001[Music] Heat up here. [Music] Good evening everybody. Welcome to the school board meeting for Tuesday, July 8th, 2025 for the De Moine public schools to order. It's really good to see all of you today. It's hot outside. It's cool inside. So, thanks for uh for addressing that. I think that was one of the things we talked about. It's you can breathe here. So, we're glad you're here. Uh, Miss Rios, would you take the role, please? Miss Alonso here. Miss Compos here. Mr. Dixs here. Miss Knox here. Miss Marana here. Dr. Mayberry Mace here. Miss Norris here. We have And I should note Dr. Roberts is online. Hello Dr. Roberts. Good evening board. Good evening community. It's good to join you all. The first item of business is approval of the agenda. May I have a
002motion and a second to approve the agenda? Marron. So moved. Dick. Second. We have a motion by Miss Marterano and a second by Mr. Dixs. Is there any discussion or questions? Board members, please cast your votes. The vote is approved. 620. Next. Uh seven to zero. I can count. Uh, next on the agenda is the public forum. Miss Alonzo, would you please introduce the public forum? We prov we provide speakers at the forum an opportunity to address the board for up to three minutes regarding items that are not on the board agenda and up to five minutes for an agenda item. If anyone wishes to speak during any portion of the business meeting, please email rosa.riosdmsschools.org. The same speaking protocols apply to all individuals who wish to address the board. Speakers will be called individually
003and we ask that they state their name and zip code prior to providing comments. Students and minors do not have to provide their addresses. Guests of the board are encouraged to speak to matters relating to the programs, services, and operations of DMPS. Please remember that the Iowa law prohibits us from discussing specific employees or their job performance. We ask all speakers to avoid references to personalities or character attacks as those types of comments do not contribute to the purpose for which this public forum exists. The use of inappropriate language will not be tolerated and individuals choosing to do so will be gled out of order and asked to excuse themselves from the premises or escorted out by district security. As a reme reminder to the board and public, the board will not engage in any
004discussion with public forum speakers as it is our obligation to discuss only matters posted in the public agenda for the sake of transparency and opportunity afforded to all community stakeholders. Matters requiring attention will receive appropriate staff and or board followup at a time after the meeting. Thanks for your participation. We appreciate your feedback and input. Mos, do we have any speakers? Yes. First up is R.J. Miller. Next is the Sickles family. Diana Sickles. Yeah. I'm Diana Sickles. We live at 101535th Street in De Moine. And I uh want to thank you all, superintendent and members of the board for allowing me to speak to you. Uh my husband Phil and I are returning to the board to update you on the scholarships we have funded for black social work work students at both the undergraduate
005and graduate level at Grand View University. The good news since our last presentation to the board number one scholarships were awarded at both the undergraduate and the graduate level during the 2324 academic year. A copy of the thank you letter we received from Aia Taylor, the undergraduate recipient, was given to you to show you how this scholarship has affected her life. Number two, we can continue to use these scholarships for black students specifically because Grand View University is a private institution which isn't affected by the public institution as the public institutions have been. And number three, we are very pleased that our initial request is being met and we thank you for the part you have played in it. Black social workers and therapists are desperately needed to work with blacks who feel the need
006for mental health assistance and are distrustful that white therapists cannot understand their issues. The need to continue to recruit promising students will continue. But our purpose today is based on increasing the amount of money in the scholarship funds so that more students can qualify for these scholarships. The current plan, which is a good one for qualifying students, is that once a person qualifies and is awarded the scholarship, that student, as long as they continue to qualify, will receive the scholarship year after year. Because the need is great, we have worked with the university to provide a donation system so that others who believe in this endeavor can in donate to and add funding so that more students can be awarded at the same time. Last year, Grand View provided a line in the donation link
007on their website for donations to the sickle scholarships. This is done by clicking on the donation link, typing in the name sickles, and donating as the donor wishes. Of course, this requires that you're looking for the sickle scholarship. A simpler donor possibility has been added. On the information sheet we gave you, a QR code has been added so that anyone with the information sheet could easily donate just by using the QR code. Our request today is this. We have given each of you four copies of this information sheet and hope you have three or four friends or colleagues who see the value of this program and will want to donate so that more students can be awarded scholarships. I have also sent you this information sheet by email so that you can make more copies
008as you need them. Phil and I will be doing our best to provide this opportunity to as many people as we can and we hope you will join us in this effort. So, thank you for your time and for your consideration of our request. Thank you. Next speaker is Britney Anne Rosenboom. Hello, my name is Britney Roseboom and I live in the 50316 um area code, zip code. Um, I'm here today to express some concerns about how staff at our school recently handled an issue. So, I'll try to keep it really short. My son has autism and ADHD. My daughter has DMD. These are really complex mental health issues and they take a lot to work with. I have a DHS history, well aware of it, and I've done a lot of work on myself
009as a mom. So, when we started going to the school that they were at last year, I was very communicative, very open, very, if you see something, say something to me. If there's concerns, bring me the concerns. I thought we were good. We built really good rapport. There was over a hundred emails back and forth, just conversations between me and multiple teachers. And we had an IEP meeting. And at this meeting, I asked about one of my kids cuz he's been having struggles with toileting issues. And I asked his teacher, "Are you seeing any of this?" I was told, "No." A week and a half later, DHS got a report that there were actually issues. No parent should have to go through this. I have worked hard for 5 years, rebuilding my family, doing therapy,
010doing all the things, getting all of the services. But yet, it was specifically said to DHS that um a lot of ugly things, but they said that they tried to communicate with me and they didn't. If you have a parent that's trying to be an active parent in this school system, I thought that's what you guys wanted. I'm trying to be. I want that. I can't have that if I have people lying to DHS about me because of my history. How many other parents go through this and don't have the guts to come tell you it's a systemic issue? I understand co was hard on everyone, but it's time to put a little bit more faith back in the people that have actually done the work. And they shouldn't lie. They shouldn't make things up.
011And I definitely shouldn't have a success worker making statements about me accepting help and have that turned around to appear as neglect. I hope you guys can do some sort of investigation or something because that should be looked into because again, how many other people are being lied on and don't speak the language, have a history but don't know how to defend themselves. It's part of fixing the district. So, I would just like some more systems be put in place where there's some sort of protocol, you have to attempt to conversate with the parents about issues before going to CPS, unless it's a very obvious abuse issue. Obviously, if a kid comes in and has like a black eye or something, I'm call them obviously. But for having accidents at school and you never picked
012up the phone to call me to come bring my kid clothes and then you throw me under the bus and tell DHS I'm not taking care of them. I don't understand. And I'm not the only one. So I just ask do something please. Thank you. Thank you. Those are all the speakers I have signed up for today. The next item on our agenda is district recognitions. Superintendent Roberts, are there any recognitions for today? Certainly, Madam Chair. Good evening, everyone. As we continue to bring forth recognitions at schoolboard meetings where we celebrate the successes and accomplishments of students and staff throughout the district. This evening I am pleased to share two recognitions that speaks volumes about the work that has been done in our schools and classrooms. As some of you may know a few weeks
013ago De Mo Public Schools was a co-host for the second year in a row of the national speech and debate tournament. This was a special year because it was the 100th edition of this prestigious event which was attended by close 7,000 students from 1500 schools across the country. The M public schools was well represented as 20 of our students representing East Lincoln North and Roosevelt high schools qualified for this year's national tournament. Tonight, board and community, it's an honor to recognize three individuals for their significant contributions to and their successes as this event. First, Principal Steve Schaer. Until last week, Principal Sha was the principal at Roosevelt High School and he has been a longtime leader in the speech and debate community and I must say a critical partner in De Moine hosting this national
014event. And with him tonight are two Roosevelt students who were finalists at this year's tournament. Again, to become a finalist in the national tournament is a true honor. First, Hadley Harvey finished fifth in the nation in the original oratory KG and Henry Godar is your national your national champion in pros. and positive because I'm sure you all are applauded board and community. These are truly outstanding accomplishments which contributed to Roosevelt being named one of a handful of high schools named a speech school of honor at this year's tournament amongst all of our other high schools in the entire country. We are very proud of these outstanding accomplishments and grateful to everyone at the M public schools who contributed to the success of hosting this major national event. At this time, I'd like to invite Steve
015Sherpaw along with both Henry and Hadley to the podium to share a little more about their experience and maybe Henry and Hadley will share with us a little bit about their award-winning work and maybe even what inspired it. Thank you, Dr. Roberts. And uh good evening to the board and to the community here tonight uh as you talk about some really important topics, but take a moment to celebrate uh the amazing accomplishment of all of those who were involved in hosting the 100th anniversary National Speech and Debate Tournament. uh your work in helping host it not only brings recognition to the students uh in this community, but also helps generate over $20 million of economic impact uh to greater central Iowa, which is something to be incredibly proud of. And I'm happy to report really
016positive uh reviews of our work uh of the students, coaches, and community here in central Iowa. And you should be excited to know that the national tournament's committed to coming back in the near future to central Iowa. Uh and so thank you to Dr. Roberts and the board for their commitment to helping host this in the future. But as Dr. Roberts said, De Mo Public Schools had 20 students who are among those who qualify to participate at the national tournament. And just by participating in the national tournament, that puts students in the top three to 5% of all students in the country. And for the national tournament, uh, as he said, 6,700 students, uh, from 1500 schools are in attendance, but there are over 4,000 schools that do speech and debate. So for Roosevelt to
017be honored as a school of honor puts them in top 40 schools in the nation for speech. And if being at nationals puts you in the top three to five percent, then being in the final round or being the national champion puts you in the top fraction of 1% of all students who do speech and debate. And so congratulations to Parker Klein, the head coach at Roosevelt High School, and all he's done the last three years to support the program and the dozens and hundreds of students who are a part of that program. But then obviously to Hadley and Henry uh who went above and beyond uh exceeding all expectations. Super proud of them and if you didn't get a chance to see their performances, they are uh chronicled online and I'm sure uh Phil
018Raider can get you those links. But I got to see both of them live and it was just uh breathtaking and remarkable. So I'd like to invite uh Hadley and Henry to share a few words with you as well. Hello everyone. Hello. My name is Hadley. Um, and I am a recent grad from Roosevelt High School and I was a finalist. So, I got fifth in the nation for original oratory. And original oratory is kind of like a TED talk where I basically get to talk for 10 minutes about whatever I want to. Um, and it has been such an amazing journey. So, I actually started speech and debate my freshman year of high school, but I started out as a debate kid. So, I competed in congressional debate and then at the end of
019my sophomore year, I decided to try original oratory, which is a speech event and I found that I was much better and I enjoyed it a lot more. So, I stuck with it for the next couple years and I got to the final stage. And the final stage was a really, really big goal of mine. It's kind of every speech and debate kid's dream because on the final stage, you're speaking in front of hundreds and hundreds of people. Um, and it's just such a beautiful moment to be able to share that with so many other kids who care about words and how impactful words can be. Um, and I love crafting my message and communicating what I want to communicate um, in an impactful and funny way because my speech is very humorous and it's
020been such an amazing journey and I couldn't have done it without the support of our coach Klene. Um, as well as just all the support that we've gotten from Mr. Shay Paul and in general people investing in us as kids and in our speech and debate program. And I want to take the time to really emphasize how that investment can pay off. I've not only gotten to fulfill a dream of mine to perform on the final stage, but I've also built such amazing leadership skills, speaking skills. I've been so much more confident being up here even now talking to all of you in the way that I am. And I think investing in those programs, not only at Roosevelt, but at all DMPS schools, and making it as accessible as possible is super, super vital.
021So, I want to thank you again for allowing me to speak up here, and I want to emphasize how impactful this has been on my life and hopefully on future kids. Hadley, you must you must tell us what your topic was. Okay, I will. And maybe even give us 30 seconds or something. Oh, I don't know about 30 seconds because if I give 30 seconds then it may not make sense cuz I start off with standup comedy because my speech is actually about how um laughter is often used to distract ourselves from the gravity of our social and political climate. So although it's very humorous, it's intentionally humorous. And so 30 seconds would be just me saying funny stuff. You may not get the actual meat of the speech, but I encourage you to watch
022it on YouTube. Thank you so much. Uh, hello. I am Henry Godar. I'm also a recent graduate from Roosevelt. And I was the national champion in pros reading, which is essentially taking a five-minute piece of pros from any way you like. It can be from a book or from a website or from an article and you interpret it how you would like adding character and blocking to the performance to enhance it and make it the most enjoyable. Uh, my piece was a monologue from the perspective of Clippy, the Microsoft assistant from the 90s and early 2000s, and his gripes with the modern-day techn technologial technological sphere, uh, with things such as like Alexa and Siri and how they have completely ruined how avatars and virtual assistants should be. Um, overall, I started speech and debate
023in sixth grade. I did public forum, which was a debate event. I did that through middle school. And when I went to high school, I decided to switch switch to speech because I just wasn't that good at public forum debate. I I have trouble hearing people a lot. I have a hearing implant. And so, a big part of public forum in a lot of debate events is getting information out as fast as you can without making sure it's clear and legible. So, I wasn't able to participate as well in those active one-on-one discussions. So I switched to speech where you can prepare stuff and it's more about you specifically rather than actively responding to others. I did a various interpretations uh including duo interpretation, humorous interpretation and program of interpretation before I did uh finally
024settle on pros for this last tournament. And um having the the coaching staff as well as de mo public schools as a whole was a big help. Uh both Mr. Klein and as well as the other people on the team would help. They would watch my speech and give me feedback. But even past the individual feedback, uh the supplemental events competition, which is what pros is in, was held at East High School. And uh I had Katon Danker and Samuel Juel, the uh Hoover and the Lincoln and East coaches respectively were there helping out. And every time a new breakground would come out when quarterfinals were released or so, they'd come up to me and be like, "Henry, did you make it?" And everyone there from De Mo public schools, especially from the East High
025School people that might have been done competing but stayed around were a big help. And I think uh in the Iowa sphere, the De Mo public schools speech and debate teams are kind of like a big family where they all know each other and they can all help each other out. And I think funding them is a very important thing because Iowa, we have a few big tournaments, but most of the big tournaments you have to go to places like Chicago and Omaha and further away places. And getting funding to allow for travel and hotel costs and judging costs, which aren't cheap these days, is vital to keeping this strong performance of a team alive. Because I know that both Roosevelt and schools more outside of that, like East and Lincoln and all of the
026other De Mo public schools have real shots in the next few years of not just becoming top 40 schools, but top 15, top 10, and becoming real powerhouses in the sphere. Thank you. Thank you so much. Congratulations, Madam Chair. [Applause] Madam Chair, if just really quick, um, would it be possible to hear from the two seniors what their postgraduate plans are? I would love for them to share. You said what? I did. Hello. Um, so I will be attending Harvard University and majoring in government and econ track. Uh, I will be attending Simpson College doing philosophy and legal studies also on the pre-law track. That's awesome. Congratulations, Henry and Hardley. sorry that I'm not there in person. Look forward to connecting with you all soon. Uh Madame Chair, that concludes this evening's uh district recognitions.
