yeah. Long list. >> The say again >> from the high school inspection has already happened. >> All of these have happened. So all of these happened in November and then we are working. So the list that you have down there is kind of rather than just trying to address the entire district at the same time. We're we're taking a more targeted approach and focusing two to three weeks on the high school. Right now we're on the five six building. The next two weeks we'll be working on this building in such hopefully by the time they come back in March we're in in a much better place than we are

078right now. So >> okay, I'll take any questions you may have. >> Anything? Anyone? Great. >> Good work. Thanks. >> All right. Now, we are discussing this statewide healthc care option, right? Darcy's supporting and we're discussing it to learn more about this as a way to improve the way home here. >> I'll just give a little bit of background. We're very fortunate that the Colorado Education Association is concerned about all teachers across the entire state, not just in urban teachers where that can happen. And they are pursuing um uh a very worthy cause. They are attempting to find a way to centralize health care for all uh public school staff. And you know, we just had a big presentation on our healthcare and what a big win that is. Um but if we were part

079of a collective across the state um we could improve that even even more offer a variety of plans who would fit different age groups and different people in their in their career journey. We're very fortunate that Darcy is representing us on the that group that committee that's known. She's done an incredible job and she came and asked uh as they're asking all school boards in the state of Colorado if um we would the board would be willing to offer a letter of support that CEA could offer in their presentation to legislators to say look this has a lot of traction. Um, there's a letter template in there uh that that basically says that you're supporting the continued exploration of a statewide insurance program. It doesn't commit us to participating in it in any way. It

080doesn't um commit us to voting in any particular ways. It just says, "Yeah, we're we think it's a valuable thing to and please keep looking into it." Um, and if that seems uh like a worthwhile endeavor to the board, then we I would submit a letter on behalf of the of the school board. I think Darcy or myself, if you don't mind, Darc would be happy to answer any questions you might have about that. >> So, it's it's really a statewide pool as opposed to our own we're a pool for one district. >> Correct. And there are other uh states that have done this. Washington State and Oregon have both been successful at this. Um, there are a couple of coalitions in Colorado that have lumped some districts together. U, but this is really about

081making a stealth statewide insurance pool that's uh supported by legislation instead of supported by us. It should be able to allow us to have more dollars for to to pay staff and educate kids. Anything I missed, Darcy? >> No. Um, this was something that was brought up at the 2023 delegate assembly by the 39,000 uh members of CA. Uh, it was the CA was asked to create a task force. The task force was created in August of 2024. Been sitting on that task force for close, you know, over a year now. Um, year and a half. Uh, we looked at a bunch of models as Rick mentioned. We went to Oregon, we looked at Washington, we looked at Kentucky, we looked at Georgia. They all have statewide healthcare. Some of those have been voted on

082by voters. Um, Kentucky was, but Georgia, Oregon, and Washington were legislation that their uh their legislators passed. Um, they are all dynamic pools, which means everybody has to be in them. um you know whether you are you know someone who has a lot of health issues or you are young and have no health issues. Um, but Oregon and Washington have done a really good job of kind of creating like a scale um where people are paying like $20 for healthare, you know, or districts are paying $20 a person for health care for our people who don't need really expensive healthare and like $150 a person for kind of the top of healthare. And I'm sure Eric or Rick can tell you how expensive our healthcare is. I believe that 78% of our budget is spent

083on salary and benefits. >> That's correct. Last year we were spending $1,250 per employee for health. This year it's per month, sorry, per month. And this year it's differentiated by plan. Um so we spending about that much money depending on the plan. But to be able to drop that to 150 or 200 heck to be able to cut that in half would be a huge saving for us. and offer more opportunity. >> And we're talking about about a pool and Eric probably has the number. I know that in the past like our our pool has been like 130 people. I've just been following here. I don't know what the exact number is out of however many educators we have, 300 or so in the whole entire school district. This would be a pool of 250,000

084people. Um which would be a which you know would make health insurance companies actually open their eyes and take care of us. Um, we're looking into doing this for all educators, not just teachers, maybe classified staff, certified staff, and are looking at a way to also do it for retired staff before they're at the age of Medicare. Um, you know, I plan to retire 10 years before that, so that'd be really nice. Um, and so it would be great if our board and especially rural school boards are showing that support because like Brick said, um, because CA encompasses the entire state, the largest unions, the largest associations are usually on the front range and they are larger school districts who have better health insurance like Kaiser Permanente, you know. Um, so it would be nice

