LPSD Board Meeting 08-16-21

001to view this meeting's presentation documents please access board docs the link to the board docs website can be found via the d38 website on www.lewispalmer.org on the board of education meetings webpage to view the live stream video of this meeting please go to the lewis palmer school district 38 youtube page uh if you guys don't mind i'll go ahead and lead us in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all this wood would you uh do the roll call yes miss phillips here mr taylor here miss f church here and it's my understanding that mr schwartz is absent in excuse this evening and is mr claussen arriving just a bit later

002he had a personal emergency he had to take care of it he will get here as early as he can mr thank you i want to uh read the public comment guidelines and before i read that i'd like to apologize because i haven't followed these guidelines and it was an oversight on my part i apologize for it and i'll do better verb board policy b-e-d-h public participation at school board meetings all regular special meetings of the board shall be opened to the public because the board desires to hear the viewpoints of all citizens throughout the district and also needs to conduct its business in an orderly and efficient manner it shall schedule time during sunboard meetings for brief comments from residents and property owners of the district parents students and employees there is one time

003for public comment and it is limited to 30 minutes in an effort to allow all who wish to speak the amount of time dedicated to each speaker will be dependent on the number of people who sign up with the entire public comment period not exceeding 30 minutes if 10 or fewer people sign up each person will have three minutes to address the board the sign up sheet for public comments will be available at 5 pm in the learning center meeting room the board respects the rights of the public to speak on matters concerning the operation of the schools we believe that public comments that are critical district staff however often cause unnecessary harm to those employees to the education of our students as a result we prefer that members of the public share any criticisms

004of employees in writing with the superintendent who is responsible for supervising all staff and then involving the board as necessary if you choose instead to address a personal issue publicly please understand that the board does not endorse the comments of any speaker and reminds all to speak that they assume the risk of legal action by district employees in the event the affected employees believe that any comments about them violate legal standards lastly keep in mind we may have k-12 students in the audience please keep all comments comments appropriate to our audience i'd like to make a motion now to approve the agenda as presented any comments or questions hearing none miss phillips aye mr taylor aye ms f church aye thank you moving right along to section b of our uh agenda the recognition some

005comments i'd like to turn time on dr casey summers now thank you mr taylor and thank you all for being here we have a few special recognitions that we'd like to share with you all this evening the first unfortunately uh is honoring our former d38 public information officer miss julie stefan unfortunately is unable to attend this evening we wanted to recognize her for her service long tenured as it was to the district 38 community and wish her well in her future endeavors which will be a coordinator administrator with the tri links chamber of commerce so we look forward to continuing to uh leverage the partnership that service to the community with that recognition and we'll just keep moving to the second one which is mr michael mozingo mr moe are you in the yeah i

006missed your mode mr bo actually i'm not have you come forward here so our d38 teachers we know are fantastic in every way good to see you sir thanks for being here absolutely so we again just have fantastic educators both in present as well as in in retirement mode and that would be past pass mode yes absolutely mr mozingo who is officially retired has been awarded the prestigious colorado band masters association's hall of fame award and i believe it was 27 years of teaching in our district does that sound right to you okay uh that's very good and so this is an award that is handed to just one colorado band director every year or one inductee to the hall of fame every year um and i believe you were inducted was it over july

007july 15th yesterday uh the convention was july 15th excellent excellent so we are just uh wanting to uh pass along additional praise and recognition and uh thank you again for your long-term service and now you'll be remembered in the hall of fame do they have like a bust or like something like that i was just thinking about the nfl qualifying so i'm not sure how they they signify that if you just wanna the hall of fame uh the colorado band masters hall of fame is uh on display in the music building at the university of northern colorado so you can see everybody's picture wonderful and hopefully mine's a good one right well i think we do have a small expression of our recognition for you as well and mr moe i think congratulations and i

008think it's fair to say that you have affected hundreds of students including individuals who've gone on into music education and music performance so congratulations on a career that was time very very well spent invested in our kids thank you thanks [Applause] all right we have one more special recognition uh and this time it is a very special leader in our system so principal bridget o'connor please join us uh yes let's look closer [Music] so we are very uh blessed to have such wonderful school leaders in our system and there is a big organization called case which is commodore association of school executives which has a new award which specifically is designed to go to principals within their first three years it's called a rookie of the year principal of the year award and mrs o'connor

009who was nominated by one of her colleagues uh most fittingly has earned that award i think the the inaugural award uh to be considered the rookie although i don't know that we can call you rookie much longer for one more year but i think her commitment and investment into every single one of her students her staff and the broader lphs and e38 community it's something that we are just very grateful uh for her sacrifice and her tireless efforts in that regard she has a very nice glass uh plaque that i that she won't let me pass back to her uh thank you maybe i'll let ms phillips do that but we are just uh really honored and so proud of you and you just make leadership and learning and taking care of our kids something

010that we are just very very grateful for so thank you for all those efforts ms phillips anything else that you would like to add of course i think that you have set the bar high for the next rookie of the year so and we are really really fortunate to have this o'connor in our district i um i'm so grateful the last year for the tone and the culture that youth have set for the students at lewis palmer high school and hundreds of them are thriving under your care so thank you so much for all that you're contributing and i know that you are not one to be looking for awards or anything but this one is very well deserved so congratulations absolutely and we won't make you do the speech like you did at the

011case but i did just a quick story behind that so we were gathered all these different secondary school leaders were in uh the room and bridget went up and just made a fabulous speech and the award winner from cherry creek high school who was the principal of the year for the state of colorado i was like oh my gosh i have to follow virgin o'connor's speech and now and now we need to say something but you did a wonderful job representing our district one more time thank you appreciate that and i believe i'm turning it back over here at this point yes do we have a sign up list for public comments so so i will call carolyn betty getting phil resident thanks my name is let's make sure at um since 1990. i wish

012to speak about the masking policy the delta variant has a particular collection of mutations that despite proteins that have like projections of the virus they make it extremely effective in attaching the human cells and gaining injuries if the original focal strains were covered in syrup this variant is covered in ultracast drying with gorillas super close there are two recent publications which demonstrate that that the vital loads in the back of the pros and effective patients are a thousand times higher than the delta variant than a 3d experience this much higher load plus the ultra stickiness of the delta strings for adhering to human cells makes it remarkably more infectious than previous strains you may have heard of are not which is in a nutshell the number of people to which an infected person would be

013expected to transmit the virus early versions of the virus had 2 to 2.5 are not valued so what infectious person would attack two or more people on average delta has r naught of about eight in the infections of these worlds that's almost unheard of chickenpox and nieces are about all we have ever seen that spread that officially from human to human this changes the storyline completely from earlier it makes this search in many ways like a completely different endemic event there is another piece of publication out of singapore with data that suspected the viral loads of the throats of vaccinated persons who become infected with delta brightened at identical rates as in unvaccinated persons but only for the first few days after after five days or so the viral loads in the vaccinated person start

014to quickly drop whereas those in the unvaccinated person persist this key set of observations is important for several reasons relating to vaccinated persons serving as specters or spread this pandemic round two is primarily being observed in younger patients and in round one our children's hospitals are even already filling up for cold because of the delta viral dynamics it is much more capable of causing severe disease in the larger swath of the population you spew enough of this human pathogen of somebody without immunity and it's not going to end well this sets up very poorly from the beginning of the school year i asked the board to please reconsider requiring of all kids and staff at our schools this variant is much more infectious than what we dealt with last year please protect our teachers staff