027And again, just as a reminder uh to everyone who's tuned in, um if you haven't already listened to the latest edition of the podcast that is fastly becoming the best educational podcast in the land, the Become Here Project or DMPS podcast, please be sure to download it. That concludes this evening's recognitions. Thank you, Dr. Roberts. We are now going to move on to our monitoring reports. Guardrails one uh first and uh the first thing we'll do and and I'm I'm going to say I just put uh Miss Murdero on the spot and asked if she'd be willing to help facilitate. So, thank you in advance uh for being willing to step up. Uh Miss Martano, do you want me to turn it over to you at this point? Okay, great. Thank you. All right. Good
028evening everyone. This evening we are looking at guardrail one which um focuses on our ELELLL students specifically or our students who are English learners and making sure that there are equitable opportunities for our students who are English learners. Uh the interim guard rail 1A that we are focusing on is the percentage of fourth grade students who are or who have been in ELLL programming meeting benchmark on fastbridge A reading um will increase and currently we are developing toward the target but we um are not yet meeting this target um it's very close um the target was 23% and we are at 22.7% % um the interim guard rail 1B is the percent of 9th grade students who are or have been in ELLL programming who have participated in central campus, central academy or advanced learning
029programs. Um we are hoping that that increases um and that is uh currently that particular um interim guardrail is uh not on target. We have insufficient movement towards the target. So, I would like to open up uh the floor to my board colleagues to inquire about the current state or the current reality of these two guard rails um by asking questions based on um um the the data that's been provided to us. And Miss Martano, prior to doing that, do we want to see Dr. Roberts, is there anything you would like to provide before we jump in? Any context? Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, board member. uh as we have started to establish this process where we want to bring forth um individuals who are closest to the work to probably present to the
030board so you have additional context for no more than 3 to 5 minutes but I believe this evening for guardrail one again because we are in the summer and folks are in vacation we may not have anyone for guardrail one but we will have someone for guardrail 5 at this time I want to ask um Phil and our tech team to um project our powerpoint for guardrail one and I'll just shared a very high level uh because I think board me captured our reality very well. Thank you. And as we jump to the next slide um what you will see there is where we are just providing some insights in terms of our programming differentiation between central campus and central academy. And just as a reminder of of course central campus is where career in
031technical education um is the focus and we're connecting learning for grades 9 through 12. Um as we go into the next school year we will uh refine that we we are looking at grade 7 um through 12 I believe and with central academy this is where advancing access courses and pathways for grades 7 through 12 is uh the focus. Advanced learning programs also will have us looking at um advanced learning identification and consultation and programming support for grades preK through 12. So we want to start much earlier as we continue to refine our practices with both of these programs. And the next slide is where we um share a little bit about exactly what board member Marano just shared and that is we've looked at board interim guard rails one and two and interim guard
032rail one which is a percentage of fourth and eighth grade students who are or have been in EL program meeting benchmark and fast reading. This is a really really a snapshot. While it says we're developing towards the target, um we're at 22.7% in terms of our actual um I it's not statistically significant, but I certainly don't want to downplay that because we still have work to do although we are increasing and there's so much more context that we can provide that I'm happy to when we look at the guard at the report and then interim guard rail 1B um certainly because there is insufficient movement towards the target there are some really nuanced bits of information and data um that I want us to probably unpack. Case in point for interim guard rule 1B when
033we think about our English language learner programming um there are two key data points that really stands out. The first is um what we've noticed in terms of our trend data over the last 3 years is the students who are enrolling English language learners who are enrolling in our central campus central academy um some of them are not necessarily after semester 1 at semester 2 we're finding that they are disenrolling and we're trying to look at what are some of the causal factors there um and that will continue to sort of guide how we think about programming. Then the second factor is um our English language learner population um is very dynamic in terms of the enrollment and we find that a number of these students are enrolling in significant numbers actually throughout the course
034of the year which may skew this data just a little bit but we still have work to do in this area. Next slide. The next slide I just want to really highlight what is next. Right. So, in terms of our systemwide priorities, what are some of the things that we want to continue doing? Um, case in point, the reason that I'm not present today in person is because I am at the University of Virginia in what is called our um, University of Virginia um, PLE program, which is where we have I'm in attendance here with um, 25 of our school district leaders as we're looking at what are some practices that we can continue to calibrate around to make sure that we are improving outcomes for some of our um, uh, schools that have the
035lowest performances or comprehensive schools. And this this is a program that will have us uh maintain this partnership and be really thoughtful and intentional about adopting best practices, researchbased practices over the next two to three years. Um, additionally, we want to make sure that we are continue to evaluate effectiveness of our special education, English language learner and advanced learning programs particularly at the middle schools. Uh we uh of course have made some personnel changes and are truly excited about um the change in leadership that will be leading our multil- language or English language learner program as well as as well as our special education population in support of those teammates who are currently um returning to make sure that we are improving outcomes for these students. um to the left, of course, you you've heard
036the team and I board and community talk um at at length about some of the frameworks that we're utilizing and some of the proven practices, right? Our Gleam framework, for example, is one that truly allows us to be culturally responsive and meet the needs of all of our students, but certainly our English language or multil- language learners with a focus on engaging affirming and meaningful instruction to really get allow them to access the grade level instruction, which is our anchor. are we focus on? And then the second area is around how are we utilizing the science of reading to strengthen students vocabulary, language comprehension, um language acquisition in order for them to improve um not just comprehension but reading fluency. So I'll pause here um and have the team enter entertain any questions from the
037team from the board. Dr. Roberts, I noticed that this particular presentation is not currently on board docs and available for the community. So, if that could just be added um at your earliest convenience, that would be ideal. Board members, I open it up to you for questions. I'm having I'm having technical difficulties with my computer. So, as soon as I have access to my questions, I will go ahead and participate and I can pull them up here if you want. I'm going to I'm going to try this. It came back. So, so pass for now on me. Dr. Roberts, I have a question as it relates to the early identification of um ELLL population. How are practices or hiring practices or identification practices evolving at DMPS to make sure that ELLL students are communicated with
038in a way that they can be identified for ALP programming? So, yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Um, we certainly have a really robust process. While I know that there is room for improvement, um there is a screening process that allows our students to um be identified. Additionally, I know that um you know, I I've shared for example that Dr. Gogerty at at Central Academy is focused on not on making sure that we are looking at students in grades preK through 12. And so one of the things that we've done is to remove some of the previously held stringent um requirements around eligibility. So lots of communication. We have a a number of consultants who are um assigned by grade level band who are spending time um sort of creating more awareness in our schools so
039that we can have more students who are English language learners accessing these programs. So just teach me if you don't mind. Um, this sounds like a silly question, but if uh do do the consultants actually speak Spanish or do we have multilingual consultants that are working with kids because the language um could be an impediment to their um identification? How does that work? While I'm not necessarily conversant with the language status of all of our consultants, what I will say is that again because we have um bilingual or family leaison and at each of our schools, we have um individuals who will provide um that language support as needed. Thank you, Dr. Roberts. Um, so on one a kind of talking about gleam. So I've been on a couple gleam walks and uh see how
040um how it's done in the classroom. Do you think it would be or it has it been that um the MLL uh associates or teachers are they participating inside of each classroom or do they still pull students out individually? The model is it's it's hybrid if you may. So we have both what is called a push in and a pull out model both for multil- language learners and special education students. And so depending on the needs of the students um and and what is the desired outcome I think of the lesson students the adults would either push in or pull out but the goal is to make sure that uh there's a continuum of supports right our service delivery model is one where we want to make sure that students can access um that information
041um that that they need and then is that um seen in middle school also or is it something that's seen probably in elementary school. The model is grades preK through 12. In any classroom where we have um if not a co-eing model where we have a teacher and maybe an education associate that transcends any grade level And then one more question. Um, so kind of going down to, you know, I'll hold off on my next question because I don't think I we've gone through that yet. Dr. Roberts, just a question as it relates to 1B, uh, access for programming and specific to central academy and, uh, ALP, there were, I think, not insignificant cuts in the ALP budget or rollover that was no longer allowed to be to be used. How, if at all, is
042staffing shortages or budget impacting your ability to accomplish goal 1B? Miss Norman, ma'am, those cuts were Sorry, could you just for our public? Yeah. What is ALP? Sorry. Advanced learning program. Thank you, Madam Chair. Those cuts were made uh for the budget going into um school year 2526. So, they we do not have any data about impact. So it's you're saying it's forward it's for FY26 or was it this past year? So FY26. Got it. Thank you. So just to be clear, we would be that those cuts are for the next school year. So that strategy will not be one that's going to help us to have more supports for students and their identification. Correct. That's not accurate. No, ma'am. Meaning we're having the same amount of supports for identification. But so the cuts were
043not did not impact the positions that identify students. They did not. we've been thoughtful about what are additional or alternative um approaches that we need to make sure that one we are truly not only meeting the goals but also meeting the um the interim guard rails that we've actually identified that we're monitoring today. So yes, for example, let me give you one example. Those cuts um were made, for example, in one of the courses, a foreign language course that did not have sufficient enrollment. Dr. Doctor, you got it, Dr. Roberts. Um, on page, I believe it's page six, um, you mention schedule space availability. Can you help me understand what's being done to remove barriers for our multilingual learners when it comes to scheduling to ensure access to the coursework that has been identified? remove
044barriers to ensure access to course work. Um I'm let me trying to get to page six. In page six, you mentioned that schedule space availability is a concern and created exclusions for multilingual learners. So can you speak to what's being done to remove that barrier and create access to coursework at central academy, central campus, etc. Yeah, I'll have Dr. Lendine, just jump chime right in and and respond to that. Morano. Um the the the point that that's brought up in the report is that uh in some cases MLS uh have other course commitments that make it difficult for them to be slotted in to have the space availability in their schedules. Um that's something that is being worked on um on the campus level. um and at Central Academy to ensure that um MLS uh
045are continuing to have access uh to the courses um regardless of their MLA status. And can you speak to the the strategies that are being used to create that access? Is this specifically at uh central academy or campus? because I know I have Tasha Brung in the room who can also um just chime right in to provide additional context. Thank you, Dr. Roberts. Good evening, board. Um we have been really trying to um work with all of the different groups of staff that are involved in supporting MLS. So one of the things that we need to do which is also connected to both our strategic plan because this is represented there with a making sure there's no more than a plus five variance in programming um as well with a lot of our goal our
046goal three work is making sure that um parents whether they've been in our district for a while or they're newcomers coming in have access to the same information that everybody else in our district does. And so we have been very actively working with the home high schools that when they have uh specific MLL targeted family engagement nights that we have representation from central campus there. We're also um working with um there's now a new um promotional video that has been done in Spanish. Um the interim director for central next year is is also bilingual. And so, you know, we are looking at having more supports to really ensure that every single student and family in De Moines public schools has universal access to the same messaging when it comes to opportunities that impact both career
047and and college planning for our MLL population. Um, one of the things that we are seeing is that um, the schedule does per uh, sometimes have an impedment on students being able to attend central campus because it does require them to not have um, to have an extra travel period associated in their schedule. And so if a student is being stacked in supplemental core services to meet their ELLL service requirements um then that can really um put us in a position which we're currently in where there it creates inequities. Um what we know about career and tech education is that it is the most highly successful contextualized learning that happens in schools that have um and districts that have highly effective CTE. So, we know that CTE is the place for MLS because those are
048those contextrich environments with the hands-on learning. It's less abstract. We see um once students have access that they're highly effective. So what we need to be doing is working continuing to work in collaboration with our ELLL team to um really take a look at what are the the needs um of the students and not in a deficit way but in a how do we now work to ensure that CTE classrooms have the ELLL support when it comes to instruction. Um later on in the report I think you've seen that one of our challenges is that we do not currently have ELLL support at central campus specifically. Um, and so that creates a wonderful opportunity in this next year for us to take a look at that um, in collaboration with all the different people that
049work with our MLS that I know would be able to add some um, really great creative ways for us to change this around. Tasha, can you just talk a little bit about the scheduling uh and educate us on the scheduling impacts in particular because some of these courses and some of these programs that we talk about that are so wonderful at Central Campus take some time and I think until you hear about it and fully understand what the commitment is, you don't understand how that can impact a student's schedule fully and how much time they have to put into it. Yeah, I think that that is why some of the goal three work is overlapped in here is because that is part of an individual academic conversation um and planning process is to take a
050look at what are the needs of me, you know, the context of myself as a as a student and a learner, right? What the different opportunities that De Mo public schools currently has and obviously hope to be increasing with reimagining ed. um how how do we take a look at serving our students in a way that doesn't limit access but actually pushes them into environments where we know that there's higher yield for those students specifically though like what are some of the programs I'm thinking about like the aviation mechanic program and how much time they have to spend Oh, sure. You mean like the duration just the duration of the classes that they would have to take? Yeah. Yep. Yep. Um I don't know if there's a solution for that. um to to be honest
051that that's just something that we have to continue to take a look at um how how do we make that space and and what can service look like for students um that are really interested in those fields and remembering too that maybe not because of time if students need like another year or two of proficiency based on when they you know um entered our our school system that's where our great post-secary partners come into play so that we can work on that proficiency very intentionally knowing that this is the end in mind for our students and where can we connect with higher learning institutions and other resources to ensure that that roadway is still b built for those students. Um and maybe it doesn't happen till their senior year. I'm not sure. I think the
052point is is that we know the plans of our students, right? and that we work with this the um specialized environments they need for additional support and how those service delivery models might look different for students that are ready for CTE programming. Okay. I appreciate you mentioning some of the strategies that you're looking at with regards to access and messaging to our our families and I think that's incredibly important, but what I'm not hearing is strategies specifically for removing the barrier to get in the classes themselves. So, um, if the core supplemental programming is not happening, then students at Academy and that's the way that students are going to be able to take courses at Academy, then I look forward to hearing strategies in the future of of what's going to actually bring them into
053sitting in the seats in those classrooms. Because right now if we have a plan and their plan says that they want A, B, and C, but we don't have access to give them A, B, and C, um the plan will do nothing. So I look forward to future conversations where you're addressing those barriers. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Tash. And thank you, board me. Uh, Madam Chair and board member M, if if I may, just so that I can provide and offer you more visibility into a sort of much clearer picture about where we are with this particular um, guard rail. Um, some additional information, right? So, when we look at the student groups who are English language learners, um, a point of celebration, if you may, that really speaks to the growth. Nearly all
054of our student groups um, who are English language learners, our multil- language learners, and students with IEPs grew on their state assessments this year. The only group that did not grow and certainly we're going to continue to do an analysis and unpack that data um is our native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander group. Um additionally we have lots of celebrations with our ELA 21 scores right the assessment that our multilanguage learners take and we've seen significant growth um in this area as well. Um with guardrail 1B uh the additional context that I want really want to provide you is the fact that a number of um our total English language learner students who enrolled at both central campus and session academy they've increased consistently over the past several years but the total number of English language
055learner students um has increased at a higher rate when we've looked at our our three-year trend. So, yes, we still have work to do as we think about how to make sure that we are truly increasing and improving access for all of our students, but we are getting some traction, but we'll continue to make sure that we're refining our programs. Miss Alonzo, have you had the opportunity to access your questions? Uh, Dr. Roberts, I um was looking okay, my computer is really suddenly goes really fast and then it stops and then it slows down. So bear with me. um uh to what do if I was able to access my questions here, I'd be able to tell you the page. So, I'm going to just read off to you the questions that I had um
056come up with. Um and then we might have I might have to have extra time to go and look at and see what page it was from. to what do you attribute the decrease in proficiency for fourth and fourth and fifth graders and that is on page um you shared that a second page four yes thank you thank you board member Lo absolutely I appreciate the question so while we did not increase in grades four and five for students receiving English language learner services on the spring a reading assessment we did have great gains with our students students who were um identified as receiving EL services. Right? This shows that as a result of receiving these services um students who have exited grades four and five are still maintaining or exceeding grade level. Um one
057we have to continue to refine our teaching practices and with a focus on tier one instruction, right? where um we're looking at what is the basic sort of instructional model that we're utilizing all of our because we want students to be able to access highquality instructional material. all of our ELELLL students and um or all students identified in grades four and five had an overall percentage of 20 25.1% um which is 426 students out of our 1700 students who are proficient on the spring a year a reading and we know that that's not acceptable. So, we're going to continue to make sure that we are looking at targeted and differentiated instruction um for all of those students. Um, in addition to a heavy focus on our tier one instruction, we know that there are opportunities
058for us to truly utilize our MTSS or multi-ter supports system to make sure that students are getting the um extension of supports in and out of the classroom to ensure that they can start to access the information in order for them to improve proficiency in reading. Um, thank you. We are uh noticing an increase in exit rates for English language learners, right? Yes, ma'am. Can you share the rates? So, 69% of our students um who were ever identified as English language learners and received that programming were proficient in the spring of 2025. And so it's 69% certainly one would say it's a reason for us to celebrate but because we are um just bold and ambitious in our goal set and we want to make sure that that number increases. We had 602 fourth grade
059students receiving English language learning services. Uh 582 fifth grade students receiving those services. And we have many students who are progressing in the the assessed areas of listening, speaking, writing and reading. But we still know and recognize that there's more work for us to do to allow students to access that tier one instruction. Um, of course, you know, you've heard before where in addition to just the pedagog pedagogical strategies that we're using in classrooms, we're also looking at utilizing AI technology with programs like Amira, right? To make sure that they're supporting the work we're doing. Dr. Roberts, would you please share that uh percentage that you shared at the very beginning? 60 69% of students who were ever identified as English language learners and receiving programming were proficient this recent spring. Okay. So this is
060not elementary ELLL students. This is 60 that that percentage is from that entire student population that are considered or is considered um ELLL. What were they positioned in? This is this is grades four and five student grades four and five students exiting ELLL programming repeat that again Dr. Roberts I am sorry you know what I um I have to be if I'm not seeing you Dr. Roberts, I I'm going to repeat repeat questions, so bear with me. Four and five. Yes. Exited. Grades four and five students. Grades. Okay. So, fourth and fifth graders. Okay. Yes. Yes. I guess a Dr. Roberts. Yeah. I just wanted to even sort of break down even further. you know we have access to for example additional data. So for fourth grade for example um the ELPA 21 assessment in
061terms of emerging we had 22% of our students are emerging we had in terms of students who are progressing because these are the varied um levels we have 70% of students and then those who are proficient that number is at 8%. And for fifth grade, similarly with emerging, progressing and proficient. 26% of students in fifth grade are emerging. 63% are progressing. And then 9% are proficient. Still have work to do. Yeah. So 69% is not the accurate percentage. So 69. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Sorry, I'm I'm It's my turn to pop on. Hello. So what what that number is looking at is um so in this guardrail, one of the things that we're looking at is both the combination of students who are currently ELLL students and who have ever been identified as ELLL students.