085for for our school district to show our support. Does this still work with an insurance company or is this a true Colorado like share program? Because the share programs the hesitancy is there's no guarantee of any type of healthare payment or like payment towards medical expenses. the state would work with a broker and you would get like four or five options, you know, >> one could be one could be signal could be but because of the large pool um directorship it would it would be the cost would be drastically. >> Yeah, I think um wanted to the word share sometimes can lead people into what some of those other share programs are and again there's no guarantee. So I just want to make sure that that is not the the same route that this would

086go that this is again a insure like an insurance of insurance fans for a greater number insurers insuring us still making money off of us. >> Sure. >> But you know much less would be coming out of our district pockets which would be possible. Is is the initiative designed to get legislative approval or what goes outside that? >> The initiative is to hope that the legislation will pass something that's going that wouldn't go to voters. It would just be passed. They would find they would find the money and then CA would work with legislators to develop um a board. Um both Oregon and Washington state have boards that you know they bring in you know a labor person, they bring in an education person, they bring in you know um ideally we would just look

087at teachers to start or educators to start. Uh but there has been talk about you know incorporating all public servants in the state which would be a pool of like you know 750,000 people. Um but there are some concerns about health the health of some of those other public servants. Not the teachers are super asking about my cortisol levels today. [laughter] >> Any other I did send you guys one pager to kind of look at the information. >> So this is for discussion tonight. We we would look to take action next month or do we need to just get around? >> That's I think that's up up to the board. There's an exemplar letter letter in there and if people were comfortable with me sending that letter, I would sign off that letter and send

088it on your behalf. Um and if you wanted more time to think about it, then do that. That's at this stage we be saying by the letter just this sounds like it's worth exploring you know saying any certainty by so I'm for saying it sounds like it's worth exploring tell us more about it >> and in my experience going to lobby days and going to the state capital and talking to legislators or legislators sorry those are hard words to say at the same time um there is a a lot. They pay attention to, you know, postcards that on their desk, letters that come from school boards, um actual educators taking time out of teaching to come and speak to us. So, it does go a long way, at least in my experience. >> Sounds like

089we're good saying >> worth exploring. >> Yeah. And I believe I used that word in the first sentence. All right. Have you do you feel like you've done the master plan update? >> I do want to talk specifically about the best grant because we have an action item about that. >> Exactly. >> So um we I I met with the state uh representative or the best grant representative Donaldson is our person. uh had a meeting with her. I've met now with RTA once. We have a meeting tomorrow afternoon to continue that work. Um we what the action item is we really need approval to continue to pursue the best grant because it does commit us to funds matching funds. Should we get a best grant? We're committed to finding matching funds. And so since it

090involves dollars, that's our next thing is like if you really want to do this, let's let's pass that. I wanted to give you some information about the best grant that uh may be new um and certainly has changed since we first started looking at best grant. So last year when we started exploring the best grant they were saying they were going to match uh it's a 55 45% match. We bring 55% to the table and best would award us 45% of the project because our assessed values continue to go up in Pigosa that is now a 5842 match. So we bring 58% and they will match uh 42% of that project. And just so that we're on the same page that best grant would cover the construction of the K8 school. we would not be

091getting 42% of our additional projects or any of that. It stops at the total cost of the of the school which we roughly know now. I think we don't have an exact but we roughly know what that is. the best grant um our best our hope is to turn that in um right around the 20th or so so that we have time for Meg uh who's excellent to review our grant and give us feedback so we can rewrite it. We really would like uh Meg to to say we have a good application and that she's in support of it and so we've been listening to to her advice. And then uh March 2nd, I believe, is when we submit it. And then we're going to sit on it until I think the first week of

092May before we'll before we'll hear hear back. Um the writing of the actual writing of the best grant is uh Eric and Heather and myself, Kelsey and RTA. there's a fairly large technical portion of it and RTA is lending their expertise and having done many best grants before they're they're filling that all in. So we have a weekly meeting right now to collaborate. We have a working Google doc that we're on. But before we submit it would need need approval which is the next part. Um you know questions about the best grant the process what I know today >> their contribution to best is that something we have already paid for or additional costs that were paid for >> that's we've already paid but that would carry us through that part of it. Yeah. Um