015and students thank you thank you next step would be james howard president james howell district resident is inherent in the democratic way of life it's essential therefore that the study and discussion of controversial issues of an important place in education for citizenship in a free society students can develop in the free citizens with important loyalty to democracy only through the process of examining evidence fact and differing viewpoints through the exercise of freedom of thought moral choice and through the making of responsible decisions so in quoting from policy imb d38's current policy on teaching controversial issues there's a lot to like about how this policy frames the issue first rather than declaring some ideas to be forbidden or out of bounds or untouchable it connects factual discussion and the expression of diverse viewpoints directly to the

016idea of democracy secondly it links the necessity of discussing difficult topics with both political freedom and intellectual freedom finally it values informed loyalty to democracy over uninformed loyalty to an ideology d38 policy clearly values intellectual freedom more than school district resolutions that aim to punish or forbid the discussion of topics such as the role race plays in america's legal system or public policy it's also preferable to laws passed at the state level that declare some topics out of bounds and in the process trample on local control policy imb also says teachers can express their personal viewpoints and opinions but they also are obligated quote to be objective and impartially present the various sides of an issue in the last paragraph of policy imb i found this when controversial issues or controversial materials are used as

017part of the instructional program alternative learning activities shall be provided by the school when feasible at the request of a student or the student's parents or guardians in other words a family can always opt out of material they find objectionable kec which covers public complaints about instructional resources says this quoting the board shall not permit any individual or group to exercise censorship over instructional materials and library collections but recognizes that at times a re-evaluation of certain materials may be desirable it goes on to establish a process for handling complaints that begins with the person who objects filling out a formal complaint that documents the specific criticism of the material i hope the district sticks with this process for handling complaints i'm confident that these existing policies can deliver exceptional educational outcomes because i've seen them

018embodied in the teaching of mr ewig now retired my son took two ap classes from mr ewig on topics relative to history and government and i had the opportunity to discuss to discuss current events with mr ewig a number of times i always got a reading assignment i always learned something during our talks and i couldn't tell you one side of any issue he was on my son had the same experience so you have policies in place that elevate intellectual freedom and support your teachers i hope you stick with those policies they're good ones thank you jackie bergens mr president wrote it down this time hi my name is jackie burhans i live in woodmore within the district boundaries i'm a parent of a palmer ridge alumnus who went to lpsd from k through 12th

019grade first of all i really want to thank the district for your thoughtful response on crt diversity equity and inclusion it's one of the best responses i've ever seen on any subject and a striking difference from the meaningless resolution on sex education signed by a previous school board since crt is a legal theory unless d38 is converting itself into a law school instead of a k-12 public education district it is not applicable to our district it's merely an attempt to create false dissent and distract from the very real work of the district and this school board one of the areas of very real work is to deal with this next phase of covent 19 and the delta variant here i'm disappointed in the district's approach and as we see things get worse i think your

020approach is going to have to change i'm already seeing the changes in our local businesses getting and keeping the school open while keeping the students teachers staff and community members safe is one of your top short-term priorities we do not live in isolation from one another and what affects one affects the rest of us however you have many other short medium and long term challenges that you face as well and one that i want to highlight is the ongoing and recurring challenge of teacher pay the pandemic have ended lies severely for 18 months and made people think hard about what is truly important the priority of family and health has risen to the front of everyone's mind and we have seen people change careers retire and truly focus on work-life balance people ask themselves if

021what they are doing is worth it given the risks that they face and the reward they get both in terms of respect and income while it's nice to say that teachers do it for the outcome and not the income that doesn't mean they don't need and deserve a competitive salary when these things are out of bill balance we risk losing the people and programs that make d38 the outstanding district that it is today beyond the normal nutrition through retirement when teachers take jobs in the private sector or in another school district that pays them better and values their health and safety d38 loses when we cannot offer programs and courses that our students want to study because we can't hire new teachers due to sick pay and safety we all lose i wish you the

022best in solving these actual problems that the district faces and stand ready to help in any way that i can thank you thank you uh the next uh agenda item is board member comments uh tiffany could we start with you and then uh go to teresa myself sure um uh first of all i want to start off by saying uh welcome to a new school year um i am optimistic and um excited about the 2012 school year i want to congratulate our incoming 2022 uh graduating class um as always thank you for your comments and thank you for that process of democracy that we have that freedom to be able to express and and air your thoughts and your grievances and your ideas with uh your local representatives which is the school district gets us

023so thank you um i also wanted to say that i do feel a sense of excitement and i do feel a sense of motivation and i'm eager to roll up our sleeves and drive deeper into our uh our big rocks our five strategic plans that we've been talking about and our vision and governing through policy and i'm excited to be a part of that and i hope to continue to be a part of that i also want to welcome our new students and our new staff to our district that we have coming in and to all everybody for a new school year and um i hope everyone has an amazing and positive first day of school and i want to say thank you to dr summers and his leadership team as as we navigated last

024year this year and we didn't rest on our laurels we continue to push forward and we will continue to push forward i also wanted to remind my fellow board members that the colorado association of school boards has a regional meeting september 1st in pueblo and that's open to all of our school board directors um august 30th there's a deadline for resolutions for the casby delegate assembly and the delegate assembly is october 23rd in fort collins um and then our fall conference is december 2nd through 4th keep those dates on the back of your mind september 1st october 23rd and december 2nd through the 4th something that we i think we ran out of time this year but something we've talked about and i hope that we can maybe partner with another school district as an

025idea um the feedback we got from the last delegates of lady when we presented our resolution was to include um the standing resolution which is called sr7 um and standing resolution sr9 which says colorado's constitution acknowledges the diverse nature of colorado school districts and establishes vocally elected school boards that's with control of instruction as the guarantor of educational quality responsive to local needs and one of the feedback that we got from several school districts throughout the state was to amend that standing resolution to insert the colorado constitution article 4 section 15. and also to insert crs 22-32-109 and i can either forward that or i can read it aloud um basically it declares that the directors of each local district have she'll have the control of instruction of public schools of their respective districts and

026it sets forth the role of the board to determine the educational programs to be carried out carried on in the schools of the district and to prescribe the textbooks for any course of instruction the reason also that this is relevant is um this is the year that we'll start to see our academic standards and social studies dance drama theater arts music and visual arts are going to be revised this year at the state level for 2022 and it's required under house bill uh 2010-32 uh that was last year um to encourage all stakeholders to contribute comment about the current standards by emailing the department at any time during the revision process and that email is c-o-s-t-a-n-d it's basically it's colorado standards e.state.colorado.us so i would encourage everybody to um weigh in on your thoughts as

027they they revise those standards um thank you and i look forward good evening i uh before i forget i just want to acknowledge that um two of my family members were just here and so i don't we don't often have a chance to publicly thank our families but as board members we know that the time we put in and so um i think that they had to exit uh to do another to another family activity but um i know that they in large part were here because my son was a graduate who was palmer high school and he um very much valued the mentorship of mrs o'connor so um just one more not to you in terms of your honor to see me and it actually provides they didn't realize this and i didn't even

028know they were coming tonight but they just provided the excellent segway for me because i wanted to make a board comment on connections something i've been thinking about the last few months and especially since we had our off site on friday and i recently read that we are hardwired for connection we are hardwired for connection and the past year has illustrated just how vital many of those connections are especially for our young people and um given that i'd like to highlight a community event that is focused precisely on connecting people in meaningful ways and toward the end all of creating environment where our students can thrive and that is an event coming up this sunday this the social emotional wellness coalition of the chai lakes area is holding a launch event for their year um

029they have entitled their year to year of this story it is this sunday august 22nd from 4 to 7 p.m at lindblock park it is open to the public and it will highlight student voices and experiences here in lewis palmer school district 38 with the hope that opening conversations creating more space for listening and valuing varied experiences will ultimately lead to more connection greater understanding and more clarity on what has worked well for our students in this community and where there also may be opportunity for additional learning and experience everyone is invited and it's partnered with pipes peak suicide prevention nami the chamber of commerce commerce local businesses and actually a number of other entities which i didn't pull up students and families alike are all welcome there will be some student activities that we