062So that's that's capturing that whole population of both current ELELLL students and past EL LL students or exited ELELLL students. So this number that we're talking about this 506 um or the 69 uh total students 69% of those students who or students who have exited ELLL programming were proficient uh or those fourth and fifth grade students who were proficient um on a reading or meeting benchmark I apologize um on a reading this spring um which is higher than our all student population. And so what we were what we wanted to draw out here was this celebration around when we're looking at this kind of population where we have identified ELLL students who if they're receiving ELLL services are likely not going to be meeting benchmark on a reading. Um when combined with that ELLL ever
063population what we're seeing is that our ELLL ever population that exited population are maintaining that ability to meet benchmark at an even higher rate than our all students population. Thank you. So meeting benchmark, what is the difference between meeting benchmark, proficient and exiting? So yeah, they're are very different assessments and so go ahead Joie. Yeah. So, um, in as we're talking about, um, uh, ELA 21, that's where we're going to talk about the assessment that determines whether or not a student is in or out of EL or is exited from, um, ELLL programming. That's that ELPA 21 assessment where we're looking at emerging, progressing, and proficient. Um, that's an assessment that's taken by all students who are in ELLL programming. A reading is our generalized measure that is taken by all students. Um and meeting
064benchmark is an identified uh benchmark that is aligned by fast um based on that kind of generalized screening measure as opposed to proficient which we essentially um attach to our Iowa state assessment of uh state progress which is going to be that um goal one and goal two measure. Um if it would be helpful I can kind of put all of that in a summary and send it to you. That would be helpful. So someone proficient does not necessarily mean that they are ready to exit. Correct. Because alpha 21 also measures things like speaking, writing um and reading. Whereas a reading is going to be just about that reading piece. It's much more tuned in than alpha 21 which is broader. So there are three or four areas that ELLL students have to be able
065to be proficient right in in order to exit the program. That's correct. Okay. At what rate do we exit students that are ready to go passing the ELPA? Page four. So repeat that question. Um at what rate are we exiting students, right? Students that are done with all areas, right? That have become proficient in all areas and are ready to exit based on the ELPA 21. What is the rate that we are exiting students at? The 2425 ELLL um exit data has not yet been submitted but when we look back at 23 24 we are at about 6.9%. Can you put that number in context? 6.99% I'm trying. Is that 6.9% of eligible proficient? I I don't think that's what you're saying. 6.9% have exited. So they have exited um ELLL programming because again they've
066demonstrated and met the proficiency requirements. If the additional context is around actual numbers, we can get those numbers to you. I'm just trying to understand what success would be or what success would look like in terms of numbers or percentage. Thank you. I I guess okay so 6.09% exited that in terms of number how numbers how many students does that mean we are exiting? Yes, that's the number we will certainly get to you as in an update. Do we know how many EL students we have in the district? Yes, we do. We can get that number to you as well. Again, 25% of our students are multil- language learners. Would it be about maybe 7,500 students somewhere in that ballpark? And I'm happy to get that. Yeah. So, it would be 6.09% of 7,500 students.
067What would that be? Math is not my thing. Sorry. I don't know. 500 something. Am I close? 500. I I think that my my my concern, Dr. Roberts is that I am all about celebrating the increases but I think that historically I mean ELLL students became a focus because we are obviously going to monitor and it it's kind of frustrating to me because it what I've learned in the in the last almost four years that I've been here if if you don't monitor you don't, it doesn't get done. And this population recently became a population that we're monitoring. And my concern is the rate at which ELELLL students are exiting because we have students still in the district that finished 12th grade and never were able to exit ELELLL. I certainly appreciate the in seventh
068grade a 5% increase, but when we say that we have 7,500 students that are ELLL and we're exiting at 6.9, that is minimal and it's a disservice to the families and the students in my opinion. Thank you, Mr. Lonzo. I really appreciate that. Um I think it's important for us to also note that when we are looking at providing our students right with tier one instruction um not all of our students who are identified either as multil- language learners or students with IEPs um they are academic deficits that requires us to get caught up and so when when a student for example comes to us in the seventh or eighth grade um instead of sort of while we aspiring for proficiency I think it's important for us to also really appreciate growth, but you're absolutely
069right. We are not where we need to be and um we will stop at nothing um to ensure that we are improving all of our practices to ensure that students are accessing quality instruction. So um please thank you. Continue to push us and we will continue to make sure that we are doing whatever we have to do in pedagogically um and instructionally to make sure we're improving outcomes for students. I would appreciate um maybe some strategies um evidence um of steps that are taken in between like what is done I would love to know what is done between the alpas if we know the students are not meeting the ben the benchmark or if the increases are so minimal because they are what are we doing in between or are we just letting students kind
070of wait and we just kind of hope that they do better. What is it? How are we being intentional in between help us to assist students to be able to pass? Because when we have students again graduating that never were able to leave ELLL programs in the district, that's a concern to me. Thank you. Thank Thank you, Mr. Lonzo. Thank you, Miss Lonzo. I would offer that perhaps the board should review this particular guardrail because we have not requested that we monitor the exit percentages um regarding these students. We have requested kind of access as well as proficiency in a reading. So, um, if we as a board, Madame Chair, would like to look at this at a future date, perhaps in a work session, I think that would, um, certainly be warranted based on
071your comments. We can discuss it as a team. But right now, that's not a data point that's currently being, um, monitored and um, um, evaluated um, in the superintendent's evaluation. Correct. It is. It is not smart. However, it's listed in the report on page and my computer doesn't show me the page. Um, and it's doing it again. No, it's okay. I do know that it's in the report. I just if we want I'm lifting up that if we want it to be more of a focus that we should I would appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. Duly noted. I'll I'll try and also there's a hunger I think for in more information on the journey and the experience and that might be a presentation we can request as well. I did have a question and comment
072as well for the monitoring report on page nine around the new actions. I I will I'll start with the positive. I'm really excited to see that one of the new actions is that central campus is planning multil- language learner family nights and focused virtual tours. I think divers diversification of connection certainly is important. Uh what my question is Dr. Roberts is around communication to the families recognizing that there are several languages that are encompassed within multil- language learners and it's not just one. How does the district plan to communicate with these families regarding the virtual tours and the family nights being available? Thank you Dr. May. Yes, we are certainly um looking forward to just improving how we not only um sort of create access to students but our communication to our families. The one
073we recently adopted parent square and parents square offers I think access to more than 50 languages and so we plan to make sure that we are um taking advantage of that communication medium. Additionally, um we're looking at enlisting our bilingual and family leaison to have um more uh sort of um parent nights um in each of our regions in each of our schools so that they have more access. And then um also trying to get better at our um social media platforms where our um sort of Spanish speaking families can also have access to the same information um that is available to our English language to our English speaking families. Right. The top three of course languages in the district um while we have more than 120 languages spoken are English, Spanish and Swahili. So
074we need to have more intentionality and using parent square and then our outreach to our um MLL communities in the coming school year will ensure that we are truly in increasing access and communication sharing. Ju just for clarification. So with the parent square makes sense. I know that translates using I believe Google translate for the social media. It is just Spanish. Correct. That is correct. Okay. So there's still 119 languages missing from being able to access this information. Um so the the focus for those other 119 languages would be parent square and the bilingual family liaison. That is correct because you might again have instances where um we have probably a an N or being 20 students or 10 students and we certainly with a particular language and we certainly want to make sure that
075they too are accessing information and that's where we're using our bilingual family as right our reality is that um while we have uh uh an incredible group of BFLs we do not have anyone in the people in the district who are proficient in each of those 100 plus languages. Right. Thank you, Dr. Roberts. Um, just a something to clarify and and a a question I had and and I'm I'm thinking back and I've referenced before students that we met, Miss Alonzo and I met. I think we were at East High School when we did. This guardrail comes specifically out of some of those stories that we heard in our um community feedback sessions where uh uh not only ELLL students but just um students of color in general were telling us that they were not
076being given the opportunity by the adults in their life to sign up for some of these classes. And and so I I'm going to point to two things. one is um your reference in in the report on page six to persistent perceptions that um campus and academy classes are not for our elelll students. Um and I I just I'd ask you to address that first. Um but then my second question is what is being done? You know, all of these tactics are great. We have a time in the year when when students are ready to sign up for classes and and that's the time to present students with uh the options that they have. And the options that my kids see or Jenna's kids see or any kid sees should be um they're not all
077going to be the same, but they should be similar. Not every student can access academy. Not every student can can uh is at that advanced level, but a lot of these campus classes are should be available to everybody. And um and I think that's my frustration on this still is the access to classes at campus at least. I understand some of the barriers at Academy uh and I appreciate the the work that is being done on those. But um I wonder if you could address for us or if there's anybody else on your team that can address for us um making it very clear to our staff top to bottom everybody that works at De Mo Public Schools that access has to be available to our students in these areas of interest whether it's JOTC
078or culinary or fashion uh whatever program it is. That's part of what we really are trying to do with our students with with our goal three too. and it it's just a it's critical um for the work we're trying to get done here. So, I wonder if you could address that access. Mr. Dixs, if it's okay, I think um this is a really important topic, the broad strategic communications of how we do our outreach to ELLL populations, and I'm wondering we have a lot of questions for Dr. Roberts, if it would be okay if we gather the questions and then request a presentation back so we can really touch on it and have the time to ask the very specific questions because it's clearly something we're very passionate about and feel very strongly about. So,
079Dr. Roberts, would you be okay with that? Absolutely, Madam Chair. And if I may, Madam Chair, um, indulge me for 20 seconds. Um, to board me. Yes. I really appreciate that question, but I can assure you uh that um I have made it very very clear um that improving and increasing access um to high quality instruction and programs for all of our students is something that we will be unapologetic about. And I can tell you Tasha Brown who um recently uh um uh is no longer serving as the director of central campus but now serves as the districtwide director has made it very clear and she's made a lot of progress around improving access for students who are in each of those historically marginalized groups right black and latinx students as well as students at
080IEPs and the numbers over the last two to three years have increased significantly. Um are we where we need to be? Absolutely not. And so I really appreciate that question. Yes, Madam Chair, please. I'm looking forward to receiving all of the questions and we'll certainly come to the board with a presentation. Great. Thank you so much, Miss Martano. Should we move to guard rail 5? Yes. Do you want to accept or vote on acceptance? We should do that. Board members. We will now move forward with deciding whether we as a board accept the monitoring report. May I have a motion and a second to approve this item. As a reminder, discussion will take place after. So, first may I have a motion and a second to approve this item. Marano. So moved. Knock. Second. We
081have a motion by Miss Marinerano and a second by Mr. by Miss by Miss Knox. Are there discussion or questions? I think I'll just say what I'm capturing from this conversation is um a level of information that is going to be helpful for us to understand the journey, understand the numbers and then we can also discuss if we want to do an offcycle monitoring report or something to come back and monitor this again um more quickly than as planned. So that's on my list to gather feedback from you. But at this point, are there any other questions? I am going to go ahead and um vote no. Um I do not feel comfortable accepting something that feels incomplete. Thank you for sharing. Other questions or comments at this point? Okay, board members, please cast your
082votes. The vote is approved 6 to one and to accept the report. And now we will move to the second guardrail report which is guardrail 5. Dr. Roberts, do you have a present? Yes, you do. Yes, I do. Thank you. And again to tee this up, um, of course, Garville 5 is where the superintendent shall not allow an environment that allows families and viable community partners to be excluded, uninvited, and unwelcome into the district's activities. and endeavors and this is our commitment to ensure that we are truly having um intentional outreach um to create strong relationships with our families and community members partners. Hello. Hello. Um I am just up here to introduce uh Deja Banks. Um as you know we've done a lot of work in our community partnerships area the last year. Um
083we've completely revamped our website. We've revamped our data systems. Um we're just really revamping pretty much everything. Um and a lot of those systems and structures wouldn't be possible without the work of our community and school coordinators across the district. Um they are the individuals that connect the partners to the families to the students. They do a lot of the groundwork. Um so we just wanted to bring Deja up here today. She's from Madison Elementary. um she does a lot of wonderful work in integrating community partners into our schools uh before school, during school, and after school. So, she's going to share a little bit about that today. Hello. Hi, my name is Deja Banks and I am the community and schools coordinator at Madison as Kaylee mentioned. So I am going to share a
084few ways that Madison has successfully partnered with community members, volunteers to support our students, families, and staff during the school day. Um so one program that we launched was with math motivators. I launched that in 2324. That program provided free inschool math tutoring programs for selected fourth grade students. Um that partnership was initiated after I heard about the program at another school. I collaborated with my admin, instructional coaches, fourth grade teachers to help identify 10 students who could benefit. After reaching out to families for permission, the students then were paired with Drake University students who wanted to volunteer. We held weekly sessions during lunch. So, the students ate while building their confidence in math and relationship building. And I supervised each each session and worked closely with teachers and math motivators to align support with
085classroom learning. The second one is the De Moines Public Library with Rosie the Reader. Um, so we had monthly classroom visits from preK to second grade on the first Friday of each month. Maddie, the outreach librarian, engage students in learning with all the public library has to offer, such as story time and encourage libraring for young learners. Kindergarten and first grade visits were aligned with EL curriculum. And once classes completed the reading for Rosie challenge, each class earned a Rosie plush sheet and a collection of books. And then second grade students received free books to help kick off the summer reading challenge and encourage literacy outside of school. And then the third one would be our long-term volunteer. We call her Nana Kate. Um so Nan Kate is a beloved classroom volunteer and a former
086Madison grandparent. So although her grandchild moved on to sixth grade, she still returns often to read with third grade students. She brings consistent joy and support to the classroom community and I ensured her continued service by helping her complete the new updated volunteer application this year because our staff and students deeply value her presence. So in all these examples, community involvement has made a meaningful difference in our students growth and sense of belonging. Thank you. Deja, may I ask a follow-up if that's okay on volunteerism to you Deja? um which is I think we've all talked about the power of volunteers and the need for volunteers and I'm wondering if you could share um any barrier like both the opportunity right and and what andor why is it challenging to get volunteers into the building.
087Um I would say I mean most adults have jobs it's kind of hard for people to take off work to come volunteer. Um people struggle times are hard right now. So that's definitely a barrier with wanting to get families inside the building. Um other than that, that's the only one I can think of right now. So is the encouragement if somebody wants to volunteer and has the time typically maybe a retiree or somebody like that. Do they contact um DMPS and this is for both of you uh the website or do they go to the school that's closest to them? What would you recommend is a good strategy? Answer that. Yeah, they go to De Mo Public Schools website. Um, it's on our new community engagement hub actually. Um, it has a volunteer link on
088there. Um, we're actually integrating a new volunteer management system before the end of the new school or beginning of the new school year. Um, so we'll have the opportunities out to the community actually. Now, great. Yep. Other question for Deja before she slips away. If you could tell the board one thing about your role or one thing that you need that would help you be even more successful. Okay. What might that be? I wasn't ready for this. Um I would just say um understanding the importance of the work that we do. We truly love our families. We love our students. And I just I want people to understand how hard we work because it is a lot of work and a lot of love involved. So yeah. Thank you. Yep. Thank you, Deja. Much appreciated.
089And Kaylee, um I'll ask the team to highlight um if it's okay. Um board member Marano, highlight the PowerPoint slide. Yep, it's up. And Jason and Kaylee are at the deas. Beautiful. And if we can go to the next slide and again interim guard rule um 5A is the percentage of favorable responses from parents and guardians and the baris engagement measure on the panorama family survey will increase from 82% um to 87%. So our target is 85% and our result is 84% which means that we are developing towards the target um but there's so much more information for us to share there. And then the second which is inter interim guard rule 5B um you will notice that there is no target set and the reason for this board and community is because um again
090when we've looked at our SOFG guidance around monitoring we need at least three monitoring periods before we can actually set a trend line and this is uh we've only monitored um this particular interim guard reel twice that is in the fall of 2024 and spring of 2025 and so the next monitoring period in fall of after then we will have um the opportunity ability to set that target. So this one is information only. Um if I may I'll pause there for any questions before I jump to ask the team to just take us to the next slide. I would just say that that should be congratulated because even showing growth, it's 258 partners and staff, but the improvement and happiness and joy in their response is obvious. So, congratulations. That's great. Thank you, Madam Chair.