093and following on that when I did show the facilities map, you know, following the award, the actual best grant award, um we would actually begin a process not long after that to look for uh architect or design build firm. We would start that process right away. >> But this is like the end of RTA's current. >> Yes, that's right. That's right. That's what we've kind of committed to each other and it they've been fabulous partners don't don't get me wrong but I've also been really clear with them that uh we have an open process you know they'll be for selecting an architect and builder and all that they're fully aware of it they're used to that relationship so approximately what percentage of this grant is was done >> that's not done you flushed out most

094of the sections 3%. >> So, it's still Oh, okay. So, they're still substantial before the >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We got stuff. Eric has pulled quite a few um you know, some of the things that are contained in there that we have to dig up that are like what are all of the building improvements that we've done for the last three years? What has been the schedule of improvements up to that point? So, we fortunately we have that uh data. Uh some of the things are easier like what's our plan for the existing buildings. Um, we just recently got a letter I think I don't know if I we got a letter from the town expressing interest in taking on the middle school specifically for rec center which was fabulous and so that's exciting.

095I'm meeting uh with healthy archeletta who's uh interested in a big portion of the elementary school and so we have some other nonprofits there that'll read really well in our best grant. anything that we can say that we don't have it. So with some of that stuff is less technical, but the technical side of it, all the building specs and stuff, RTA has uh dumped the the bones of that in there. They have a lot of documents to present. There's quite a bit of just pros, just text people to read. So we we need an official motion to direct you to continue that work and submit um authorize you to submit the best on school district for that KA site. I will go ahead to approve this mission of the building excellent schools today best

096grant application called department of education on behalf of school district 2026 grant central as presented >> have a motion do we have a second I'll second it motion and a second any further discussion >> all right we'll take the vote >> I >> motion carrier. That's not insignificant to be at that point to say we're ready to put the whole grant together for that. >> Exactly. >> You know, it's been talked about for a long time there. We we did, >> I believe, submit one successful best grant for some security, a small one, six, seven years ago. This is the first time for for a building court. EPOS got a best grant a few years ago and so well written grants I think are received well by good people looking forward. So it's nice to

097know who's collaborating to really get the documents >> and the homeworks. I mean I know there's a lot of compilation to do now but the big hard part about the community make a choice analyze the buildings comprehensively look at all the options. It's been really well done. We've been, you know, in conversation with Meg, you know, for more than a year now and making some decisions based on her advice, like a very thorough site analysis, a very public uh way of selecting the site. Um, the very large number of public comment opportunities. Um, it's just been our early surveying of seeing if we had support. All of that stuff is going to pay off in our application. You know, the best is obviously concerned like you're going to ask us for all this money. Is

098your community ready to offer up the other matching part and for us to be able to show early survey data that already said people will want to pay that amount and that's going to be very beneficial for us. So, we're pulling all that together and feels like it's going to be pretty busy for the next few weeks. Um, and then we'll do a little bit of waiting, but we actually have some other projects that we'll need to do during that time we can talk about in March. Yeah. Very good. That's a big milestone for us. All right. One other action is the 26 27 school district calendar. Um, Rick can update a little bit. There's one significant change I would say starting a week earlier. Not adding days, but starting a week earlier instead of

099the first day being after Labor Days. frankly before moving in the right direction. >> I talk about the longterm goal here before I just talk about the immediate change that occurred this year. Uh currently our high school and our school starts later than everyone in our Boseies, later than everyone in our athletic partners, later than every college that we do college classes with. In fact, it puts our kids at a real disadvantage. we lose multiple weeks of instruction that other students are getting before they take SATs and AP exams. And um the high school and the high school uh sack uh school accountability committee have really have asked like we would like to move to a mid August start and that seemed like a lot to do right out of the gate and especially we

100heard that right around December. So, we did pull the calendar committee together and said, "Boy, if that's our if that were a long-term goal, um so that we could start school when other schools in our area start school, start athletics, um so our kids are actually going to school when other schools are playing middle school and high school sports. Give our kids extra weeks of instruction before they have to take those high stakes exams. That would be a good thing." The calendar committee looked at this next year's calendar and said, "Oh, look at that. Uh, Labor Day is pretty deep into September. What if we just take this opportunity to start a week before Labor Day as we're moving, we want to progress into August, which seems reasonable to me. Um because I don't want