030hope our young people will enjoy i'm grateful that we live in a community that values the overall health of each and every student i appreciate the effort that is being invested in the social emotional learning component of education here and we have much to be grateful for and i as one board member look forward to the year ahead thank you thank you teresa so thank you i concur with both of your comments and the excitement of the year i really like those comments about connections because that is core to our health so thank you very much i uh you may have kind of taken from some of the comments so far that we had an off-site with dr summers and his administration last friday and i thought it was excellent because we made some real

031connections and if you guys don't mind would you just stand let's start with amber amber is uh dr summers you're gonna have to help me with their titles because i'm not exactly sure i know what she does but i'm not sure what her title is our new assistant superintendent excellent excellent so next is kristen kristen stieber is our chief of human resources awesome and kitty kitty overton chief financial officer and mark mark belcher director of communication and atop and rick our veteran rick frampton executive director of student services perfect i wanted to take a moment just to acknowledge you because in our outside we talked a lot about a long-range comprehensive strategic plan which we've now been working on for going on two years and one of the things that we want to do is

032to ensure that our community has a chance to participate in uh how do we govern i guess is how do we govern that policy or that uh long-range strategic plan so we we think of policy and i appreciate the public office tonight that actually referred to policy because policy is the guiding principles that drive the behavior within our school system and so our administration under the guidance of dr summers will be focusing on different aspects of policy as it relates to the strategic plan and ensuring that our current policies are up to speed with that long-range comprehensive strategic plan for our school district those guiding principles or policies is where we want public feedback now we will have policy review and our current process is we have a first reading and then we'll have a

033second reading before we vote on any changes to the policy i encourage public review and comment and participation in that process it's important to us all that we represent through our guiding principles our policies the values of our community so that our school system becomes what we want it to be as a community besides it just being the best in the world right we want it to be a reflection of our values so having said that i also just want to express the reflection i've had these past few days of elementary children going to school some first grade you know it's not their first time at school first grade for them is a big deal and then i saw another little sign that a student had first time second grader and i just have to

034say that really touches me a lot when i see kids and their excitement to go into the classroom to meet their friends to meet their teachers it's a new year and new beginnings is such a good thing i i personally have a junior and a senior who are have went to school today got their id's and you know looked at their schedules and met with some friends and they seemed to have just as much excitement as the elementary kids so i have as a member of the board the same kind of excitement about the board of meeting this is the first one of this school year i think this is my fourth year on the board and i feel as energetic and as optimistic as i ever have and i think you know the work

035that casey and his administration did during the pandemic was amazing number one and number two is the board was able to work with casey and the administration to actually accomplish more progress on our long-range strategic plan and we could have just said oh let's just put everything off but we didn't so we continued to make progress even or in spite of the pandemic i wished that it was over unfortunately it's not i encourage you know everyone particularly families to make those choices that they have to make to protect the help of their family the administration of the school district has in place the same guidelines we were following all last year which is the el paso county health the colorado department of health guidelines they are ever changing throughout the year i i can't even

036remember we ever had two months of consistency they just change constantly which is to be expected the point i'm making is this we may have to change again and as we do the agility that the school system has already demonstrated in adapting to that change has been demonstrated they will continue to follow public health guidelines and at the same time try and keep our schools open for our children so you know i again i commend rick frampton because i know he was central at the help and dr summers as always i appreciate your leadership we're grateful i personally am grateful to have a superintendent that is able to communicate well you've got a new staff i'll try and be patient as we kind of go through this transition period with new people doing presentations and

037wanting those presentations to kind of look similar to what we are used to but knowing there's a learning curve for each one of you and i'm grateful for all of you being here and supporting dr summers and with that i'll turn the time to you thank you mr taylor thank you all board members for your comments this evening as well as our public comments earlier so i'm going to just keep my comments somewhat brief did not prepare a formal presentation with slides but i think the starting point is we love hearing the excitement the energy the enthusiasm and we're very excited to welcome everyone back or welcome everybody new into our district for the upcoming 21 22 school year uh certainly we hope that our staff had a restful relaxing summer while i appreciate all

038of the positive commentary we could not have done it without the entire team and all of our staff members who uh worked tirelessly uh through all of the ever changing uh processes as we went through last year i don't wanna necessarily flash back to all of that because i think we're all hoping for and aiming for something much more sustainable as we move into this upcoming year it's been really good to welcome many of our staff members back i just want to highlight a few things so that you have some context because we get to this point in the summer which i don't even know that we could use the term summer anymore but we really started our team's work started early july and we were very excited to welcome all of our principals back

039and have a wonderful professional learning experience together up at the case conference which we mentioned earlier that was kind of our first time together as a brand new team district leadership team including all of our executive leaders as well as our principals we followed that with an extended leadership team experience the week of august 2nd and that was an opportunity to be with our assistant principals our instructional coaches learning services student services teams and we look at very closely the continuum of all of our students from the preschool early childhood realm all the way through into the secondary level and beyond and we're talking a lot about every student every day what our vision is and how we're committing to preparing every student for future life success whether that be via college career just general

040life experience and making sure that our kids are leaving very capable and competent for whatever comes next we had an excellent new teacher orientation facilitated by multiple team members so we were really excited to have all of our new teachers with us for a couple of days at palmer ridge high school and then we were able to welcome all of our teachers and many of our support staff back to their schools their sites um just a few days ago on august 11th so again we're just thrilled about welcoming everybody on board mr taylor you already did a little bit of a profile of all of our executive leadership team one individual you did not have the chance to meet uh we hired him over the summer is mark mark is uh running our live streaming

041right now and doing a great job just uh nestling right in he's coming to us from uccs uh where he was uh in their communications team for several years and has uh background in news media uh and is really uh coming right along and uh being an excellent addition in addition to the rest of our executive leaders so we have been on a road show and i thought a little bit about maybe doing one more roadshow experience but i think i thought better but our team is already a little bit roadshow road showy out but really where we're going in that process number one is introducing us and a little bit about who we are and more importantly getting to the core of uh how we are championing our strategic plan this year so we

042do have five priorities uh and those priorities we are going to deep dive and we're going to look closely at every month over the course of the next five months and then we'll repeat that same process going into the second half of the year so we're excited tonight uh to dig a little bit deeper into priority one cultivate safe healthy and welcoming schools uh and mr rick frampton will be facilitating that process so i'm gonna let that presentation do a lot of the talking when we get to it um and that will also include some covert related updates based on where we are at this point in time uh as it's been alluded to so again just really looking forward to the year ahead thank you again board for your service your volunteering all of

043uh the time that you put into this uh it means a lot to every student every stakeholder in our system and looking forward to again moving forward with purpose and with passion and with an eye toward every student every day so thank you thank you dr summers our next agenda item is c1 schneider electric update we have william finish the program manager and robert davidson the project development manager from schneider electric to provide their presentation on an update of a contract that was approved back in june it's wonderful to see you all minus two um i hope you all have a wonderful summer and uh thank you for letting robert and i come in and thank you to dr summers for giving us the time to be able to provide a progress update for the

044board on how construction has gone this summer specifically with the security best jobs so i will open my presentation here to slideshow mode make sure this works and perfect so if you do recall from earlier this spring if there are any questions that come up during the presentation feel free to stop us we want to make sure this time is utilized as best as possible make sure we can answer all questions for the board especially as we move forward in continuing the remainder of our scope of work for our capital recovery project for the loose palmer school district pretty exciting as we have here on our our title slide our photo right here on the left is our sport for entrance vestibule being built over the summer throughout most of july and actually robert and