091And again, we are going to continue to strive um to ensure that we're increasing those numbers. Kaylee and Jason and team have done are doing a phenomenal job um with that. But as we think about um what's next for us, right? Because we're always anchoring our time in sort of this this having this propensity for continuous improvement and one I know that we have an upcoming um professional development session that will be led by Kaylee to improve and share guidelines for how our leaders and school leaders can integrate effective partnerships into schools and student supports. Um because while those of us at the district office have this desire to make sure we are truly cultivating the kind of environment where partners um want to uh be in sort of um support of the work we're
092doing or our community members want to be in partnership with us. We have to make sure that today's just earlier point that we develop and cultivate a strong understanding of the work that those individuals at the schools are doing and how can we better support them. Additionally, we want to make sure that we continue to engage families through improved communications. We I know we've talked about that earlier. Um even as we monitor guard rail one, um some of the things we've done and we'll continue to build on our, you know, family university, we're we providing opportunities for family to receive a lot of supports that are not just necessarily related to their children, but to their own development. um improving and building upon our focus with not only students, but how are we utilizing that
093to support families? And then of course, as we think about the connection to our academic um outcomes, looking at the portrait of a grad rate and the learning collaboration, Kaylee or Jason, want to expound on any of these? I do want to mention um we put in a community needs assessment into online registration that launched yesterday. Um and that is going to give us building by building data on um the needs just to start quantifying them out um and connecting community partners, volunteers, and donations to the schools to meet those specific needs. Um our data team built out a really amazing dashboard that's going to be used monthly. um by the community and school coordinators that are actually going to quantify the needs being met and unmet um so we can plug in community partners
094where they're actually needed based on their capacity. Just a follow-up question on that. So I'm recalling um a teacher who came and spoke uh in in the past couple of months and she was talking specifically about Metro Kids and access to Metro Kids. And so I'm wondering the community needs needs data. How, if at all, that applies to staff? And I know it's it's different, but how are we asking what supports they may need uh based on, you know, support for them to be successful as a teacher? Is that because some are struggling with some of the basic needs? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Um I'm going to be honest, uh this was built out for students and families. Um within you'll see that we're establishing an evaluation system as well. Um in that we are asking
095staff feedback too um for community partners. Um I know some of our st you know we have our food pantries and things like that in our schools. I think we can be better about um supporting our staff in that way. Uh we actually do have on August 15th we have an all staff event at Drake. Um, we're also including all of our 130 community partners that day so every single staff member can integrate with all of our community partners too and learn about the resources. And and let me also offer if I may, Madam Chair, I really appreciate that question um because and I recall the teacher who you mentioned and certainly we want to make sure that we're continuing to think about how to keep our finger on the pulse of whether or not
096we are meeting staff needs. And so two things can happen. even utilizing this particular survey to disagregate the data by staff and non staff. But secondly, we also have with support from our um uh HR department um a really solid system that includes um state interviews where every single leader um is is expected to have those state interviews with um their teachers and staff or direct reports. Um, additionally, um, just creating and cultivating this culture where we are constantly, um, checking in with staff. Um, creating an open door policy amongst all of our executive cabinet and tactical cabinet leaders where individuals feel, um, that they this is a safe space. They feel a sense of psychological safety where they can share and express areas where they're struggling and we are expected to respond to support
097them. So, I appreciate I appreciate that question. Thank you, M. Knox. Did you Thank you, board member Marano. Any questions for us? Additional, I should say. I had a question on page five. Uh, okay. There is a uh a comment referencing the monthly engagement sessions with community partners and I was curious, is there anything that you've learned from those conversations that might be helpful in providing more access to other community partners that are viable? Yeah, definitely. So actually over the last 6 months we have a monthly uh community conversation. Actually we have one tomorrow morning. Um the first Wednesday of every month with every partner um invited um and over the last 6 months we've actually been going through a SWAT analysis and root cause of um really where they're struggling where the barriers are
098getting into schools. I mean it could have been anything. So, we actually created a list with each feeder pattern to go through some of the wins to start um addressing their barriers that they're experiencing in schools, but also with the CSC's too, what barriers they're experiencing as well. So, we're working on it. Great to hear. I think it's a great practice. Thank you. And strategic. I have a question. Uh and Jason, this may be for you on page four as it relates to after school. So um in what's going well and it's it's before school too. So we provide pro we continue to provide consistent afterchool programming across elementary schools and then it talks about internal programs metro kids 21st century learning and outside partners. How um supply and demand right so is there more
099demand than we can support and what is the expectation of buildings to provide something and I don't want to say a mandate but h how are you um what's the strategy or how do you think about those two issues? Yeah, thank you. I think that's a great question. Um I think the first thing is is that you know what we try to do is working uh you know close with admin because we're we essentially try to get in all these buildings is and I and I think um well let me speak to this first um making sure that our communication chains are open you know for I'll give you an example of that you know um working with Monroe you know I think two years ago we weren't able to we had to take out
100uh metro kids it was uh purely there just wasn't enough student participation however having did that um uh we were also collaborating at the same time with the Boys and Girls Club and um while um while we had to remove that program in terms of actually having it on site, there's two things we still do. One, uh we still provide uh those kids the opportunity to attend Metro Kids as a at a different location and um and there's transportation and there's transportation provided in that regard. The other thing is is that um because we recognize that you know we can't provide a full array of services you know and this is why these partnerships are really important with uh what Kayle's mentioning is that the Boys and Girls Club is coming back and so they
101will start providing you know a bus and if the need arises they'll actually provide uh or let me phrase it they're they're providing the van and if the need arises they'll provide a bus and so I think that what's going to be really important for us is that what we've talked about earlier is looking at that um you know on the OR are and when we can start to identify what those needs are in addition to just our conversations, right? Some things just happen through conversations as well as continually to uh you know kind of be on the ground and I think that's where the cse really play a role uh meaning that uh when we have those those PTO PTA uh student advisory council uh meetings, booster clubs, things of that nature, making sure
102that they're working in collaboration with admin to also identify what are the things that we may be missing. um maybe that's not necessarily captured through the data um but are still really important to figure out how do we address that specifically in the long term and then uh work uh systematically so that we don't duplicate efforts and so you know if we've got the same program offering the same type of uh uh or I should say different programs offering the same type of program but we're kind of serving the same students is there an opportunity for us to to work a little bit smarter and identify how can we better maximize our resources thanks and Maybe just to follow up with the um bill that was recently passed. My understanding is federal funding of after
103school programming has been cut pretty significantly not for FY26 but for FY27. Is that is that accurate? And if so, how are we thinking about um a replacement strategy for that? No, I I appreciate you saying it. I I think that we're still, you know, we're learning more And I think this will be probably one of those that um as we continue to watch what's going on at the federal level, state level, we'll have a better sense of kind of ultimately what does that funding look like? But in the meantime, that doesn't stop us from being able to continue to partner with, you know, um the all the community partners. That's the that's where we're fortunate to have so many of those to start now to identify, okay, where are the gaps going to be
104and how can we start now filling those gaps prior to uh you know, maybe some of that program going away. The reality is is that it whatever we do needs to be sustainable. And so um you know while we're always going to take as much money as we can get and we need it um we also have to look internal to figure out is there other ways and I'm saying specifically within the city within our own communities um you know uh how we uh really leverage our parents um and the community at large to be able to serve our students um specifically for out of school time. Thank you. I I took the Panorama survey, I believe, as a parent, I would have, right? And I'm trying to remember the questions. I I know we're
105talking a lot about money and resources, but I remember the questions being more like, is someone nice to me when I walk in the front door, right? Like things that don't cost any money. Is there any insight on how like with the US not experiencing growth in the Panorama survey? Is that more attributed to programmatic deficiencies or or gaps like we've been talking about of why parents are feeling maybe less engaged or is it more cultural? That's sort of what I guess I was I feel when you think about the Panorama survey. It's more like how do you feel? Do you do is your teacher nice to you? I mean, to one of our speakers points tonight, do you feel like you have uh the support of the people in your building that have the
106best interest of your child at heart? So, can you give a little refresher on that? No, I I appreciate you mentioning that. I think for us, when we look at our overall scores, you know, we're at 84% for the spring, which, you know, um you know, that that's not our target, but certainly um you know, and we have the we certainly hope to do, you know, continue to grow in that regard. Um the the question becomes more around um as we look at the number of people who surveyed um looking trying to look more specifically at the the demographics and identifying where specifically are we um do we need to maybe target better. Um I think when you look at the data um for us we know middle school is is an area where we
107can certainly do more and we probably have to do more but it's not something that we do in a silos right it's working um again with each of our schools individually um to identify what does their community you know so what does that mean specifically for their community and how are they uh working um to help to address those issues as a for an example um one of the things that Perkins does and and I don't know that I'm not going call them unique but we appreciate it. I just want to lift it up is that you know uh during the summer time they visit uh they try to make visits to you know most of their their parents' homes family's homes right they try to make those connections um or we have schools that
108um work in collaboration with our with our transportation department to identify ways to overcome those barriers you know that are not necessarily currently uh maybe set up in our current system um you know so I I I think it's it's it's a multi-prong approach in and trying to identify those things. But again, working with the schools. We have some schools that leverage activities. I'll use that as a plug. Um you know, um activities, family engagement nights, you know, um you know, what are some of the things that we need to do to better target those families that are maybe not uh you know, currently engaged. It's something that we're going to use specifically looking at Metro kids, you know, and not only Metro, but we'll use it at other places as well to try to
109uh define those areas where as a collective unit, you know, we could uh we can address that. And then, of course, you're working internally with the schools, right? And I I appreciate you lifting up uh you know, there's 13 questions on that. Um while overall, I think we've scored pretty high, there's there are a couple areas where we're looking to uh you know, to make some improvements. Um but I think that can be done um you know working in collaboration with our schools individually and then strategy um and I think some of the things we've talked about today with the partners they'll help to uh fill some of those gaps not all of them because as you mentioned you know how um you know maybe a you know a parent feeling uh comfortable you know
110having conversations with their administration those are things that we just need to ask more questions and make sure that we all have the same understanding. of what really is the issue, you know, um and and how do we work, you know, to address that? Uh, one comment or kind of question I have um from my community, I hear a lot about parents that are wanting to volunteer at the schools and they're all for it. they have some barriers um with some of the application I think is filled out um and they are scared because of their immigration statuses. Um and I'm all for with the application. I mean, I want to know who's going to be in the kids' school, but how have you how can we work on that barriers to help these community
111um families and parents that really want to help volunteer at the schools? We have gone rounds on this topic trying to create um those pathways for those um parents. Uh, we've had many conversations around this because a background check is required with a social security number. Um, I'm still working with our legal counsel on what that could potentially look like in possibly tiers of volunteerism, what a background check is required for if you're if you're in a school versus, you know, offsite. Um, not around students. uh we're we're just we're working through what the the legal council is allowing us to. So So let me also build on that. Thank you, Kaylee. Uh and what and Kayle's referencing and I've been an integral part of these conversations. Um we want to make sure that we
112are creating more opportunities for all of our parents regardless of um status to be able to um spend time in schools and um be involved. However, we have to try to find this sort of um prudent balance between um latigious exposure uh right but also having um parents in schools. And one thing that we are exploring is um having our leaders in schools um who can vouch um for um our parents and and that's the first step. The second step will mean that if individuals do not have um the necessary background information or identification, one consideration we have or we haven't finalized because to Katie's point, we want to make sure that we're also leveraging our legal counsel, but we thinking about um they can be in the presence or partnership with school personnel in
113their time of volterism. So, um Miss Campos, I appreciate that question. We're going to continue to try to remove any barriers and to the greatest extent possible, right? mitigate that real fear and apprehension that you referenced um from some of our parents. Thank you, Dr. Roberts. I appreciate that. Just a a followup because I know we brought this up before. Do we have a timeline on when we're going to come to an actual recommendation to move this forward? What do you think is a fair expectation for a timeline? I mean, I can bring you a recommendation. It's really if the district wants to open. So, so Dr. Robert, I think it' just be helpful cuz this has been address this has been elevated I think for over a year. So it' just be helpful to
114know what you think is a fair expectation to be able to move this forward for our community. Yes, madam chair. I can certainly commit to um the beginning of in the fall of school year 2526. Great. Thank you. Just a quick question. Uh page four talks about the and I think it's kind of a followup to uh the comments made um about the supports and the um partners that we are working with in terms of metro kids. I know that that is after school. Yes. Yes. Yes. And uh going back to how we gain feedback from the community and the needs and trying to be supportive um of students and families. Do you have or have you had anyone wonder about before school metro kids before school and after school? And I is that a
115is that ever talked about, discussed, or would it be a possibility? Um, I I will tell you we've not heard a lot about before school. That doesn't mean that it doesn't that the need doesn't exist. Um, you know, and so I I don't know that I would say it's not a possibility. I think we'd have to look at that and think through, you know, kind of what does it mean um, you know, to make that a possibility, right? And and I think that you know the other question was how are we gaining feedback from the community? So it's not a need because we're hearing from who's saying it's not a need, right? Are we inquiring and are we being intentional about wanting to really know? Y absolutely. One of our strategic actions and our strategic
116plan for priority 5 is roundts with the community to listen not just to have the um quantifiable data uh in schools but really listen to what they actually need as well. Um and we do have some partners that serve we have churches that serve breakfast in the morning and things like that. So we do have partners that take kids before school. I'm so glad you brought up the strategic actions. I was really interested and I appreciate the context um Jason about sort of understanding the how complex uh the data is and how it really diff is different building to building and even like elementary versus middle school and really trying to zone like narrow in on the highest leverage points. Um and so I'm curious around the sort of continued next steps around family engagement.
117it it's a lot about really creating a strategy uh that uses the data to align that's on page six to align with the strategic plan. So have some of these data points been created andor when do we expect to have um like a strategy and measurable outcomes to directly address barriers to family engagement. and in these pieces like is that in this school year or when is that already happening in the strategic plan and we just will see that when we see sort of the OKRs and dashboard to come? Just curious. Yeah, I I can tell you that um that is a priority for us. Um you know, I think as we just started to look at, you know, where the areas of opportunity are specifically for that, um that'll be something that we'll look
118really closely at with the hope of being able to provide more information, uh maybe coming this fall. Sorry, one one question. It probably is more in the weeds than I was trying to do something. Is there when community partners are interested in or families are interested in volunteering and they go to the website to then sign up to volunteer? Uh two questions. One, are they required to have a school springs account? And two, are they required to volunteer and select a a specific school or is there a general volunteer application? So, I believe you have to make an account with Schoolspring. Um, but then in the application, you choose your top three schools. Um, I think that's where a lot of our inequities come amongst the volunteer data that we have. Um, so this will
119all transfer over into our new volunteer management system. it's going to be much more um comprehensive and easier um to to sign up and also to see the available opportunities in every single school. I think that'll really help the community see what we actually need versus, oh, hey, I know this person at Hubble, so that's where I'm going to go. Perfect. Thank you. I wasn't I know you had mentioned there was a new system. I wasn't sure if this was it. Nope. No, school spring is not it. Perfect. Thank you. Just one last just one last question. Do we know how many volunteers we have in the district? Oh gosh, the last number I want to say we since we just had them all transfer over to school spring, I want to say it was
120around 1,600 1,800. So we went from about 8,000 I think they were just all kind of sitting there for a while to around 1,600,800 that had to reapply um into our new system in school spring. Um, and then with the new volunteer management system, that was one of our requirements was they do not have to reapply. We're just going to plop them right in there. And so you're referring to an to individuals who are considered volunteers, not community partners, right? Yes. So we have about 1,600. Do we do anything in recognition of our volunteers? So we just started a monthly volunteer um highlight where we'll show them on social media and Dr. Roberts actually will go to the school and have a little ceremony with a certificate with them. We went to Perkins with um
121the volunteer that was here last time actually and Perkins had a cake for her and all these things. So, we're going to start doing those monthly and then I intend to start doing a volunteer thank you banquet or something along those lines as well. Recognition and acknowledgement really go a long way. Yeah, definitely do. Yeah. Perfect. All right, Madam Chair, I turn it back to you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks. Uh we are now going to move forward with deciding whether we as a board accept the monitoring report. Is that Martano so moved? Mayberry may second. We have a motion by Miss Marterano and a second by Dr. Mayberry Mays. Uh any discussion or questions? Board members, please cast your votes. The vote is approved 720 to 0. We will now move to
122the consent agenda. As a reminder to the board and public, the board will not engage in discussion or deliberation with the speaker regarding comments made to agenda items. Discussion and deliberation will remain among board members at the board table with speakers comments informing the board's discussion, deliberation, and determinations as deemed necessary. Miss Rios, do we have any speakers? No speakers tonight. Miss Alonzo, I believe you have the consent motion. Wrong. Ron. Uh, Dr. Roberts, you might want to mute. Go ahead, Miss Alonzo. I move that the board approve the consent items in accordance with the recommended action for each item on the consent agenda, including bills previously authorized, certified, and approved for payment by the board secretary in the amount of 12,163,7624. and procurement card transactions in the amount of $898,618 98 98 cents. Thanks.