101to assume that all of our there's probably vacations that have been planned for a year that might bleed into that late August. I don't want to do that to staff or uh to families that say, "Hey, surprise. We move school three weeks." Um but we would like to move school up one week. It does not add a week of school. Just shifts the calendar forward. And then we would like to explore for the following year to move into the middle of August. um and give plenty of announcement for that. That may be some work that we do this spring by getting community input and feedback. And you can imagine I kind of laid out a campaign that we might say, "Hey, this is why why would we do that?" But in the short term, we

102haven't to the best of my knowledge recently started before Labor Day. So that will be a little bit of a change for folks, but it seemed like not a bad time to do it given given the way it laid out. So that's the change really that you would be um approving. We left everything else pretty much the same. Same number of contact days, professional development days, early release Fridays, all of that we didn't touch. also to simplify the message like we just did this one thing and honestly in another year we probably keep the message simple and we're just going to do this other thing before we start talking about if we want to add days or we want to change the structure of what we're doing um just keep it simple in people's people's

103minds. So the calendar you have in front of you is the calendar the proposed calendar for next year. It has the first day of student contact on August 31st. It has teachers reporting on August 24th, which will be about a week earlier than there uh have in the past. And it has us wrapping up on the 28th of May, right before Memorial Day. Um so we won't have that time that we've had most recently after Memorial Day. Um instead, that time moved in front of Labor Day. >> We'll take questions about that. Well, the only thing I noticed just because of the it's the way the calendar goes year to year is that it's on Memorial graduation on Memorial weekend and that just kind of jacks up prices for airfares and things that people want

104to come in. I don't think there's any chance of we would consider moving graduation to 22nd and when seniors are out. >> Yeah. >> I mean that that's just off the top of my head. Um some schools do that um graduate a little bit earlier but >> I mean our seniors will be done but this >> I don't know if that's talked about it not because of the flights but we just talked about had seniors were out that last week and um I would feel better having just kind of run that by the committee at the high school before we commit to it. And so if that was something like um you want to hold off on approving the calendar or approve it uh pending uh 22nd graduation date do something like that or we

105could wait and approve it in March. I just want to give people enough head heads up. So I would suggest we if we approve it with the option of changing graduation date. So the start and end date of all school and all everything else stay same but the option of changing graduation based on the calendar. >> I I don't know if you know the high high school faculty would you know have a coronary you know the idea. We haven't done that before. So that would certainly be something that you could ask them. If they say, "Oh gosh, that would really create a big problem for them." I don't understand. It's just that you know and and in the years coming is what is it every four years this is going to go away. I think

106>> but this is I just noticed it for this for next year. >> Yeah, I think it's a question worth asking question to bring it back. >> I just want to ask again about the parent teach conferences schedule. Those are you know the teachers do the conferences in the evening time, right? Um, I'm just wanting to make sure that like teachers are able to get input on the structure of conferences, how it's working. Um, also like boy, would it be nice if they had birthday after that? I mean, that's selfishly me saying like, my gosh, that's a lot of work for three days and they still have to come back on a on a Thursday. But, you know, obviously the staff have approved this, but just kind of this is the only opportunity that parent

107conferences come across our our ability to have a conversation with and um just didn't know just a mut I'm 10 minutes. >> I I do you have 10 minutes in front of be really slow and methodical. I actually I think that when we do discuss the for the following year when we talk about moving it up two more weeks that those things will also be part of our surveying of staff like is this in the right place? Is this the right way to do it? Is this the right time? Um and so we didn't touch any of those things this year for the purpose again of simplicity. Um, but I I I do think if we move up two weeks, you know, and suddenly we're ending in the second week of May, we should talk

108to staff like, hey, do we have the right number of breaks in here? Do we want to how do we want to do this? Do we need to look at time here or time there differently than the way we are? And then, um, the board needs to know, you know, if you're like, you know what, we would like to do we'd like to see add five days of school. Well, then that's 70 to $75,000 a day. So yeah, we can do that, but you need that's what it's going to take to do that. And I think those discussions come up in the next the next iteration. Anything else? Anyone? Then I I'll put forward the motion to approve the 262 calendar with the option of changing graduation date up a week or not depending on