045i a little bit earlier about an hour and a half ago stopped by lewis palmer elementary and take a look at the beautiful red awning that's now on the top of there and seeing that process wrap up is really exciting and on the right side there you see dr silvers and i met up at the case conference a few weeks back we have a banner stand with some information lewis palmer that i'll actually be providing for the district uh shortly sometime in the following weeks but getting into the conversation in a brief agenda as we have presented in the past um going to take a look at a time of events since the project approval back in june and some progress photos some before afters at each of the three schools that have security vestibule

046installations we'll then be wrapping up with discussing the remaining scope of work a brief marketing communications update i'm glad marcus here go introduce myself to him after this and then wrap up with the construction timeline moving forward i also saw dr silver's quote on the school's instagram this morning i thought it was wonderful good job so let's get right into it so we had our project approval set on june 14th of 2021 and we moved right into things four days later with our construction kickoff meeting our constructor john stancliff has been really leading the charge this summer and getting all the work taken care of robert and i have really been impressed with the work that he's done especially working alongside leo dennis and bob throughout the summer so we really appreciate this work i

047wanted to give him a little shout out there security vestibule's breaking ground so really a week after the project was approved beginning that process getting the foundation set at all three sites being at bear creek prairie winds and louis palmer elementary throughout the following close to two months or so those vestibules are just about near completion and here we have on august 17th even today and sometime tomorrow we're going to have continued work to continue as that process moves forward so we'll share some before and after photos as well as touch base on a few other items i will say i have here the physical vestibules and walls are complete we'll show those photos there are some items that do need to get wrapped up um just cleaning up certain some of the schools with

048finishing up some of the caulking work that needs to be done the glass actually does need to be replaced with the three vestibules that work will get done over the next month or so it will be done at night it won't be interrupting the educational process um students and teachers will not be noticing the change it'll look like nothing really happened there we're just changing the actual glass that's being put in there with the glass that was required in the original design of the process so we've communicated directly with the security contractor on that and but regarding the actual vestibules they are put up the functionality is there they do look beautiful we're excited for the school year to begin with them um and yeah you'll see some photos here on that yes which glass

049is the vegetables themselves or the original so the vegetables that were installed they were installed with a tempered glass and they need to be replaced with a laminate glass that has that film that we were discussing throughout the spring that would increase that level effectively the fabricator made an error in a glass selection that has been identified let's get into some progress photos this is my favorite part um starting with prairie winds and i apologize for folks in the crowd if it's a little small to see there but if you haven't been over at that school yet you'll see this beautiful structure that has been erected right at the main building entrance there standing next to the blue pole so really of course a drastic difference to the before and after where visitors will be

050entering on the left side entrance and staff will be entering on the right side from the vestibule as well also at prairie winds if you'll walk through the main corridor there and you enter to the left to where the main classroom wing entrance is you'll of course see that that hall is now is now covered and blocked out so there is that additional wall that has been constructed and erected for that classroom wing entrance as well here over at bear creek on the left side this was during the spring when we took our original photos of that main reception area now that uh that another structure has been erected there on the afterwards covering the reception area so all again visitors will be entering on the left side one more angle of that just to

051show really where the entrance is and you will notice as that second door is there is a gap at the top there one of the items that will be added on over the next few weeks is getting a i believe a polycarbonate glass covering so that entire covering up top will be covered um of course preventing any sort of measures on that front but we've communicated with dennis leo and this will principle on that as well lewis palmer elementary my favorite one so we have built out here the beautiful storefront entrance with the red awning it looks wonderful we actually just saw the principal outside she was pulling weeds out of the ground making sure her grounds looked beautiful outside there it was wonderful to see how excited she was to start the school year

052but as you can see here at that entrance is fully covered and that vestibule is truly built in now the process remaining is cleaning up that area and making sure that it's ready for students here's another angle from the left side facing and the right side facing and i believe the pdf that might have been sent is has a few slight different photos but i'll be sure to send the more updated version i believe vicki and i were communicating on that front continuing at lewis palmer elementary if you recall not just the entrance vestibules but also for the interior walls um at inside the school as well robert you haven't been talking that much would you like to jump in and talk about the interior loss did my voice get around sure yeah at least

053elementary school several of the interior hallways did not have the final classroom at the end fully rolled down the ability to close the door and have that kind of security in the classroom so you can see here some pictures of the progress and the implementation process of closing those walls in and they're all wrapped up walls are in now doors are in some additional pictures of it so the after photos here really showing those walls are up fully covered up there they are complete just now cleaning up that process making sure it's ready for students to enter in so that is the final amount of the best field work is complete it is excited of course those small items will be taken care of we'll be able to provide dr silvers and his team a

054final timeline for when the remainder of that work should be taken care of again what we're expecting over the next month or so for that work to be done any questions on the on the progress photos and i want to again once more commend dr somers we had a conversation last week it's wonderful to see in two short months this work being done we're proud of the team that has been working so hard day and night on this process and we're excited to continue this work as we have quite a bit of remaining scope to any questions the update was really helpful i just have a comment i stopped by lewis palmer elementary school today um i'm no longer an lps mom but i guess i just can't get enough of it um i actually

055had to pick up a uh clarinet and the vestibule was it was interesting to see it was new and it was cool and it it's i think it'll do a great job of its intended purpose so thank you and if i didn't mention it earlier i i do want to commend specifically uh dennis coates and leo pereira for their hard work every single week being on the phone with our team the security contractors they have been so accessible and helpful so thank you again okay so let's jump into the remaining scope of work actually robert did you want to touch on this process yeah so our big focus this summer was to get those vestibules installed before the kids came back and we're excited to have those walls and doors there and you know all

056the structures there and kids can pass through them as expected and not interfere with the use of the building but the remainder of the work is basically everything else all the lighting the water the plug load controls the hvac replacements the hvac controls all the rest of that scope is there because the focus this summer was on the best fields so you can see really the majority only two line items were taken out and that was the security vestibules and then the walls there so we'll share the remaining timeline at a very high level in a few slides for what that will look like moving past that if you recall from our presentations earlier in the spring a big focus of ours being on the marketing communication side so you'll see some of the similar

057items that we shared and i'm going to actually share a few examples on the next few slides discussing how that marketing plan has already begun but once school does begin during the school year parents are dropping off students they're going to want to understand where is all this change coming from especially once we move past the vestibules but move into some of the lighting work that's going to happen the mechanical work as well on the automation side so we'll be working with the district as well as the new communications leader on putting together successful signage across several campuses that will be again attesting to the strategic vision of the district and what the project is accomplishing that post-project video as we discussed backed in in the spring will be completed next summer once the remaining

058scope of work is complete so you'll get already getting an idea of when we should be completing the remainder of that scope so a little while out from now but wanted to just retouch on it on the social media end i'll share a few screenshots that i took but besides some of the typical platforms like linkedin or instagram or facebook our team is also in the process of creating a more formal press release for lewis palmer school district we've been communicating with dr summers uh on what that would look like and i'll be communicating with the communications and communications director as well as we start the school year and how that associates itself with the project objectives um the article in the tribune progress through the pandemic i thought it was wonderfully written and it

059really attests to all the great work that was done last year and how that moves forward into this year as well and i know that all board members were associated with that uh description and writing lastly district events we touched on it briefly during the spring but our students at steam event it's underway it's it's up and running we're planning right now for early october if you recall this is an event where we're hoping to get louis palmer as really the main sponsored district as well as several other districts in el paso county to teach the importance of seam and stem learning experiences have speakers come in right now we're planned on hosting that at actually the discovery center in colorado springs so coordination for that event is underway we've been working with jess mcallister