123May I have a second, please? Martano second. We have a motion by Miss Alonzo and a second by Miss Marterano. Any discussions or questions? Madam Chair, I do plan to abstain from this vote due to a conflict of interest on E3 preschool agreements due to another board conflict. Great. Thank you so much. Board members, please cast your votes. The vote is approved. Six to zero with one abstension. All right. I'm wondering why everybody's here and I have a feeling it has to do with the next topic uh which is reimagining education. I'm going to make one suggestion which is we take come on up. We take a five minute break. Five minutes means five minutes. Okay. All you chatters 5 minutes starting now. That means we're coming back at 7:24. to begin this very exciting
124session. Uh it is 7:24. So board members, if you are not here, we are going to get started. Great. Uh Matt, I'm going to turn it over to you. Okay. Dr. Roberts, do you want to frame this conversation? Thank you, Madam Chair. almost two years ago. Um just to give you some background context and then tee up our presentation. Um the leaders of the Mont public schools in partnership with representative group of members of our community embarked upon a journey to conduct a deep analysis of our current data and essentially to embrace the brutal facts of the reality of the MO public school student achievement data or enrollment analysis and we've even looked at the occupational versus functional capacity of our 72 buildings. And in this pursuit, we acknowledge that while there is so much
125to celebrate with regards to the maintenance and operation efficiencies of our buildings, um, student achievement and the overall student experience, we acknowledge that we were not necessarily meeting the needs of 100% of our students and our buildings HVAC systems and overall infrastructure have seen the effects of their age and it was clear that we needed to do something different and madame chair board and the community members. We did at the conclusion of a 16 to 20 month or so period. This committee known now as the reimagining education committee landed on a final plan that is in many ways bold and audacious intended to radically enhance the student experience from prek through 12th grade and improve outcomes of our students. and we arrived at this plan at a proposed cost at of $500 million. At the
126June 17, 2025 board meeting, the team and I shared the scope of work and the 10-year timeline um that accompanies this $500 million cost via a proposed general obligation bond with the board. our school board. You all and the district staff and leaders maintain their enthusiastic support of the plan to truly reimagine education and reinvigorate our schools and board. At this recent board meeting, you certainly, and I'm deeming it to be, you flexed your empathy muscles as you considered the potential economic and financial impact on our broader community and our voting constituents. As a result, you charged the reimagine education team, including yours truly, for us to go revisit the scope of work and the cost of this proposal with consideration of this overall financial impact on our taxpayers who board you made it very
127clear to us that you value. After a district's leadership team review of the recent polling results that was administered by a credible and reli reliable pollster combined with your charge board, I'm delighted to share that we have arrived at a now refined scope of work at a significantly reduced cost of $265 million for a general obligation bond. It is important to know that while we remain remain committed to upgrading all of our buildings, the majority of which are somewhere between 72 and 80 years old, and we aspire to improve our operational efficiencies and educate our students in updated and in some instances state-of-the-art buildings. This plan is not only focused on reimagining education only with our buildings. It would also see us demonstrate a relentless focus on rethinking our instructional programs, academic offerings, and innovating
128our instructional practices in unprecedented ways. Quite frankly, it's also important for us to note that the proposed programmatic changes are aligned to achieving all of our board goals and guard rails. Particularly, and I want to punctuate this, our commitment to preparing students after they graduate to successfully enroll, enlist, and be gainfully employed. This the programmatic and instructional changes is one of the real strengths of our reimagine education plan. The revised and refined plan that you will hear about tonight is no longer a 10-year plan, but is one that will see these significant changes around building occupational and functional capacity as well as our instructional and academic programs occurring within the next 5 years. And this is exciting because what it does board and community is it allows more of our students and families to benefit
129from you know 5-year plan instead of the initial 10-year plan. The issuance of a general obligation bond will have us maintain our commitment to deliver on 100% of what we said that we will do in the eventual bond. But we will also remain somewhat agile and nimble with regards to timelines around programmatic and academic implementation. We are committed to those as well. board. In addition to the polling results and our response to the appetite of our community and voting constituents, I want to thank you for truly not only exercising your empathy muscles and challenging us to consider what will be the financial and economic impact on constituents. But when you share that with us, we really listen to this charge and we embrace the value that it would add. And what you'll hear from Matt
130tonight is we did just that. Because when we embarked upon this journey to reimagine education and reinvigorate our schools, the closure of buildings and upgrading buildings is a significant part of this vision. But I I would suggest to you and so a lot of members of this team that one of the most important parts and aspects of this endeavor is the way that we will educate more than 30,000 students in the near future as in the next 5 years, but more importantly the way we will educate them for generations to come. How will we do that with what we're proposing in terms of sophisticated career and technical education programs? How will we radically increase access to highquality preschool education? A focus that we will never stop pushing and offering innovative and highquality signature schools that
131will focus on science, technology, engineering, and math. health sciences such as certified nursing assistants, medical technologists, paramedics, the arts and Montasuri schools in every of each of our named geographic region in the mo border community. As I wrap, we have an opportunity to deliver on a promise to 100% of our students in this de mo community. And as we reflect in this endeavor, we have a quote that you've heard us brought into this spa space previously. And that is is the Greek quote. It says, "A community and society grows strong when men and women plant trees under whose shades they know they shall never sit." With reimagining education, we have an opportunity to truly cultivate generational impact by planting trees under whose shades we know we will never sit in the form of upgraded and
132sophisticated programmatic offerings. Our students, your children, and the children of your children eventually deserve better and they deserve to have those proverbial shades. At this time, I will invite superintendent, associate superintendent Matt Smith to present on the more granular details about the changes in the scope of work from 10 years to 5 years and how this now presents a truly exciting and inspiring opportunity for more families to immediately benefit from this bold and audacious plan much sooner than the previous 10-year plan. This reduction from a proposed 500 million to $260 million GO bond will be one that we are excited about. And the changes to building retirements and our commitment to these sophisticated instructional programs will probably set us up for success much sooner than later. Matt, the floor is yours. Yeah, thank you so
133much, Dr. Roberts. Um, good evening board. um and everybody else in the audience and the millions watching at home at this point in time. Um it is a real honor and a pleasure to be back with you uh to be discussing the revised plan. So, thank you again for the charge. Uh before I get rolling, just want to recognize um the person to my right, Amanda Miller, um who brings a great deal of insight and joy to the work um along with Chad Linbacher and Sarah Holland, who also bring a great deal of joy and insight and do a lot of number crunching and to make sure that our functional capacities are accurate and that we're continue to put forth the data that is accurate and is going to better serve our students. So, there's
134a lot of folks involved in this work and I just wanted to make sure that I highlight a few of them. Um it doesn't get done without them. So, um I we have 60 slides. Um I know it's already 7:33. Um but there are 60 slides. Um and some of them we'll spend less time on than others, but we need to set the context a little bit um as we get into the revised plan and what $265 million allows us and affords us to do for our 30,000 children, our 5,000 employees and our students and families in De Moines. Um just to bring us back, um what is the reimagine education plan? It is a uh an opportunity to create a world-class education for our students, staff, and our families. And it positions De Mo
135Public Schools to be a destination district. Um it also affords us the opportunity to create modern and efficient facilities. Why do we do this work? Um it is a once in a generational opportunity. Um, a $265 million investment in our students, in our community, in our schools would be the single largest investment that De Moines has ever received at a single time. Um, the opportunity to engage in in with our community around that investment to do something that's never been done for our students in De Mo public schools um just breeds excitement and opportunity abound. And like Dr. Robert said it is a once in a generational opportunity in front of us. Um this is also an opportunity to continue to invest in um infrastructure that not only is high quality for learning, it is
136high quality for teaching. Our staff are just as important as anybody else in this configuration and in these um this reimagined work. And so having staff that have the tools in front of them to be their very best selves in front of children every single day is also what this work is about. You've heard us say it before and we'll continue to say it. This is a facilities a plan that is about people. This reimagine work is also the reasons why we do this is because um we do have some outdated inefficient facilities. Um this $265 million plan will allow us to upgrade and create more efficiencies. It will also allow us to change our enrollment patterns. Um, and we will continue going to that next slide. Part of those enrollment patterns means that we
137need to um reverse the trend of enrollment loss. Um, over the last 7 years, we've lost more than 2,000 students and that equates to about $16 million in loss revenue and general fund dollars. Um, making significant investments in the infrastructure which enhances and expands upon the program changes in our district will allow us to begin to change that trend line and create a new trajectory that not only allows us to retain students but allows us to grow our enrollment in the next 5 to six years. We also do this because just plainly stated our kids deserve better. Um, this sentiment has been resonated from this board table on multiple occasions and it is resonating in our offices and in our classrooms because everybody feels it and everybody knows it and everybody wants to be a
138part of that. This plan represents an opportunity for us all to come together and to unite because we know our children deserve better. So the revised scope uh as Dr. Roberts mentioned the revised scope um is maintaining the same priorities and it is scaling it back and it is shortening the timeline. That is important uh to emphasize. Um as we went came back to the drawing board to to look at uh the $500 million plan, what we didn't do is change the plan. What we did was keep the components and the elements of the plan, particularly those that are most favorable, prioritized those and scaled it down to to be um fit within a 250 to $300 million plan. It resulted in a $265 million plan, which is what we're presenting to you tonight. So
139it is important that the integrity of the larger plan of $500 million is intact. Um this plan also um is perfectly aligned with our strategic plan and in support of our strategic plan. So when we consider our five pillars um and our priorities um articulated in our strategic plan, the reimagine plan at does serve and is perfectly aligned with our strategic plan as well. One of the key um outcomes of our strategic plan and one of our strategic objectives is that in uh 2030, open enrollment out of DMPS will not exceed open enrollment into DMPS. Again, going back into our enrollment trends, we believe that the investments that this $265 million um bond will have on our students and for our staff and our families is that it will begin to reverse that enrollment loss
140so that we will actually exceed this goal prior to 2030. Uh we believe the investments that we're going to make and we're going to show you tonight will allow us to get that done. It was also important that we maintain the integrity of the four anchors that the committee developed uh what seems like many many years ago. Um but it was about two years ago. Um these four anchors drove our work and were the foundation of building the plan in its entirety and they are still the anchors in this $265 million plan. This chart represents the data collected at the end of the 19 uh community meetings, the surveys, and what it represents is the degree of favorability of the various components of the plan. Um if you look at those in green, you've seen
141this chart before, but you look at them in green, they represent uh components of the plan that were strongly supported with yellow being moderately supported. Uh with a couple of tweaks, they become strongly supported. um the red has had less than 40% favorability. What I would offer to you is with the check marks meant to represent this uh on the left side there is that these components are actually all still very much a part of the $265 million plan. um where you find check marks in things like improving student outcomes, future readiness, signature school concept, middle school redesign, those are prioritized in a $265 million plan because we are literally taking about half of the original amount of financing from a bond and then prioritizing how we're going to invest that $265 million. um that
142it this does not mean that we are not doing some of the grade reconfiguration or that we are not still closing um some facilities. That is still going to take place and I'll show you some of those details here momentarily. Um they're just not priorities as we came back to the table with a $265 million lens. We prioritized these other highly favorable components of the plan and made that the priority. So, what does a two uh $165 million plan include? Um, it includes maintaining a um a shift towards a three region system. Again, working towards creating um community connections, neighborhood connections, um feeder patterns that lead to three comprehensive high schools. That three regional system is a new system in De Mo public schools. So, um, just as we've stated with the $500 million plan,
143we're not looking to make tweaks or adjustments or modifications to what we're currently doing. We are looking to change our system for serving 30,000 students. And so, that is still um hold intact and the integrity of the three regions is still going to be advanced and move forward in a $265 million plan. We are also still going to um create more access for preschool. Um the difference here and then what's noted is that this access will be targeted particularly in areas of most need. Um one of the things that we um cannot do with $265 million is create satellite preschool classrooms at every single elementary school as we originally planned for. What we can do is continue to increase access to preschool um even next year as um through using save dollars and through um
144um creating more programmatic supports and sustainability um funding streams for preschool. So um we will continue to increase access to preschool. Um another example of that is um adding more drivers to our transportation fleet to be able to transport more preschool students to school that otherwise didn't have access. So, there's some other ways that we can increase access, but we will also um have the potential to use save dollars. As the need arises in these next several years um and programmatic funding is sustainable, we can make that happen and continue to um offer accessible preschool for families in every region, changing grade configurations, um still going to have great configurations, but what you will see is that u we are still going to have preschool centers um in each of the regions. We will also
145have elementary schools that serving K5. And so in the original plan, we looked to reduce the number of transitions to preK to six U with a modified plan of $265 million in terms of financing. We will not be able to actually have preK6 universally at every elementary school. And so that is going to be one of those components that we will have to um wait for um another time. It won't be a part of this five um year plan in a $265 million investment. Um that doesn't mean that we won't have some sixth grade at elementary at elementary school. We will have that happen and we've got four schools actually onboarding elementary school uh sixth graders in elementary next year because they have the existing capacity in our current structure to do so. We also
146have other buildings that do have some existing capacity. We will look to move sixth grade into those spaces as well in the years to come. It's just not funded through bond dollars. So we can have save dollars help with that and we've got existing capacity in some of our elementarymentaries where we can make that happen. And again, just a reminder, there's a lot of data that we've um talked about over the two years um that we've been meeting is um we are under capacity at elementary schools. Um when we get to middle school, we're almost right at capacity. When we get to high school level, we are over capacity in our current structures. So, in our elementarymentaries, we can afford to bring sixth grade in to several buildings. In other places, we're going to have
147to use save dollars to make that happen, and we've accounted for that. The middle schools will be 68 configuration. In the original plan, we had 78 configuration and again that was predicated on the ability to make investments in elementary schools to build out the infrastructure to support sixth grade at all elementary which resulted in us having seventh and eighth grade campuses at middle schools. We don't have the financing to do that in a $265 million plan. And so we've prioritized other a opportunities to serve children and to serve families. And so we will maintain a sixth through 8th grade structure in um our middle schools, high schools 912, particularly in our comprehensive schools. Our signature schools um no change there. It's a prek8 or a 712. We've also added 612 and that's specifically to call
148out Meredith and Hoover because they're currently a 612 building. Um and so as a signature school, we can make that modification to make it a 612 signature school. Again, the reason for that is without a fully funded $500 million, we don't have the infrastructure invested in the elementary schools to receive sixth grade, which would have allowed it to be a 712. So, we're going to maintain that 612 structure, and we will make some investments into both Meredith and Hoover to account for that. Uh creating programming for signature schools. Um again um the signature schools were also highly favorable and um these particular um pathways um based on the signature school analysis were the most favorable and they also um have generated the most support um also through administrators and staff feedback. And so we're excited