109the calendar committee and staff. I'll second that motion and a second. Any more discussion? >> I >> motion carries with that one thing to check out. Yes. All right. from the board. Anything you've been involved in that you should report on, want to share. I've been going to lots of basketball games. [laughter] I'm almost done and then back into the regular cycle. >> Um, both. So um Manazu Cortez was not allowed to break off from San Juan Boseis to form its own cave. So that I I feel like it's now dead. I you know I'm just like is there more that could come? Um the Boseies meeting is next week. I will not be able to be in attendance to that. I've informed them already about that. Um, there's an off chance that I could

110try to get on online, but it's very unlikely that I'd be able to do that. So, just wanted to let you guys know. >> Do we have an alter? [laughter] >> I have since >> Oh, and I was nominated for vice president to which I declined. So, like, what did such a great job? And I was like, no. They're like, we should keep it in Archel. So that's my question. >> So do we need our our alternate to attend for you? >> I mean I have the agenda. A lot of it is related to voices evaluation. Um Rick I don't know if you have an opinion of I don't see a lot of um high leverage voting matters that you know would impact our discipline in any way. Um, you know, I will again remind

111them if I get feedback that was like, hey, you could really be used or needed, I will relay that out to you. But at this point, I don't think that it's um a necessity. >> The only issue, my past experience is sometimes patient have a little trouble getting we don't have someone there. They may or may not act. They have to have five show >> expecting any other absences and I'll let you know guys on that guys. [laughter] >> But yeah, if they need someone for a quorum, you [laughter] you're that guy. >> You're that guy. >> Yeah. Yeah. I can't hit that. We have to stop talking. >> Anything else to share? >> Um, no. I mean, the only thing that I work on is the athletic advisory. We're still trying to we've had

112two meetings now. We're working on getting everybody on board just by making assignments. So, we're trying to establish, you know, everybody's duty is to help facilitate our athletic program. You got a good crew of people involved, getting everybody going the right direction, same direction. >> Good. You got you got that all started. So, yeah. have anything? I don't have anything other than to say any casual feedback I've gotten or little bits you pick up from social media is uh I think the public appreciates the process we went through selecting the site appreciates the amount of input and the depth that everybody here in making that choice and I you know every everyone didn't get exactly what they want but I think everyone felt like it was a thorough and fair process at least the feedback

113I was able to gather. So, >> well, I'd offer that we've made a couple of presentations the last few weeks and it's been very positive and same for the most part the same comments that whether they like the decision we made or not, they appreciate the effort when it's making that decision and the transparency of that. And so far, everyone I've talked to said, "I can get behind this and help, you know, push us through." So, >> yeah. Very good. >> All right. That's that's all we have, I think. Anything from you here? >> I just wanted to use all three minutes. [laughter] >> She's gonna wave the bed. >> Um, no, just a little bit more about Boseies. We've started to look at alternative funding structures now that we know that Mazuma Cortez is

114staying. They did go through the repeal. They tried to appeal the response. Susanna Cordova, who's the commissioner of education, denied that appeal. Uh they will likely appeal again and this will just be an ongoing I don't know what new information but there is no mechanism to stop them from appealing. So unless that board has changed its position or now that Tom has moved on and Eddie Ramirez, new superintendent, till he decides he wants to let it go, that this could be an ongoing thing. There's nothing that's changed significantly that would change the outcome other than us having to wait for the deliberation and wait for CD to tell us. Um the models that we're looking at for changing the funding Boseies, I think I've t spoken about this in the past. Boseies has a very

115static model by which we contribute as a member and we're trying to make that more dynamic so it reflects the actual uh increases that the state gives to per pupil funding so that could really pass through to BOSI. So last year we were faced for a moment where uh BOSI said to us and we're going to need 10% more money which is really difficult to plan for and a lot to ask and so Royce is good. she heard our feedback. Instead, we suggested that we pursue a model that just allows dollars to trickle in as we get which is typically along the rate of inflation. So, that's our that's our big work that's going on there. That model will either be based on total enrollment or by uh special education enrollment. um if it ends

116up being by special education enrollment, we're currently sitting a few percent points below most other districts as far as identification. And so that could work in our favor financially this year. Um if they do it based on enrollment, just overall enrollment, um we'll as everyone's enrollment, you know, decreases, we be paying theoretically that amount would go down too. And so would both. So there's some problems with that, but we're working on it. I'm also just working with Bill Pagosa right now and the architects on the the plan. We've met with some CT folks and that's progressing nicely right now. But more to share probably in March or April. Very good. All right. Nothing. Nothing. Anyone? >> Boom. >> Coach, right? Don't tell me about