060over at the district cte program she's been fantastic in connecting us with other folks to get in contact with um but an exciting event that we're hoping lewis palmer is is really a part of the face for so something that we will be providing another update on very soon do we have a date i believe october 8th but it's tentative so i'll let go and more confident but for now so just a screenshot if you haven't been able to jump on the district's website i want to commend rachel wardwell for doing a wonderful job working with her and her team on putting together a partnership web page on the district's website going through the process of developing this partnership with lewis palmer school district sharing the resources and documents to make sure that the community

061staff and faculty understand exactly what's involved in this comprehensive scope of work it's wonderfully done and we will be continuously updating it with photos um any sort of presentations like this one today and any other necessary information that's requested for that webpage i believe it's under the community tab on the district's web page there's a wonderful job check around that too far alongside that just a few screenshots of some district partnership social media content as i mentioned a few earlier i will continue to be providing those so a construction timeline moving forward again like i mentioned the vestibule and wall installation wrapping up as the summer is wrapping up as we enter into the fall actually would you like to touch on this sure yeah it's all good we're just gonna show the whole slide

062there yeah so we are moving into the next phase of development which means finalizing our automation engineering for having folks outside on site next week to go lift up ceiling panels and work out the final minutia for the engineering design and building automation system our mechanical installation was originally intended to work almost exclusively next year in the spring most of the work has to be done on heating systems and as you know in colorado the heating season starts early so our plan was to really get that done as soon as the weather was warm enough in the spring of 2022 however we're going to pull a little bit of that ahead uh the boiler lewis formula is it's on its last legs we want to make sure it is replaced in as timely fashion as

063possible we've already ordered the boiler itself and we're hoping to get that done earlier rather than later in the schedule but then really the building automation system installation itself will happen more in the spring as well because you can't take those systems down in the heart of the heating system at the same time we'll have the lighting and the water the plug controls all that stuff done starting in spring 2022 finishing up summer 2022 uh of course all done without interrupting students so we're excited about the schedule and the next steps forward with implementation with the next phase of the project the long-term savings delivery uh the construction closeout the start of the measurement verification process uh at the end of summer 2022. start to see those savings one other piece i didn't mention earlier

064on the marketing communications if you recall from i believe maybe our second presentation to the board we spent some time speaking with several stakeholders across the district about how they feel is this investment of interested in deferred maintenance and upgrades to the security vestibules is it worth the investment for the district to consider it and we received a lot of feedback we shared that with the board we will be going back to those stakeholders and we plan on doing that as private as the construction progress is wrapping up and asking them do you feel like the difference has been made give us provide us that feedback because it is so important we want to ensure your voice is being heard again in hope of helping achieve several goals within the district's strategic vision any questions

065on the construction timeline moving forward the only question i have has has been any anything at all that has caused any delay are you so the boilers we would have loved to have gotten them started earlier uh material delays in the construction world right now are crazy so we would have loved uh on june 14th leo said hey i'm worried about the boiler can we get that going sooner but of course delays in lead times for equipment and make that a little bit more difficult the only other thing i would say that's been a delay has been with the glass itself right the the error in the fabrication that we'll mention that we'll be addressing uh has set us back a little bit because we would love to not have to do that right we'd

066love to already be in place right now fully but that's the only substantive delay thus far i would also mention we did think about that on the lighting end where a lot of the lighting has been procured early and will be stored in the basement of bear creek so once we do get to that work as it is a huge savings piece it's well it should already be here with the district we won't be procuring it at the time and that workshop starts we're trying to think ahead with anything that might happen we've identified some of the supply chain challenges for raw materials and to prevent any sort of schedule slipping in the spring we've already pre-procured the materials for the lighting so that won't be an issue is it fair to say that most

067of the lighting savings would occur during the winter months so we wouldn't really see majority of those savings until the following winter since they're being installed in the spring so the lighting savings will be heavily generated during the periods of greatest occupancy so not winter in like seasonal sense but when you're in the non-summer break since if that means so during the school year so we'll still there will still be savings they're all installed in the early spring between early spring and the end of the academic year when you see the initial savings yes that's very absolutely during that construction through those construction periods and that year to see grow those wonderful cash flows we share it back in the spring so they're in that winter 2022 installation piece for mechanicals but the hope is

068for like fall okay i have one last question that is i just don't remember the impact this might have on the air quality inside of our buildings can you address you know what all of this work what is that what impact it has on the internal air quality environment yeah so a good example of the improvements that are going to happen in indoor air quality are louis palmer high school some of the relief bands that provide proper building pressurization and ventilation uh we're at the end of their useful life and we're really struggling to provide a comfortable space those are all getting replaced on the older side of that building we're addressing some economizer making sure that the maximum amount of fresh air can be brought into the buildings without having negative effects on comfort

069you know in particular list bumper high school but in all of the buildings we're putting in brand new building automation systems and controls to make sure that everything functions the way that it's supposed to so any air dampers that have failed over the years they'll be part of the commissioning process right we install the controls to make sure they operate correctly we'll diagnose any of those deficiencies and remedy them so that the air is able to flow through and the maximum ventilation that you know kind of design level of fresh air is brought into the spaces as as effectively as possible with the given infrastructure so we're really trying to make the most of what's there everywhere and then in some places we're improving the equipment to to substantially improve it where more stuff was

070that this useful life and it made a lot of sense to make a change thank you that brought up another question um with the automation of those systems and the upgrade those systems does that require any new training by our staff for our staff so it will include some training and it's part of the project so we worked with leo and team before we selected the final product for this and he's very comfortable with the approach and i think it's a very user friendly approach previously the district had four different platforms that they were operating we're consolidating it down to two in the project so really it should be a net benefit from a training standpoint dr summers just uh pardon me just echoing what you've already heard and what you're seeing through this presentation

071the efficiency the diligence the um it also goes so far to say customer service around all of this we just are grateful for our partnership and look forward to all the next steps in front of us excellent thank you both very much thank you thank you our next agenda is support priority number one update i believe rick is going to lead us through this and before rick gets started on that dr summer could you help us bridge the uh strategic plan is one two three four five are that is that what the priority number means is that what it aligns to yes so what you will see as follows is a focus on priority one cultivating safe healthy involvement schools and i should have also made the connection uh our update from our schneider team

072uh was really a deeper dive into where we're at with our investments into a more physically secure campus so um rick and dennis are going to touch on a little bit thank you for also being here dennis uh are going to touch a little bit more on some of the other components that follow under that overarching uh priority number one so we're looking forward to them walking us through this thank you great thanks um it's actually quite nice being able to represent representatives priority one when we have such an efficient and capable like schneider electric it makes us champions of priority one look good so thank you for that um and we'll start with the number one key uh initiative under the priority of cultivating a safe healthy and welcoming schools starting with safe and

073we just heard a road wrap with the building security upgrades and the improved secure school features for all students and staff so that was really good one thing we did on august 4th is we had an opportunity to train all of our district administrators uh principals assistant principals and instructional coaches on crisis response and preparedness training mr coats here took the lead on that training so um anything you want to add to that training that you know i think a lot of our staff have already been through it with some reminders you know there's such a broad range between uh sometimes we've had some changes and levels so it was just a good we had reminder really good team a lot of very confident going into the year at that same time we did attendance

074and restaurants we started disciplined practices we're looking at how we're implementing our our discipline and attendance with kids who are struggling in school and coming up with ways that are going to be preventative in nature and helping kids learn from mistakes that they might make and move forward and we're also focusing on social emotional learning supports in partnership with parents and families we have a safety security team that's returning in almost its entirety you want to learn that this community group that focuses on social emotional learning is there a connection here i assume there is but i just want to ask yes yes there is um bridget o'connor who was here earlier is is on the board for the social emotional wellness coalition i attend those meetings and we're active participants in their meetings and