149about advancing the signature school program and offering more and more students across our district in every region access to these um interest-based learning pathways that we think are really really going to set us apart from any other school district in the state of Iowa. Redesigning the middle school experience we're going to continue that was also a part of the $500 million plan that's still a major part of this um $265 million plan. It does include um in investing in spaces those um maker spaces, CTE spaces at the middle school level to give kids earlier exploratory opportunities not only through the programmatic lens but also through the physical plant structure and the spaces that that from which they are learning. Um we will also um add those um not only classroom spaces but those maker labs
150um at all of our middle schools. Um it is important to note again just I'm going to continue to sort of improvise um impress upon this that this includes sixth grade um because sixth grade would not be moving to um the elementary schools holistically across our district. Um and so sixth graders um being served at middle schools, we will work as because we're making those investments in our middle schools, we will work to incorporate some of those opportunities at elementary schools that are maintaining sixth graders in their campuses. Can you um you said maker labs, maker spaces. Uh what does that mean? Yeah, those are um it's a term um that's meant to um speak about um hands-on learning um and opportunities for students to engage in project-based learning um environments um where they are
151going beyond the cognitive demands and actually utilizing the skills that they're learning to create and innovate and generate uh synthesize if you will uh those concepts by which we are teaching in our career and technical education labs. Um it's also spaces where we bring community partners in um to support students learning both during school day and after the school day. So they're not your traditional classrooms. They have a bit more technology involved in them. They have a bit more components where students um are much more actively engaged in their learning. Thank you for the question. Um, speaking of building new learning spaces, um, one of the the very first bullet there, um, this $265 million plan includes a one brand new build, um, in our district. Um, it is at Molton Elementary School and it
152is the signature school, PreK8 for fine and performing arts. Um, in the original plan, we had two other schools that were going to be new builds. In this plan, we have one new build and it is in the urban core in the most dense um, population. um residence area of our district right around Molten King. Um it also has um a design and construct 130 new innovative spaces across our district in every region. Um that includes 60 modern classrooms uh to support critical thinking and promote hands-on project-based learning. It includes over 50 specialized CTE spaces at the secondary levels and it also includes 18 purpose-built classrooms to support the expansion of Monasuri programming. Um these investments are also um going to allow us to address the overcapacity challenges that we are facing specifically at high
153schools right now. And so um all of our high schools um particularly those at Roosevelt, Lincoln, and North High School are over capacity, their functional capacity. Roosevelt or um Hoover is right at their capacity and um East is a little bit over theirs as well right now too. So this these investments actually will allow us to not only it'll serve two purposes. Um, it creates these new learning spaces, these modern spaces of career technical education as well as these signature pathway spaces, but it also creates the opportunity for us to improve the functional capacity in the overall student and staff and family experience in those buildings. Um, just a a sort of quick sort of um design concept. Again, I think we've shown some of these pictures before. Um there's real opportunity for us to
154obviously and work with our architects uh firms and our community and our staff to design some of the most incredible spaces that don't just promote academic rigor and academic engagement. They promote hope, they promote well-being, they create opportunities for students, staff, and families um to have a holistic experience when they're in these spaces because we bring in the natural light. We utilize the natural um uh woods um in these spaces. And so it's really really an opportunity for us to generate spaces that speak to the whole child and improves and promotes academic excellence. The plan also includes retiring buildings as we talked about. Um in a $265 million plan in a 5-year timeline, we will retire three schools. Um the original plan had us retiring seven facilities. Um this plan has us retiring three and
155that's for two um specific reasons. The first is the original plan had us making the investments in the capacity of elementaryaries and other buildings to support us bringing students over from schools that were being retired. We're not making those investments systematically with $265 million. And so we need therefore to reduce the amount of schools that we're looking to retire. The three schools that are being retired were identified for retirement in the 500 million plan. And so, um, we still need to retire some buildings. We need to gain some efficiency in operational and maintenance costs yearbyear. Um, this will allow us to do that. Um the other reason why um we need to continue to um um move forward with retiring V facilities is be in terms of why um three and not seven is because
156we have to continue to reorganize our district in new feeder patterns. Right? So as we think about um some of the adjustments in capacity, it's not just about building spaces. It's also about boundary analysis and making sure that we have the right boundaries for today's students and our families where they live and where they reside today and where they're going to live and reside in the years to come with our forecasting. Matt, just a question on that. Is it okay to if we just ask questions? Please. Yeah, please. That'd be great. The what's the timeline for the three regions? So, how does that align with this fiveyear time frame? So, when you say the timeline for the three regions, when will three regions start? Yeah. So it actually will begin um in FY27. Um so
157um assume across the board we will begin operating with the new feeder system begin FY27. Thank you for that. Um preparing students for successful futures. Um, we show this slide and we I'm going provide this information because it's important to note that um, $265 million is a significant investment in the infrastructure in the spaces of where our students learn and where our teachers teach and where our families come to visit and conferences. It is a significant investment. That investment is only enhanced and complemented by rigorous changes in programs and continue to advance programmatic shifts that speak to the whole child and actually lift up academic excellence in all of our buildings and all of our grade levels. And so we want to continue to highlight diploma plus is very much integrated into this plan. um
158literacy in mathematics are very much integrated into this plan because these facilities are meant to enhance those experiences and that engagement and that interaction and those curriculum um programs and in the diploma plus framework. Um they're not meant to operate in isolation of one another. They're meant to support and work in concert and in tandem with one another. This $265 million plan still does that and it actually does it very very well. So to sort of summarize, when you think about uh before we get into some more of the details, um when we think about the advantages of a $265 million plan, it prioritizes student outcomes and future ready learning spaces. Each of those um um components, of course, scored very favorably in every survey that we've ever administered. Um and this plan continues to
159deliver on that. It increases access to career and technical education which we continue to hear is one of the foremost desires of our students and our families. It also increases access to signature school programming in each of our regions because we're investing in every region for students in Monasuri for example to have uh geographical access to those programs. And so it lifts up outcomes and future writing learning spaces for students in every region. um there in the middle column. This particular $265 million plan also reduces the timeline as Dr. Roberts mentioned to get us going from 10 years to five years. That is a significant change because now what we can say is that the vast majority of our students will experience these changes while they're in De Mo public schools. We couldn't have said
160that with a 10-year plan. And um so changing this and moving this to five years allows us to get that done. the community will also see results much much sooner. Um we've talked about this actually I know at this table and we've talked about it in other spaces. Um one of the projects that that is um so fun to watch go up is there at the airport right seeing some of those new structures and some of those new spaces um as you drive by. We will be able to see that in our district within 5 years. All of the work uh of investing in new spaces and modern facilities and career technical education, signature school programming, all of that will take shape within five years, which generates not only excitement, but it generates momentum for
161what's next. What can we do after that? Because we're seeing the results that it's having in our kids' lives. We're seeing the results that's happening for our staff. And so, this is a real opportunity for us to capitalize on that success and that momentum even after the five years. to the right there, we talk about it being auh community informed and right-sized. Um, it's community informed because it still maintains the integrity of the plan that was community informed. And so this we believe strongly that this is supported by the community feedback that we've received to date. And in fact, it actually prioritizes the most favorable feedback that we've actually received. Um, it also allows us to not only be continue to be ambitious and bold in our approach to serving children and serving families, it
162also allows us to be fiscally responsible to our taxpayers, recognizing that the economic times that we're all facing both locally, statewide, and nationally are not ideal. Um, we want to be sensitive to that. And so, again, we want to lift up and appreciate and and appreciate you for giving us that charge and um, flexing that empathy muscle as Dr. Roberts puts it. Um, we believe this plan does that. We believe that it actually is empathetic to um our economic reality and creates an opportunity for us all to engage and invest in our schools differently and in a way that's been unprecedented. So, um what does the revised 265 million plan not include? Um it does not include um nearly, you know, that of of that $500 million plan fullcale renovations in every single building. Um,
163again, when we cut the the financial um plan in half, we cannot make renovations in every single building. So, what you will see momentarily is um in timelines previously presented in a $500 million plan, you would see elementary schools, you would see middle schools, you would see high schools, all on this plan. You won't see that now because we don't have the finances to actually invest in all of our schools through renovations and additions. Again, you're going to see the priorities based on what we've already discussed. you'll see that lifted up. Um the 265 million plan limits renovations to partial upgrades and not full upgrades across our district. Um district-wide capacity adjustments. Um what you will find is that this plan um offers capacity improvements um dramatic improvements at our secondary level, particularly our high
164schools. What that doesn't allow us to do in 265 is make the adjustments for some capacity challenges at some of our elementary schools. Um, and for example, we've got some elementary schools on the south side that are at capacity and over capacity and are projected to actually increase u to be over capacity. Um, this plan doesn't use bond dollars to do that. However, we are allocating and moving save dollars in a position we can actually help support that moving forward. And so we won't be able to do it at every school in every region, but we will do it with targeted um analysis and we'll be able to do it in a manner that actually supports our families and our students and our teachers at some of our elementary school sites. Matt, just a clarification
165on that. So the the total pool of SAVE dollars I think is 75 is it save and pebble is $75 million over five years. It's um about I actually have that for you. It is it's about $43 million in save. Okay. Um but $23 million of that goes to debt services through FY29. And so we actually only have about 20 to 24 uh million yearbyear until FY29. So maybe I misunderstood, but I guess the question is there are overcrowded elementary buildings in some cases and in some in some places. Correct. And what money is available from that save? And is Pebble still when is Pebble phasing out? I always get confused. Um well that that's some information that we're going to have to gather more on. Okay. Right. So yeah, Pebble's being talked about at
166the legislature, but what funds do we have either for an overcrowded building or uh security HVAC, right? because we're we're we're moving some of that fund to support reimagining education. Correct. Um over the 5 years, we're actually moving 25 million and we'll show you that here in a slide in just a second, but to give you an example because you're actually speaking to it. It is um one of the investments by using SAVE to allow that to happen is we're doing that with Weeks Middle School actually right now. Um and it's because Weeks is right at capacity and they're about to go way over the tipping point. There's a brand new apartment complex that's going up and that's actually ready to go that will have actually yield a number of students and um we're trying
167to get ahead of that and so we're already utilizing save to get in front of that actually as I'm speaking. Great. So the revised details of the northeast region. So now we're going to get into a little bit specifics so we can show school by school because I do believe I think that um folks that are here um they want to know what's happening with my school in this revised plan. So we're happy to show that to you. So in the northwest region again the delineation is by the rivers when we look at the regional system. So in the northwest at the prek centers in a $265 million plan the prek center will be McKe. Um we are highlighting the schools in blue to note the change specifically uh dramatic changes from the $500 million
168plan to the $265 million plan. So this revised plan includes McKe will maintain its um current status as a preschool center to continue to offer that accessibility in the north um east region. Elementary schools you'll see are um noted as K through fifth grade where there's exceptions where there are sixth grade capacity and some of that is already taking place even for next year. We'll note that as well. You will see Capitol View. So no change there. They will continue to serve pre-K through fifth grade. Carver will continue to serve pre-K through fifth grade. There is a change to Catel from the original plan. Catel was identified as coming offline. Catel will no longer come offline. It will be um a school that serves K through fifth grade students. Finley Elementary School was a school
169that was identified as being repurposed for preschool. It will no longer be repurposed for preschool. It will continue to serve students in K through 6th grade. Gartner Elementary School will serve students pre-K through 5th. Madison prek through 5ifth, Oak Park K5, Phillips K5, Stow was originally identified to come offline. It will no longer come offline. It will actually serve students as in its current capacity K through 5 and Willard um K through 5 as well. No change there. Um just a reminder again that the reason why some of these schools were identified was because of a um database that we used to generate that. The reason why they come off the list is because in a $265 million plan is we don't have the finances to invest in the infrastructure capacity building at other nearby
170elementary schools to be able to take on the students for enrollment in those buildings. And so what we need to do is maintain those facilities, continue to try to invest in them to the very best we can to improve and upgrade their facilities to serve students um um as best we can. And so we're going to continue to do that. In our middle schools in the northeast, um again looking at middle schools as a sixth through eighth grade campus. Um we've got Goodrell and Hyatt. The conference of high school in the northeast is East High School serving students 9th grade through 12. The proposed signature schools Brewbaker Hoy were noting as a prek through 8th grade. The reason why that the original plan noted as a prek through 12 in this plan because it's a
1715-year plan. We're noting it as a prek through 8th grade building. Um naturally, um as success begets success, once that uh signature school begins to take hold and we begin to grow that, it makes perfect sense that that school continue to progress and metriculate into a prek through 12 campus. But we'll look up here in 5 years and we'll determine is that the direction that we want to go in terms of our investments. But in this current $265 million revised plan, we will look to make that a prek8 signature program serving dual language immersion. North High School is 7th through 12th grade. um Pleasant Hill pre-K through 8th grade. Um I do want to note for North High School that um the reason why that's important is because what's not on here which is Harding
172Middle School in terms of it it will continue to be retired. We will serve the students through the capacity building of Goodwill Hyatt and North because we will be able to take on sixth, seventh and eighth graders in those campuses as we distribute them and so we can continue to make that happen. So the northeast region serves uh three signature schools, PreK8, PreK8, and 712. And you can see Pleasant Hill, Bricker, Hoy, and North. Again, the designations of these signature um pathways um was conducted there right at the end of the school year. I think we talked about this on June 3rd. And the signature school analysis data and what generated these pathways in these regions and the reasons for that. So we're excited to continue that investment. So, the timeline for the Northeast again
173is a shortened timeline. It is a five-year timeline. Um, and you can see that that begins um those uh capital improvement investments in year 2627 school year, the FY27 school year. Um, and so um uh all things um aligned and and and uh everything works out. We pass a bond in November of 2025. we immediately begin um work to make sure that the designs are are in play and that we can begin breaking ground and and those improvements in capital um infrastructure begin FY26 with good role. You'll notice that Harding is slated for retirement in FY32 or the 3132 school year. Um yes, that is technically six years um in a 5-year plan. The reason is because we need that time to make those investments and know those other schools before Harding would come offline.
174And so this time allows us to get that done. Matt, looking at the timeline, it's accurate to say that the end, so for instance, east, the completion date is 2030 2031 school year. That is correct. Thank you for that. So, the revised details for the Northwest region. Um, again, Northwest um pre-K centers in the original plan, JFT, Jesse, Frank, and Taylor and Woodlon were designated in the original plan as preschool centers. They will continue to do so. Um, elementary schools looking at K through fifth grade. Again, if they are K through six, that's noted on there. Um, the downtown school, it was originally um identified to be repurposed. Um, we're going to need the capacity and so downtown school will not be repurposed. It will continue to operate and serves children in K through 5.