075we collaborate very closely with them and teresa are you on the committee as well i do attend those meetings i'm not on the stage thank you i just wanted to uh there's only one new name on that board but uh these guys have been hard at work including not just since they've come back in the last couple weeks but with my team with over that besides that 120 over 120 years of law enforcement experience they've attended fbi training over the summer we've trained with the el paso county sheriff's office we've done training with monument police department and that was on their own dime in their own time so i want to give that's a great group of guys we're very fortunate to have that we do have a new sro for louis vuitton deputy weeds

076bennett lewis palmer and going into his second year and deputy adkisson will be uh first year with district 38 at palmer ridge but he has been an sro for several years in district 49 and of no i believe both of those are e38 graduates is that correct that is and i didn't even know that until recently i believe it was kind of unique because it surprised me when i heard tiffany atkinson talking about graduating with mrs o'connor's brother so when i as soon as i heard that i hadn't met him yet but as soon as i heard that i knew that he would have a tie and this would be more than just a job potato so that's awesome if i may just add some context based on what you just asked mr taylor a

077few minutes ago but um because mr schwartz and i are also associated with the skull one and in previous conversations over the last couple years much like the social emotional wellness components of the community collaborate with the school district our local monument please can you list off some of the organizations that collaborate with you in terms of keeping our kids safe oh there's every department of human services we did i was fortunate enough to be asked to speak in an sro training this summer so dealing with fountain police department pueblo sheriff's office i believe manitou springs we were all collaborative and we had people from pueblo and el paso county uh mental health services that were there providing recommendations and contacts and uh making sure that if there are situations that are above outside the

078parents want then it doesn't have to necessarily always happen in our walls and making sure that our families have the information that they need to help outside our walls also about safety and security is multi-passive and multi-layered across the district in our introduction we already touched on the administrative training that happened on august 4th one thing we didn't talk about in specificity is a complete suicide and risk assessment as well as that assessment that combined with the crisis response is a real comprehensive uh training for our administrators on how to identify students who might have additional needs and need support we're definitely taking a proactive approach to this one of the most important things we as school providers can do for students is develop relationships with them understand who they are as people and know

079what their what their day-to-day activities look like so when something's not right something's off we can easily pick up on that because we know the students well and we can address that very early on so we're working with all of our staff to understand how important those relationships are and then also provide any any interventions that are necessary so if a staff during our retreat but that that relationship is so key um i personally have that experience of knowing that um but this also does include partnership with parents and involving the parents in this as well okay oh absolutely absolutely we [Music] we want to be able to communicate any concerns we have with them we want to have an open door for them to communicate with something that's going on so we can support

080the students for not only academically but but from the whole child approach so that's essential and by the way academics too one of the things we've found is that if the students you know if their pet dog died the night before a big test um that's important for us to know those are important dynamics that we can adjust to individualized course so students can thrive when you say procedure i think we're taking numerous um steps to developing those relationships with parents whether it be back to school in my parent conferences labor communication between the teacher and parents and hopefully um our community is seeing that on a regular basis in all of our schools involving our kids in grade levels so that's that's the first step in making sure that we have this context and

081also i would hope that um you know if if we're building those relationships we've already we're also building that relationship with the family also so by no means we expect it to be a surprise and there are multiple times when the parents have asked us to take it a step beyond what they feel comfortable doing so the parents would definitely play a part and just if i can really touch to go back to in the crisis response just along with the vestibules is the grant the safer schools grant that we got is is it amping up and i've had several meetings with them too and we're we don't have an exact timeline of when that goes on but we will be the first school district in el paso county that will have that uh that

082instant access to we've talked about preventative measures in that's moving forward best case scenario october is probably more realistic it isn't any kind of a hold up isn't on our end it's the sheriff's office has to get everybody trained in order you know every deputy every dispatcher so it's more on their end right now i um but we're we're ready to go this school year yes uh another step we're going to take in ensuring that our social emotional wellness and curriculum and learning is in places we're going to be asking students and staff some perception surveys we're going to be asking questions about school culture and climate and we're going to use that information on a couple different levels the first of which is where we're going to take a look at how effective we

083are getting really needs a gift we're going to ask the question in the fall we'll ask those questions again in the spring and what we're looking for is some objective measures in which we can determine growth and success in our ability to meet the kids social emotional needs as well as their academic needs we're going to ask the staff some of the same questions about school culture and climate just to make sure that we have all those perceptions available to us and what we're hoping to do is identify those schools that are doing it exceptionally well and they have really strong responses in culture and climate try to identify which which factors are successful so we can we can broaden those on outside of that individual school across the district and if we also identify

084some gaps that need to be addressed we can be aware of that quickly the second aspect of the student surveys if there is some unique needs are coming out we can respond very quickly and identify students who might need additional resources or support parental and there will still be parental oversight that's correct yeah absolutely uh we'll be able to share the results with parents um this is different this is different than the same school questionnaire that we've been asked to participate in by this at the state level we were actually asked to do that questionnaire for this year that we've declined this is a survey that we have full control over this is a survey that's more about school climate and addresses school climate issues and how students are feeling about connecting with adults and

085the climate of their classroom if parents want to see the questions we'll make those available to them if they want to see the results we can make that available to them and if there's any discomfort whether students participate which participants okay i hope this last slide is where i'm coded safety protocols i hope this is the last time we ever have to talk about this in this meeting um but i just want to point out that we have been following both cargo department of health environment and el paso county public health's requirements and guidelines very closely we're noticing them changing about every other week so we're having an update on the third of august and then another one on the 15th of august so they're definitely coming out at a fairly quick pace as of

086right now regarding mass requirements um the public health order 2038 is saying they are not required so louis palmer school district is not requiring masks but we are encouraging them for all students staff and visitors inside school buildings they are required on buses per federal law the cdc has offered an order in which we must follow that for all public transportation that the massive arm required and one of our goals and one of our primary focuses is we want to provide us live and welcoming environment for any student who chooses to wear a house or chooses not to wear a mask and that's the focus of ours is to not set folks apart or have students feel like they're uncomfortable if wearing a mask is a cheap choice to make and vice versa where if

087a child chooses not to wear a mask they're they're not really an environment where they feel pressure to do so if a student does test positive or staff or anybody else in their schools we are still going to follow the guidelines in which there's a 10-day isolation period required for anybody to test positive our mantra for this school year is we want those who are sick to stay home and those who are unwell to stay in school and that's the next piece of this which is quarantined practices we want to keep our well students in school to the greatest extent possible so we will continue to contact trace a close contact is considered a person who is in the vicinity of three feet or less for more than 15 minutes of a positive individual but

088we are not as a school district going to be doing the quantities in isolation if there's a need for a quarantine we'll be working closely with the el paso county department of public health and they will um actually be doing the quarantine um on our behalf when it's necessary so we're going to be working much closer with them than what we did in the past year the intent really is to keep kids spaced out beyond that three foot radius so even though uh positive persons in our schools the impact on quarantine is is there is there's still a guideline with regard to number of cases that define an outbreak yeah there is what is that right now it's five so if you have five or more students with within a class or a cohort that

089would be considered and defined as an outbreak and that's up from last year which is very nice i think that's going to be very helpful for us so we're not defending outbreaks quite as quickly one thing we are going to be doing is tracking very closely though if we do know uh if we are notified of a positive case in any of our classrooms or schools and we identify additional cases we will work closely with the department to identify an appropriate response to that to try and mitigate any spread as well as encouraging el paso county health order are you also um are we retaining distance or any what are the distance protocols in the classrooms right now three feet is is the distance that we consider in close contact so we're taking as many

090preventative measures as we can to keep that three foot distance to follow that to the basics that possible we're very pleased because last year it was six feet and six feet distance is almost impossible to maintain a classroom setting but three feet is much easier to manage can you speak to how how you guide each of the schools physically is it the principal or the nurse or how is it that these ever-changing rules are you know communicated and administered in all the different sites well we have regular meetings with our principals and oftentimes well i i can say every single agenda item from the last light year and a half this has been at the forefront of our agenda so these conversations are occurring regularly it gives our principals an opportunity to share feedback with

091us to make sure we have to figure out the pulse on what's happening in each of our schools i meet with our nurses regularly the nurses are part of the student support team and i'm meeting with them quite frequently last year was is weekly at times i've already met within this school year in preparation so they're fully aware of the guidelines and practices as are the principles and it's moving from the principal and faculty meetings down into the buildings that way and then perhaps conversely uh how often do you meet with el paso or public health is that monthly or weekly right now they they have a coordinator meeting it's every other week right now on friday so that's been the pace in which they're going to continue until there's a change in need and

092if they need to have them offered coffee they'll schedule the other thing that corresponds to that is monthly sometimes twice a month meetings with other superintendents from other districts so we often are sharing with each other where we currently are in relationship to adherence to guidelines and different protocols that are being implemented across the area so while we aren't necessarily always locked up in kingdoms generally speaking we're pretty much uh in alignment with how we're making sense of all about them that means just the school the superintendent just knows the public are regular participants in that meeting so we we do request in addition to the public health employees themselves we often have el paso county attorney diana may on those calls oftentimes we have susan whelan who is the director of public health in

093el paso county and other school-based representatives that work really closely with us so that has been something that i i don't know that it will be as regular we had it last year but anytime we need some additional clarification we're uh usually able to request that uh those communication channels going so dr summers just let me ask this question because uh all school districts didn't respond the same last year i don't anticipate that they necessarily would respond identically this year so the purpose of this meeting is a to make sure that we are aware of any changes that are being made at the el paso county health level i can tell you just in the past two weeks the initial guidelines that we received early august were modified two or three different times that we

094just received again this past friday so it's an opportunity if nothing else to make sure that we are asking questions of our partners there and secondly while we aren't necessarily in a position where we are doing everything the same it is really beneficial to hear the thinking and hear some of the different what's worked or what hasn't there's been a couple of districts that have welcomed students back earlier so it's always a point of note to say well how is whatever you're doing actually going and you'd be surprised even though on the surface there may be you know general adherence to protocols if you dig deeper you get different interpretations different nuances um so if nothing else it just is you know with 15 different districts it's helpful to hear how different folks are approaching

095different needs that may be there and understanding that we aren't all the same that's not an expectation ever but it is it's helpful to at least reference where we situate because we're all dealing with similar things at the end of the day but all the school districts are following the cpeg and el paso the requirements are the non-negotiables the within the guidance there is certainly different room for interpretation so our position continues to be working within those guidelines uh but yes certainly there will be some unique features of how we're interpreting and how we're implementing but in terms of the actual requirements we understand what the have twos are and if you'll tell me once again what's the institute of one team arts what again this year every student every day every student every day

096so that's your guiding principle in this effort coming back to what rick mentioned at the beginning keeping well students and staff at school at work and if they're sick they need to get better and i think the best way for us to combat the spread right now is to do the very best we can and everybody has a part to play in keeping any illness away from our school buildings on an advocacy level uh school directors parents educators um students have that freedom and should reach out and advocate to our healthcare art healthcare our department of health uh officials susan wheeler for example and they have their their what their email addresses are on their website so advocacy um on behalf of your own students and our school districts also i encourage everybody to do

097that excellent anything else thank you very much our next agenda item is financial planning analysis with kitty overton first first time review yeah so you've all had a chance to look at the um july financial reports that are in your board packet were there any questions or comments on this tonight well if you don't mind i would like to focus do you have a slice can you pull up the attendance the district enrollment i just want to make sure i'm understanding that properly thank you so the columns under 20 21-22 there's two columns the first one says previous year first day count and then the second one says previous year october count so to be clear the first day count was around august whatever that day was and the october count is what drives overseas

098so last year it was 64.94 in october october count and i think on the far right and not forest right but the first yellow call on the right shows that this year we're up 217 students from the october account last year at 67.02 is that accurate they set the numbers as reported and we're excited that they're going up just a quick cash i think change from last year on the first day not the october countdown so there's the 6702 the 64.85 i was tracking very closely there mr taylor so only word of caution i would reference in relationship to this parent report is we are still and especially at this time of year we see a lot of movement in and some movement out as we're nearing and as we're really the first couple of

099weeks of school we don't really completely have a great sense of the official number until probably beginning of september because there are students that we just don't know yet maybe who have moved um several families will notify us sometimes we just don't know until we're looking at a roster and we expect a student show to show up and they may not the other thing is obviously we continue to have more and more students enrolling as we get closer to the beginning of the school year so we've actually seen a very significant update in the past couple of weeks what day is our first day august 18th august 8th wednesday this coming wednesday so we will have an update in the future that will have august 18th as our first day of school the other question

100that i have is what number do we have in the budget the budgeted number which include that i have here which includes monument academy and the transition program is 62.74 so and i just want to check my math with yours uh kitty the projection yeah you're right on was 6274 obviously you can that wasn't based on a projection of 160 homeschool enrichment academy students we are not um really approaching that number at this point in time so you see a delta there and then when you break out half the kindergarten slots uh transitions program as well as cpp or preschool obviously we have to make sure we're tracking those closely because not all of those students are full-time funded students so we just have to keep that fte right now in perspective they it actually

101raises two questions so it's 400 students does that affect staffing are we going to be short-handed for our teachers classrooms well we are short right now that's partly due to the fact that we do not have all open positions uh full so that's one variable i can tell you that by and large at least at the elementary level we are mostly fully staffed in terms of classroom teachers being in a position to accommodate all of the students that are assigned to specific home rooms if you will we are still short some of our special education staff including paraprofessionals i think we are short at least in mental health professional one maybe two and we are short right now in preschool and we are short right now in world language at the high school level and

102is there any others that i'm missing kristen that you know off the top of your head so is it's been a hard hiring uh season from that standpoint um we also are still short a few positions in food service transportation uh and a few other support staff positions so it is um as as challenging of a staffing year as i think we've experienced at the beginning of the year um and certainly we have uh more positions that we would love to be able to fill yeah it's one thing to have the extra red proceeds but it's service kids first indeed uh i would just add that i'm looking forward to you know getting more visibility into our our salary structure and finding you know some standards there if you will so that we can actually

103do a real comparison with other histories etc so i'm excited about that work that we'll see in the future i just wanted to touch base here with the fact that this is a double-edged sword you know 400 extra students there's a need to support that regardless of whatever the ppor all right any other questions on this tip yeah real quick i'm missing something because i see 217 of the change versus 400 so that's coming from the budget it's 270 right for 62.74 275. okay following i was good keeping in mind some of those students being monument academy um i i can tell you in most places we were fairly on schedule with the general staffing allocations related to mostly elementary schools for the most part middle high school's a little bit trickier just in terms

104of how you count sections and where you're counting grade level distribution as a whole yes we are up from where we were that change from last year we are definitely already beginning to look closer at what we can anticipate in terms of uh increase in revenue and what implications that may have as that october count becomes more solidified so i think those are conversations that we will look forward to having with you all as we get closer to that time so when school starts um i can look back at what last year showed but are we seeing an increase in any particular grade level or building level so i think bear creek is the the first uh that you're seeing there definitely we were projecting fewer kindergartners when we were in the spring so coming