175Edmonds uh K through six building. Greenwood would be a pre-K through six building. Um just a note, the original plan had the downtown school merging with Greenwood. Um that is no longer going to be the case. Um they will continue to operate um near proximity. Uh but they're each going to serve those students in those capacities because again we won't have the funds to invest in the capacity building at Greenwood to make that merger happen. Hannah Walt will continue to serve students K through five. Hillis um K through sixth grade. Um Hillis is scheduled to take on sixth graders next year because they have the capacity to do so. Hubble was scheduled to be repurposed. It will no longer be repurposed. It will maintain its K through five um grade configuration. King Elementary School, Monroe,
176Moore, Perkins, Samuelson, and Windsor all K through five as they are currently serving students. When we look at middle school, um, sixth through 8th grades, Kalan and Merrill, Kalanan was scheduled to be retired. Kalanan will not be retired, um, for the same reasons. Um, and I want to continue to say it because I want everybody um, even in the audience to know it's because if we don't have the finances to make the investments in elementary school to support sixth grade um, at those campuses, then we can't make the retirements um, for all of the originally identified seven buildings. Um and so Kalinan will remain online and they will continue to serve students beautifully and magically as they currently do today. Comprehensive high schools is Roosevelt. Uh the proposed signature schools Kohl's Monasuri uh Meredith and
177Hoover uh and Molton Elementary School as a pre-K through 8th grade. The school retiring in the northwest is Walnut Street. Walnut Street was also originally identified to retire. It is still identified to retire. um we can um support the capacity of serving those students in nearby buildings and in other spaces um for IB programming um as it becomes available. Matt, what is the Oh, here you go. Oh, sorry. Okay, there you go. U the signature schools in the Northwest um Kohl's again is currently already serving students pre-K through 8 with Monasuri programming. Um Molton is a will become a preK8 performing arts and visual um school. Um and new uh Hoover Meredith is a steam school focusing on technology integration, coding, digital design, and media tech. Um again, what we have there actually it shows
178712. That's my fault. That should say actually 612 because Meredith is going to maintain sixth grade. So I'll make that adjustment. In the Northwest region, here's the timeline. Um um originally Walnut Street was scheduled um to come offline in the FY20 um uh 7 school year, which means that um FY26 school year, that means next year is um Walnut Street's um last school year as it currently exists, that is still the case. And so um that will still take place. What you see also there is Molton looking um um transitioning to Kurts. Um and so um right now we're looking at Kurts being a better opportunity um to serve um our our Molton students and staff and families. Uh we're continuing to work with um Eddie McCully, the principal there and um we will um
179explore any other options that are available to us. But right now we believe that is the best option for us actually moving forward. Um and it's going to be best for our students. Um just just to be clear, so two years is what it's going to take to get Molten to the place that you want it to be. So yeah, cuz Molton is a new build and so on the same site. And so it would take two years to bring Molten down as it currently exists. Um preserving and maintaining the historical significance of the building and those aspects of it and then building it back up around that significance. um and making sure that they have a state-of-the-art pre-K through 8 performing arts center in the hub of our district and of our community in
180our urban core serving in an area where we have the densest population of students residing um Roosevelt Kalan as when we get to FY29 and FY30. So again, looking at a 5-year implementation, um, and having the vast majority of our students being able to experience these changes, the revised detail plans for the south region, everything south of the Raccoon River. So we see Mitchell as a preschool center. No change there. They were also identified to be the preschool center on the south side. Where you do see some change there in blue is in elementary schools, specifically at Studebaker. Stobaker was um identified to be repurposed as a preschool center on the far south side. Um that will not be the case in a $265 million plan and the reason for that is because if we
181don't have the finances to make the infrastructure investments and other elementary schools to build that capacity then we need to maintain Studebaker as it is and continue to serve students there. We will be able to make some investments in Studebaker because they are actually over capacity already and so there's some save dollars that we've allocated for that. Um, going back up the list, if you look at Jefferson as a pre-K5, um, McKenley, um, all the way through, uh, uh, Park Avenue, Riverwoods, Lovejo, Joy, Morris, no changes there. They will continue to serve as K5, South Union as a K6 grade beginning next year, and Wright Elementary School as a K5. Um, the middle schools, if you look through sixth through 8th grade, you've got Brody, Mcomes, and Weeks. MCOMES was scheduled to be repurposed as
182the K6 where Studebaker was going to um you know essentially move over. Um that will not be the case. Mcomes will continue to serve students 6th through 8th grade in that location. Um the reason for that is because we are not able to make the investments in the infrastructure in other buildings to take on students in that respect. The conference of high school would be Lincoln High School. Uh the proposed signature schools there are Jackson and Kurts as originally designed and the retired building is how um how was also originally retired. It was actually the um only building identified in the $500 million plan to be retired on the south um side region. Um it's still the only building design um identified to be retired there. So um before we jump into some of uh
183well let me finish this up. Um let me do make the statement. We have three schools being identified for retirement. it's one in each region. Um, and so I feel like that's an important fact um to point out. Um, we received a lot of feedback about whether or not we were actually having too many schools in in one region or another being retired. Um, this is not to say that we approached this work by saying let's make sure that everybody has equal in the regions. What we looked at is is let's make sure that we are lifting up the prior the priorities of this plan, the favorability, and what's going to actually have the most impact on our students outcomes and their accessibility to highquality programming in every region. And we use that approach to
184drive how we built a $265 million plan. Real quick, um so Kurds right now, what's in Kurtz? Curtis um offers uh the welcome center um options uh programming, focus programming, and there's some um space there's some office spaces there for some of our staff members, but there's also um some professional development spaces there. So, just thinking um for the people that are watching, we could say that Kurts is just being repurposed and that's going to be like something sooner rather than later. Yes. Yeah. Um yes. So, um, we are working through, um, um, we've need to meet with those staff members, um, and those administrators about where they're going to be relocated, but we've got some really good opportunities for them moving forward with the $265 million plan. Okay. Yeah. Originally, in the in the
185timeline in the $500 million plan, it was much later on. So, this accelerates that, right? So, it um, which has its advantages um, because we get some signature school programming on the south side actually much sooner than the original timeline allowed us to do. And then will those programs be there during um Molton? Yeah. No, they will not be. Nope. So, they'll be moving prior to Molton doing some work. So, they don't know where we're at right now. Uh well, yeah, we we know where we're at, but we need to actually have those meetings with those folks to make sure that they are um they are aware of that. Okay. Could I also add um in the transition of Molton going to Kurts, there are some special things that we are working through with the
186administration at Molton about um family transportation to if their child is sick, how do they pick up their child? Uh parent teacher conferences being held at King instead of all the way down at Southside at Kurts. So, we know that as we transition into that swing school, there will be some special provisions for Molten families that we'll need to make and we are working with the administration and community partners at those spaces to make sure that's good. This might be kind of out there, but why is it not decided that we have Harding as like a swing school for Molton that's closer on that side of town for those parents that are that don't drive or that need transportation? It's because of the timeline and the investments that need to be made earlier on in
187other schools in the northeast region to give us time before Harding comes offline. So, we actually can accelerate um by moving programs from Kurts to get u we can do that quicker um in terms of our of relocating programs than we can with Harding. There's much fewer kids. I appreciate the question. Thanks for Yeah. for bringing that up. We looked at other buildings and other opportunities um for that. Um, and it always comes back to um, the investments that we make based on the timeline of building capacity when something can come offline to be freed up as a as a transition school or something like that. And right now, the way we've designed this $265 million plan, the quickest we can make those investments in those other schools in the Northeast to support students at
188Harding is the first four years, which allows us to then transition Harding later on. So, it wouldn't be available Matt, how will it work just in general? Because this will happen on many campuses. I would assume there are some campuses that are over capacity that will have renovations that will allow for new classroom space to alleviate some of that capacity concern. How's that going to happen while you're adding kids to schools just in general? Some people are going to look at this and say, you're adding kids to schools, you got to build the space to fill them, and are we just going to be crowded for a couple of years or Yeah. um mostly no. Um but so we can add space um in almost every case prior to adding students in those spaces. And
189so um the the the timeline is actually designed to do that is to get the spaces built first before we begin to add students in those spaces. And so there's some exceptions to that that we'll need to work through some of those details. Um there's also um the opportunity to take our current existing facilities and how the space is currently being utilized and the functions of them to redesign existing spaces so that we create more capacity in our current designs in those situations where we might need to add some students in there prematurely. And just one more question with the reduced from 10 to five years do our experts have any concerns about the timeline? Are we shrinking our timeline at all to build in order to get this done in 5 years? And my
190question there is a little bit about what if there are delays and a little bit about making sure that we're doing this safely and well. Yeah. So, uh, thanks Donald, thanks for the question. Um, this timeline is built, um, in consultation with architects and those that do this work um, and what's possible. Um, now that being said, are there always things that could potentially happen? Absolutely, as we all know. Uh but this is built in um um collaboration with and in consultation with um those professionals and those experts that do this work. Yeah. Thank you, Matt. One of the points that I would offer just for consideration um based off some of the comments I've heard from some of the southside um residents in in relation to the Molten Curts swing school. There was some
191concern in the past around um Kurt's around Lincoln High School being able to still utilize Kurt's space for athletics and activities. Um with this now having Molton serve as a swing uh or Kurt serve as a swing during that time. I don't have a solution. It's not necessarily a question, but something to think about and how Lincoln will utilize that space if they need it for practices or other activities. Yeah. No, thanks for lifting that up and we are currently thinking through that about how to actually create the schedule that allows for that to both uh to dual exist um and so it's definitely on the forefront of our planning and our collaborative conversations 100%. Thank you for that. um Southside region. Just want to make sure that I point out if I didn't talk
192about this the preK8 is Jackson identified as Monasuri and 712 at Kurtsby and CTE um with focuses on aviation business um that business including production and marketing um and environmental science and a um a sciences as well. the timeline for the southside. Um I do want to note in this particular timeline you can see in the 2526 school year which is next year um weeks is already will be started. Um, so again, that's utilizing some save dollars, not bond dollars obviously, but utilizing save in order to to go ahead and not only address capacity, but also to go ahead and build those spaces um for CTE labs, for project-based learning, those modern learning spaces um at Weeks Middle School. That is currently scheduled right now to happen in the next school year. Matt, what does
193something like that cost? Um, on average, if you look at a classroom space um square footage wise, it's about a million dollars a classroom. Um, we've got schools are a little bit more. Preschool is a little bit more because how much does the weeks the the saved how much? It's about $6 million investment. Thank you. Yes. Um, districtwide, um, you're not going to see much change at the district level either. Um, again, these stars are just to note kind of where we have district offices. We're still going to have um, for example, and also districtwide programming. Central Academy will continue to serve 7th through 12th grade. Central Campus 9th through 12th grade. Uh again we still have our aggro um aronomy greenhouse and aviation um there's no changes there estimated project cost. So how do
194we actually determine the amounts for a $265 million plan? So what this allow us to do? So what we've done is articulate um by region the investments through the priorities that we've talked about and what that actually results in. So in the northeast you're looking at an almost $90 million investment. In the Northwest, a $65 million investment. There's an asterisk to that. Um, in the south, a $53 million um $53 million investment. There's an asterisk to that. Um, and you'll see that we pulled out new builds. Um, the reason why we did that is because it's the only new build in this plan. Um, in the regional design, the new build is Molten. Moltton is in the Northwest. And so, it's the only new build in this $265 million plan. And so by placing it
195in the Northwest, it looks like the Northwest is receiving $ 107 million and nobody else is not getting near that kind of money regionally. Um so we wanted to actually pull that out for two reasons. Number one, it is our only new build and it so it is unique. It's also centrally located and the most accessible by all regions based on its geographical location. And so we do believe that this signature pathway at Molton serving pre-K through8 students is going to be a significant draw from students from all parts of the region. So we thought it warranted its own category as a new build at 42 million. Um it's also important to note that these are escalated costs. So we took today's dollars, added the 5% per year. These are escalated costs. That's what you
196see um because that's what we need to expect to have happen. Um, you'll also see construction contingency at 15 million. Um, the reason for that is because that is actually standard when you're going to build projects, right? Whether you're doing a home project or whether you're doing projects that we're talking about doing at $265 million. The um, American Institute of Architects recommends a 5 to 10% contingency. 15 million represents about 6%. So, we're right within that threshold. Um the other asterisk that I want to note is on the south side you look at 53 u million there. We're going to show some um slides here subsequent slides that talk about um um additional investments particularly through save dollars um that allow that. So it looks like 53 million from bond. there's actually more save dollars
197that we'll actually be able to use particularly on the south side to add um some preschool capacity to add some sixth grade classrooms and to actually help support over capacity at some of our elementaryaries particularly schools like Studebaker. Um Morris is rapidly approaching that same situation. So there's opportunities there to use save dollars. So I am going to go ahead and I I guess I'll talk about that here in just a second. Um, so in the Northeast, when we begin to break that down by school, what you see in front of you are the current and the future grade configurations, the transition year based on the uh capital improvement investments, the estimated construction costs per building, and the proposed scope of that work. Um, so a couple of things to note. Again, the bottom line
198there is about 89 close to $90 million. Um, draw your attention to North High School at $ 32 million. um that's a much higher investment um than what was originally imposed. And what the reason is is because when we began to look at a reduced scope and we began to associate dollars to this knowing that we needed to not only renovate the building for the signature programs and the CTE pathways um classrooms that we need, we also need to add space to accommodate seventh and eighth grade students. And so the reason why you'll see North High School in comparatively speaking to a a Hoover High School is North High School needs additional classroom space to support seventh and eighth grade students. Hoover already has seventh and eighth grade students supported in its current Meredith design.
199And so you'll see a le it won't be 32 million. It's actually closer to 21 million. It's on the next slide. U but that that would account for the difference in the investment in those areas. um you'll see a pretty consistent investment of around that $6 million at our middle schools. Just like we just spoke about with Weeks Elementary School or Weeks Middle School, currently they're going to get a $6 million investment for next year. You'll see similar $6 million investments in middle schools for that CTE programming and those modern spaces and the opportunity to actually alleviate some capacity issues. Um again, these are all 5% escalated costs. Um when we look at the Northwest, um you'll see that $65 million um total there. Um you'll note that again that six uh almost a $7
200million investment at each of our middle schools. Um you'll see um a $19 million investment at um Roosevelt. Um Roosevelt is significantly over capacity and we need to do a lot of investments there, not only with our CTE programming and the spaces, but just classroom spaces in general to support the capacity at Roosevelt. Roosevelt also has one of the smallest cafeterias in the history of high school cafeterias. Um, and so it creates a significant number of challenges um, not just for staff but for students um, at Roosevelt High School. So we need to do some significant cafeteria work to enhance the overall experience of everybody at Roosevelt High School. Um, Hoover High School, it's um, I said maybe 21 million, it's $16.3 million investment at Hoover. Um, when you combine that with an almost $7
201million at Meredith, that's where we're getting the 23 $24 million investment. And so, um, again, Hoover and Meredith, for those, um, listening that don't know, they're connected. Um, they are physically connected. Um, and they are also connected programmatically and spiritually. Um, all the things that make you connected. So, um, they're receiving about a $23 million combined investment. On the south side, you'll see a $53 million total there. Again, um what I want to note that is that um there's a side coming up. Um we have other investments um from SAVE that would allow us to um create more opportunities on the south side, particularly in preschool programming expansion as the program um dollars become more sustainable as well as sixth grade moving to elementary schools and some capacity issues that we know we're seeing. Um
202I think it's important to note this. Um the investments of some of those saved dollars um in all parts of the district, but particularly the southside um are so important that we opted to utilize save dollars for that because that allows us the flexibility and um the opportunity to make those investments whether or not a bond passes. And so when we look at a $53 million um investment and then we add to that another 15, another 20 um through save, it really allows us to actually bring this back to an opportunity where it's the southside is not receiving fewer dollar investments. We're actually prioritizing the southside through the utilization of SAVE and repurposing what's going to end up being $25 million from SAVE to support these same endeavors and these same elements of the plan.
203Um you'll see uh Kurt's opportunity there at 20 um at.5 u million. Um Lincoln High School also at um almost 16 million. Lincoln also is very um um over capacity. And so this is going to do um an incredible job of helping to support um the overall student, family, and staff experience there. Um when we look at new builds, um we've slated obviously multi school for $42 million. That is an escalated cost, but um it needs to be $42 million based on inflation and also based on the fact that it's going to go from a prek to 8 um uh program and it's going to have more capacity to serve again students in the highest density of our district. Um it is in the urban core. It is in the heart of the urban core
204which means it is the most accessible by all regions. Matt, can you discuss how you chose the signature focus? um for Bolton. Yeah. So, same process in terms of um lifting up the signature survey data from our families. Um so, that analysis created multiple data points um from multiple different surveys actually in multiple different um venues. But what it lifted up was a strong desire particularly in students from preK through 8 to be involved in performing arts, but also regionally based on um the Northwest region because technically that's where um uh Molton is located um in our new regional system. that was the most desirable from not only students but also from families. Um it's also um just sort of serendipitous that Molton already engages in arts um um artful learning for students. Um if
205you were to actually walk in Molton today um you'll see what the um very creative principal Eddie McCully has done to that building along with some other um local artists to create um an environment where performing and visual arts is a part of their um everyday well-being. Um, and so it matches the historical um, emphasis at Molton, but it also actually happened to be exactly what parents were asking for, what students were asking for, and it's also what we can deliver on. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for that question. Um, the use of Save and Pebble dollars. So, um, we've talked about that actually quite a bit tonight and so I think it's important to note that, um, these are not limitless funds that we have in SAVE nor Pebble. Um, and again, SAFE specifically
206brings in about $43 million of the a year. There's about 23 20-ish, you know, dollars a year that actually goes to debt service. And so that goes through FY29. Um, so we have about $20 million a year and saved. What that actually does is allows us to maintain all of our facilities as it is. And so every year we have about $20 million that we look to apply towards um mechanical systems, towards electrical systems, towards um capacity challenges in some of our um schools across the district and across the regions. So um it allows us to address those needs to not only be um agile um in moments of crisis, right, where we've got almost we've got multiple apartment plexes going up. we can be agile with those dollars, but it also allows us um
207to address the sustainability of our facilities. Um it's no um it's not by chance that the district has actually won 13 years straight the Energy Star award uh because these investments also go towards that um and we will continue to do that. Part of the uh outputs of this particular work over the last two years has been the development of a facility condition assessment conducted by BBS architecture. Um that created the opportunity for us to tear out with the superintendent advisory committee what are the needs that are most urgent in the next 3 to 5 years. What are the needs that we need in the next 6 to 10? What are the needs that we need in the next 11 to 15? So by utilizing that tiered system, we know that we can actually pull
208out 25 million and still take these other dollars and support the needs. um many of the needs in the next three to five years based on um what was lifted up in those facility condition assessments. So that's how we will use save. That's how we've used it in the past and how we'll use it differently is to supplement and support the particularly on the south side um this reimagined plan so that we can be agile and nimble and that we can actually create some spaces and opportunities for students to access preschool and career and technology and sixth grade and elementary schools and do so whether or not the bond passes. Um again, right now we've allocated $25 million out of SAFE. So, um what is the financial impact of this? Um this is a chart
209just to show the sort of the average um homeowner value by zip code. Um there are several zip codes in De Mo proper. Um and so this just provides um what that does. The reason why we show this slide is because as we know um based on a $265 million bond um the increase in property tax is based on the valuation of the home. And so not every home will receive the same impact. It just depends on the valuation the assessed valuation of the home. And so with multiple um average home valuations, you're going to see folks impact a little bit different. But we wanted to offer what is an average um home in De Moine, what impact might a $265 million plan do? Um what that actually will do is create um for a
210home on average uh that is assessed at $210,000. Um that would be an increase yearly of less than $200, right? At $198 for a yearly increase. What that results in is a monthly increase if you were to break it down by months at $1653 on average, right? So if again taking an average household assessed at a value of 210,000, a monthly investment in property tax and increase would be about $1653. Um the last time I looked at my Netflix subscription, it was more than that. Um and so we are talking about the opportunity to make generational change. Um, and I don't shake a stick at $1653 a month. That's an investment. Um, it's an investment in students. It's an investment in hope. It's an investment in academic rigor. It's an investment in changing the paradigm
211for 30,000 children. Um, Netflix does a lot of good things, but it doesn't do that for our kids. It doesn't create those opportunities in those spaces. When we look at the $265 million plan, the yearly uh cost, again, per valuation, we just use sort of $50,000 increments for homes, 100, 150, 200. We look at the annual uh residential cost in a $265 million plan um versus a $500 million plan. And we show this because what we want folks to see is it will impact homeowners differently based on their home evaluation. Uh but it also um it shows that we're literally cutting the investment in half. Um and so when we compare a $500 million investment of a bond to a $265 million investment, it's going to impact um folks significantly less in their property taxes.