105in at 93 we did add a kindergarten section at bear creek louis palmer elementary pretty stable overall same with palmer lake uh prairie winds again kilmer middle as i mentioned uh there's there's just some natural fluctuations so it and then you do see a lot of growth in the high school so high school typically ends up you receive both um some in truck district uh appeals or transfers based on families making decisions as the spring and summer goes along maybe they had attended and being at one of the sites and then have requested to go elsewhere so you're seeing fairly consistent numbers uh in terms of incoming freshmen across the board and you can also see you know some of those bigger classes palmer ridge specifically junior and senior year definitely a few more students

106there compared to lowe's palmer high school so yeah it's all kind of a blend of different ways of looking at it but something that we we have a lot of conversations with each of the principals uh around these numbers and how we're tracking it to make sure that we are appropriately staffed one more question did monument academy go to 11th grade not yet they are currently at the 9th and 10th grade level you can see the number of 10th graders a little bit up from where they were last year with their 9th grade class i believe that was a class of 25 so a few more 10th graders at this time and a bigger ninth grade class than what they had started with the year before so that is a group that will continue to

107roll up year over year you are seeing some increase in numbers at both their elementary because they have additional space or seats available if you will as well as some of the middle school numbers also trending upward if we look across the all of the locations we're well within capacity and within meaning we have adequate capacity yes every school except palmer ridge high school which we're exceeding capacity and i know we've had some conversation about this most recently going back to some of our work with the grace bus steering committee i would want us to at some point and i think we can look into this as we kick off a year and go a little bit further into the fall make sure that we are very clear about program capacity and what the true

108definition of that is and i'll just give you an example uh while palmer ridge's program capacity is currently set at 1200 i can tell you that there are still some classrooms that are not inhabited during the day meaning we do have some flexibility in terms of where students may be assigned or teachers are assigned to be able to teach so it does depend to some extent the definition of what we mean by that i think it's worth a review of that i know it's probably been some years since we've uh talked about that concept and what it means uh in terms of full capacity utilization that'll obviously be very helpful as we [Music] well july is kind of hard for me to address how are you doing in terms of recording are you getting comfortable

109with we still need to finish up um we're just getting started really with the hard work of the audit of last year's financials um once we run the august payroll we'll be able to finally start finalizing numbers and making those final adjustments and get things over to the audit committee that will be reviewing them for our fiscal year end of 21. excellent uh the change that you've made payroll here i'm happy to announce that we've taken steps to align our pay schedules more closely to how we budget for the fiscal year so what that means for our teaching staff and school-based staff typically historically their calendar their pay schedule ran from september through august a 12-month cycle we're going to back that up one month so that their pay cycle will run from august through

110july what this means for our teachers this year all school-based staff i keep saying teachers but it is all school-based staff who don't work a year-round calendar um they will be paid out their final payment for the fiscal year and the school year that just ended they'll be receiving their final payout on that contract in august and then they will start their new contract in august so they will actually receive two payments in august that will set them on that new pay schedule what this means for our year-round staff is that um we will be resetting their pay schedule to correspond exactly to the fiscal year meaning they will be paid from july through june 30th and the benefit to them this year will be that their pay raises will be [Music] retroactive to july

1111st so at the end of the fiscal year we have traditionally had a two-month accrual at the end of june this is correct to accommodate the payment schedule that occurs in so that the expenditures for that payroll fall in the previous fiscal year as a cost right so the cost for the fiscal year ending next june the year we're in won't change the difference will be based on what i'm understanding is instead of an accrual of two months next june 30th it'll be one month yes that is correct for school-based um personnel year-round personnel we don't need to do that because they are paying them in the proper area so a new employee they start in july or august they don't get paid apparently until september that is right so new incoming employees um will

112no longer have to wait almost six to eight weeks to get their first page yes so we're very excited about that i appreciate the support of the board on that we're happy to do that i do want to point out though that even though it doesn't impact the pnl and it does impact the balance sheet at the accrual change it does have an impact on our reserves so we need to be looking at our reserves carefully yeah we take a big hit to the cash balance right up front um where we might see that over time is when people leave the district they won't be paid out as i understand the nuances of the accounting of it but i think the board doesn't need to recognize that the change in the payroll cycle does have

113an impact on our cash reserves and ultimately could have a positive impact on the district overall given that i don't know if that's an incentive for new hires to receive a paycheck earlier is that different from other districts or have we been doing it differently we've heard some trends about other districts having already made such shifts or were already on a similar pay schedule i know why field district did it a couple of years ago and i think district 20 did as well [Music] if it's a person who's retiring and so they won't be receiving especially this first year they might have been thinking they were going to receive payment through august that won't change they'll still receive that final payment and it's still for the same contracted years of service for months of service

114if you will we will be sending out additional communication to employees that further explains how this impacts each individual employee depending on their role in the district well i would just add that essentially for the fiscal year july 2021 to june of 2020 or better instead the payroll year from august 1st to july 31st and next year there's 13 payrolls for certain clubs the 13th pay is from last year though yes but one is for last contracted year and one is for the new contract i totally understand that but if i'm a recipient i'm getting right here yes that is correct and if you're a new employee you're getting paid a month earlier than you would have otherwise right so those are not benefits to be ignored in my mind because the district is reducing

115its reserves because we're trying to do everything we can for what our teachers so we can't offer permanent raises because we've got bpor restrictions and budgetary restrictions but through your good efforts and dr summer's good efforts you found a way to have a 13th yeah and it is good to point that out that it is just that one time one year only i understand it is not inconsequential so thank you both for figuring out how to do that and thank the board for you know [Music] what kind of so as you know or hopefully you know that we we have a flexible budgeting process that essentially we approve a budget in june based on the head count that is the pure guess and we're going to update the actual after we get the october count

116so hopefully you know an october time frame if not before thanksgiving will have a final approved budget and that we're just thinking of it as a flexible budget so that we don't have to continually report receipt variances based on head count right so we will want to see an update of that budgeting process as we move into september thank you i was just going to ask is there any any uh flags or celebrations or anything that we need to know about burning differences not at this point there sure aren't i did take a quick glimpse at last year's july financials just to kind of see where the financial reports came in this year and then very similar in terms of our receipts and our expenditures thank you very much thank you and welcome again our

117next agenda item is uh c4 consider a true intergovernmental agreement for the november 2nd 2021 coordinated election um i think you're gonna drive this or is dr summers i'm not sure this is all they do all right right i'm sorry it's good the iga basically lays out the the procedures the duties of the designated election official the county's responsibilities the district's responsibilities and it does quote a deposit amount at this time due september 3rd i believe completely reviewed by our legal counsel it's something that we sign and on september 3rd we have to do a fifty percent depositive which is under ten thousand and we paid the balance some time later but it basically is the agreement that allows us to participate in the election process for the two seats that are up in district

118one district three indeed and we encourage any of the public to want to to run to get the paperwork you can pick it up at miss wood's office and learn how to be nominated for a non-partisan role on the d-38 board of education yes so i make a motion to approve the intercom intergovernmental agreement with the el paso county board of county commissioners and the el paso county clerk and recorder concerning the conduct of the november 2nd 2021 coordinated election thereby agreeing to follow the provisions of the agreement and the election code appointing vicki wood as the district's designated election official and authorizing the board president to execute the agreement any comments or questions what would you call the vote ms phillips aye mr taylor aye ms f church hi thank you i'd like to

119recommend a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented a second questions comments concerns we have a vote miss phillips aye mr taylor ms f church formal motion not necessary but i'm going to go ahead and adjourn this meeting until our next regular board meeting our next work session is is it on the calendar for september what's the date i don't recall 7 7 a tuesday right tuesday at 9 30 a.m excellent so this meeting is an hour thank you all thank you