212Matt, I just want to double check on one number. Is is one of those numbers erroneous? maybe at the $200,000 line only because I remember. Isn't it closer to $350 in Are you talking about the for the 500,000 500 500 million million? Um that could be it could be three only because you're saying yes it dropped. That was a pretty significant piece that we felt was too high. So I just want to make sure we made a decision based on Good. You're correct. Yeah, cuz I just see where it actually dropped from 267 to 256. So, you're right. Um, and you can't see it, but I'm using my pointer on my screen, but that's not that's not helpful right now. Thank you. So, but you're correct. I believe it's 356. It was a It should
213be 356 cuz I think that was the basis with which we made the decision. 100%. Right. So, thank you for that catch. Um, so that is 356 for a $500 million plan at 200,000 188 a year for a $265 million plan. Yes, thank you for that. Great catch, Jackie. Um, so next steps. Um, the next steps are, um, if you look at right in the middle of this timeline, you see July 15th circulate bond petition. Um, we're on track. Um, we're on track to do that. Um, that's a great place to be in. Um, but what we need to know is, um, we need to be able to circulate this petition. We need to finalize the petition. And so, um, we've invited, um, our friends and and neighbors and partners in this work. um allers
214um tonight um to be able to talk a little bit about um the bond language because the reason why we're previewing this tonight is this bond language reflects a $265 million bond. Um it is not a bond language that reflects 500 million. It is tonight's presentation. It is tonight's $265 million bond. Um and but before we jump into that bond language and preview that um and we'll have um Beth and team talk a little bit about it. Um Dr. Dr. Roberts, I know that um what we were seeking tonight was um um board response. Um and when you consider the charge of coming back with a 200 um50 $300 million and what we land on was a $265 million plan. Um we want to make sure that we are meeting um your needs and meeting
215your challenges and your expectations for this work and that we are doing and lifting up the right priorities um to accelerate academic outcomes for students and create the spaces where our students can be feel seen heard and valued and they are making the academic gains that we all want them to make. Uh board members I'm going to s Yeah, I'm going to suggest it let you any clarifying questions first. So from the presentation are there any clarifying questions just before we do that? I know I have two. So, um the I just want to go back to preK because we all know it's a critical priority for DMPS. If if prek is unable to be if the funding is unable to be increased, right, because the state does not choose to make that a priority
216if we have to keep it at status quo and not grow prek funding, are we making the right decision in the selection of the buildings? Yeah, so the thanks for that question. So the selection of the buildings will be based on funding um sustainability and so if it's not coming from state um um legislation then we will look to create those fundings with um grants with partners with other sort of sustainable funding not general fund dollars right and so we will look to expand upon the current general fund dollars that we currently use and look for other opportunities to make that a more sustainable venture and as we do that and and as you heard tonight like um our ability um under Kayle's leadership and Dr. Roberts to grow community partners um is really really
217um exciting and promising and so we feel really really good and optimistic about our ability to grow sustainable programming dollars for preschool because we've had so much interest in so many investments in preschool already and so we'll look to continue to do that and we will make those targeted investments in the infrastructure through save and things like that as we're able to make that um that program and shift. Great. Thank you. I think my second question is um by not taking buildings offline. Yeah. Can you provide us some answer as it relates to budget implications? Sure. Obviously part of the choice in taking buildings off bringing buildings offline was a cost savings. And so can you foreshadow for us to the best of your ability um the the budget implications that we will still have
218on our general fund even with the decisions that you are recommending for the bond. Sure. So, um, hard number-wise, um, this plan with the investments that we make, um, and the cost avoidance, um, that we would have based on these investments and and three schools still coming offline, we will be, um, right around a million dollars in 5 years of savings. Um, so that's that includes avoidance and just maintenance and operational costs. um the implications that I think you're also maybe um talking about in terms of um will we still have cuts that we need to make and the answer is yes. Um and so um this actually um this plan will not um um prevent us from making cuts in the district moving forward. Um however which includes build which which could include buildings,
219right? It could include um additional uh buildings. Um, however, what this plan as a $265 million plan does do is actually give us gives us the best chance to retain and attract students because the the key here and the the the critical factor is enrollment um as we all know. And so how we talk about these spaces, how we talk about education, how we talk about serving one another and creating opportunities for accessibility and the rigorous um programs that we can offer, that's what makes the difference in terms of retention and recruitment and offering signature programs that are unique that no one else officers bring students in. It's the enrollment factor that we need to continue to address u which is why it's lifted up in our strategic plan. Um so yes um as we
220begin to turn the tide on enrollment all things change, right? And then we're able to actually do more things and that's where we begin to see um fewer and fewer and ideally zero cuts um moving forward. Great. Board members, clarifying questions. I have one clarifying question. It is not necessarily about the facilities piece of this, but more so the personnel. Now hearing that some of the schools are coming back online that were originally planned to go offline, I I'd imagine there were probably some teachers that made decisions based off previous information. How are the schools looking now that were originally planned to go offline from a personnel and educator perspective? Um, actually still really well. Our our um fill rate um are I'm not saying that right. the number of stu uh staff that have
221left our district is actually not any different than any typical year. Um and so it's not more um it's not less um than what has happened in years prior to that. Um even at schools that were identified to come offline. We have some we have lost some teachers though that um a school was designated to come offline in year six or seven that chose to go elsewhere. Um in conversations with some of those teachers, they will tell you that it's actually not about reimagine, it's about their own circumstances. So, um I think your question um if I'm if I'm tracking um Dr. Mayberry Maze is um how are we handling that and how are we reaching out to folks and we are making those communications. But the first step tonight is to actually make sure
222that um we are all in um unison in support of a $265 million plan and singing from that same himnil. um as we begin to reach out um to staff to make sure that they know here's the $265 million plan and if you chose to leave um based on something so reason about this, we'd love to have you back. Um and so there's real opportunities for us um to improve and increase our communication to staff um as this night continues. Great. Thank you. Thank you, sir. All right, board members, it's now the time to just I think uh go around the table and give some feedback. And I think the feedback can be pretty simple, but how is everybody feeling about a move forward at this point and um and then from there we'll invite
223um the team up to talk about the bond language. Perfect. All right, I'll go. I'm fired up. Let's go. So I don't know. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm I'm shouting here because again this is what I know the board has you have been so enthusiastic about this but you've continued to push us to get this into the right space and then as Matt shared earlier um just also wanted to make sure that we are considering impact on our community so thank you for that Matt and Amanda excellent presentation and now board thank you as you're going around but the board cheers direction for us to get that enthusiastic thumbs up and you can use both hands and both thumbs so the community sees that as well I'll I'll go First, I I think um this
224is what the community asked for. This is still what the community asked for. And as we brought the 10-year plan in, I think this focuses down and concentrates what the community was really excited about. And so, I'm still excited about $265 million. I'm still excited about it being over 5 years because I I do think it gets built faster. I also believe that and I and I want to point out that I think that um the staff, the administration, our leaders in each building and our teachers have already made a down payment on this in their actions over the last two years. There is progress being made and it's not fast enough for anybody. Um but we have shed some of the barriers that have been in place. Um attitudes are changing and I just
225personally feel that shift. Uh, and I'm excited about the combination of that cultural change along with uh, the investment that we can make in our buildings. It's not everything we want. Um, but I think this is, as Matt said, this is the best chance of us turning around enrollment and that is the best investment we can make in the future, financial future uh, of the district. But regardless of all that, I'm excited about what a uh kindergarten student 3 or four years from now is going to see when they get to high school uh in our district and the opportunities that they're going to have. And that's that's what this is about. Matt, Amanda, team, everyone that is behind the all that you have presented tonight. Um thank you. I am filled with gratitude tonight.
226I am grateful that you used community input to drive this. I'm grateful that you used data and lots of data to inform your decisions. I'm grateful that you are empathetic to the economic reality that we are facing. Um I'm I'm grateful for the access that our students are going to have. Um, the fact that you bring up Netflix, it was it it took my breath away. Um, in my mind, that right there is is so impactful. To think that anyone could possibly say that this isn't worth it. Our students aren't worth it for the price of Netflix every month or a few coffees every month. Um, I just thank you for for making that analogy. I am I wholeheartedly support this plan. I support what we are going to be doing for our students and
227families and our entire community and um look forward to the next steps. Thank you. I think you'll find a theme in some of the comments tonight. Also very appreciative for what the team has done to get us to this point. I know it's been a very iterative process. There's been a lot of feedback from the board. Uh, one of the things that I'd like to point out u on on one of the slides that you mentioned is the design and construction of 130 new innovative spaces and to hear that piece of it when I drive past the airport every single day and see the benefit and the beauty of innovation and new spaces and what it does to a community and its vibrancy. I'm really excited. One of the uh points that you often make,
228Matt, is about the last time this community went out to ask for a bond from this community. And I think I was 7 months old, and it's about time again that we do it. And I'm really excited for re-imagine education for De Mo Public Schools. Um I feel like I have looked at this project with a little bit of a side eye the whole time. Maybe I haven't been at the table. Um I haven't been a part of the group that's met regularly and has been in as uh indepth in all the details. Um but what you share tonight gives me a lot of hope, excitement, and optimism. And you are so right. Uh this is our opportunity to not only reimagine education in De Moine, but I think we're doing something that's bigger. I
229think it's just reimagining public education in general at a time where people are really hungry for it. And I think we have an opportunity to set the stage for how to do it across the nation. Um I was really I I just thought the timing of Kaylee sharing all the work um that she's been doing around community partners could not have been more perfect to dovetail with this presentation because it is going to take our whole community to lift the programs off the ground. It's going to take uh additional investments but we as Patrick said we've been doing the work in this district and uh Dr. Roberts and team have been doing an amazing job of showing our community that we are making changes. We are being nimble. We are being responsive. Um and now
230we are going to deliver on what they asked for which is a new new and exciting way to think about public education. And so um I give you two thumbs up Dr. Roberts and uh kudos to the team. Excited for all this to come. Uh, thanks the team and everybody that was on your guys' committee. I know this was a long year and a half or so that we've been the from start to finish. Um, I remember when we did release the original and the feedback from the parents and the family and the community members about the school closures and the amount. Um, as a product of De Moine public schools, kids graduated and then I have another set that's going to are is in school. Um, I'm excited about this plan. We need something
231different for our students. We need to be back on top like we were before. Um, and I just wanted to let the families out there know, our taxpayers out there know that we really, really thought about our community when it came to the bond referendum, when it came about um the placements of the schools and we really, really, really wanted to hear from you guys. and you guys came out and talked about or gave us the feedback that we needed. And I hope that you really understand that this is a vision that us as a board, us as a school district heard from you guys that you want in our in your community. Um, I'm just super excited and I appreciate everything you guys done, uh, with everything from the very bottom talking to all
232the parents that you can, all the community members and really taking heart what De Moines is. Thank you. You know, I I don't know that there is a whole lot more that I could say. I know that when we first started talking about this, I got a headache. And I thought, you know, when is this ever going to be done? You know, when are we actually going to be able to hear, okay, we're ready to go. And here we are. We're ready to go. um the community uh parents, students, it this is this change has been just overdue, way overdue. And every family and every student, every employee in the district, um every person in De Moine truly deserves this change and thank you so much for the investment that you have made. I I
233think you might have more gray hair, Mr. Matt. Um certainly, absolutely. Certainly. Um thank you for giving yourself more gray hair. We appreciate it. The community appreciates it. Um I am so looking forward to what this will be like. It's going to be great. Thank you so much. Thank you, Madam Chair. One more thing. One more thank you. Um and that is that this started as a building's um problem. That's the way it was viewed. And I just want to say thank you because you're the one that made us all pause and say this is also an opportunity. This is an opportunity. It's not just a problem. And so, thank you for your leadership in asking us to reframe this question and move it forward. Yeah, I I um thank you for that. I think
234um I'm most proud that our board and staff worked so well together and that we're able to say unanimously we're so excited about this and we can't wait. And I think the only thing I can add to everything that people have said is that you know kids this this investment matters to our kids. They don't need all the fancy stadiums because a really nice classroom that has great plugs and some maker space is a really big deal for our kids and I know that they're going to walk tall knowing that their community invested in them. So, I really hope that the community supports this more than 60%. We want a lot more than that because our kids deserve it. So, thank you very much. Thank you guys very much. Can we clap? Thank you. um
235board, thank you so much for the two thumbs enthusiastic support matter at this time, can we have um attorney Beth Gro and team um come up and so we can um Yes, thank you Dr. Roberts. And so um while while Beth is stepping up, I just want to um note that um in the slide in front of you um to Dr. Mayberry's point, he was 7 months old in 1989. That was the last that was the last time De Mo public schools went out for a bond referendum um to improve um the infrastructure for students in the spaces in which they learn and the spaces in which teachers and administrators teach. And so um this is a unique unique opportunity to once again create generational change and for us to advance De Mo public schools
236as the premier destination district in the state of Iowa. So, um, with us we have Beth Grobe, um, from Allers's Attorneys. And so, what's in front of you is a draft of just preview of language that reflects the $265 million plan. So, I'll just turn it over to Beth and then we can answer any questions that you might have. And just to say, I think success tonight would be that any feedback was provided, please. But then, uh, very quickly, right, it is turned around and given right back to you. so that the um the focus can go into um acquiring signatures correct in the community. So I and I would really stress like material significant changes is what would be important to elevate tonight. Thank you. I I would tell you you did a great
237job. Um Matt, Dr. Robert's team, they were very detailed. They really pushed their their um church sleeves up. dug in and got everything done and when they came back and said we need this kind of a project drafted we had a lot of back and forth and they were very responsive and we got it done. So um as you know the ballot question has to contain the amount of bonds to be issued and the purposes for which the bond issu the bond proceeds would be spent. So it it's focused on you know additions, improvements, remodeling. Um your facility folks did a great job of providing that language to us. We also put some language in there about the re-imagining education plan. You know, we're we're we're going to provide funds to implement the re-imagining education
238plan with these goals and we're going to do that by making these capital improvements that are listed there. So, if you recall that the voters have to have a substantial degree of certainty on the projects on which they're they're voting on and this provides that. Where is the nimleness? So obviously you we want to deliver what the voters think they're voting for and at the same time 5 years in this world seems to be a really long time and so how how is this nimble if there was a change if something came in over budget? H how do you Well, we don't allocate money to each project in this. It's very generic. We don't put square footage. We don't say, you know, how we're going to use each space to your your comment about preschool.
239That's a board decision. So, we just provide very generic language regarding we're going to um remodel some buildings uh and we're going to build additions to some buildings and that's all we're doing. We're not saying you have to do the, you know, 16 million at this building. That's the plan. But if something comes in under or over um we can adjust. That's just about effective reporting to taxpayers on why choices were made. Exactly. If some if by chance something were to come in under budget and we had money at the end, haha, um would we would the district have the flexibility to to make investments in non-named facilities? Not really, but they could go back to these buildings and and do more at those buildings. If if for example something was cut, let's say something
240was cut at Hoy. Um if you had had an an underbudget project at Meredith, you could go back to Hoy and say, "Okay, we're going to add that back in." Board members, other questions? And just to clarify, that means if that's on here, we we have to make an investment in that building. So we cannot run out of money. All has to be timed appropriately so that all investments are made. Correct. Okay. Does anybody have any significant or material changes that they would like to bring forward? Last call. Can we add the first eight signatures right now? I can get that done pretty quickly first thing in the morning. Uh I think you got the feedback you needed from the board and it sounds like you are going to be off to the races. So
241um thank you so much for waiting here for as long as you did to get that answer. We really appreciate it. I was Thank you. I was out of college in 1989. me. Just um Matt, I'm not sure how you planned on closing this up and maybe letting the board know next steps. There's I don't know if there's like 60 more slides. There's not. We're kind of at the end there. Um um what we intended was to close out was to say um thank you um to each of you and your leadership and your support um and your feedback um that's been consistent for us. um um headaches and gray hair um are a part of doing the right work for children and um so we can never express our gratitude enough for your leadership
242and what you continue to push us and to make us to think about things differently in De Mo public schools. So it it takes all of us to get that done. So we definitely wanted to lift up our gratitude for each of you and the work that you've done. I also want to I would be remiss if I did not mention yet again the committee and the work that they did, the time that they put in. They spent hours and hours and hours over almost two years away from their families, away from their friends to invest in this detailed work and this complex work. And so um I can never express enough gratitude for them and what they've done. and we're in a really really good position to make um substantial change for 30,000 children
243for generations to come. Um and so thank you so very much. The next steps are we will be working and sharing information with the campaign committee which is a separate entity. It's not part of De Mo Public Schools. It is made up of um community members and parents and students and information will be shared with them. they will communicate out to everyone else how to get involved, how to actually sign the petition. All of that will come from them. That doesn't come from De Mo Public Schools. And so, a lot of that will be going later on this week. Um, updates to the Reimagine Education website, the Reimagine Education website will begin tomorrow and take a next couple of days, next few days to get that done, but you'll begin to see these changes reflected
244on the website because we know a lot of folks go to the website um for their information. We will continue to make those edits and those changes to reflect what you saw here tonight. Um along with working with our strategic partners um both internally with Phil and team with CISO and we are adding another uh consultant partner to the work. Um we are all getting together tomorrow to make sure that we're all singing from the same himnil and working from the same page so that we can roll out all of this revised plan to our community methodically and that we're reaching all parts of our district. So, um, a lot more to come in terms of communication, but we're excited, um, to move this forward. And just so the board knows, uh, I think we
245did a quick training on, you know, the the dos and don'ts when you're at this point where it now goes into the community uh, for passage. And so, the campaign arm is responsible for advocating and encouraging people to vote. district the district is allowed to provide factual information and answer questions but the line is really around advocating in support of so just understand there's a nuance there and uh it's even more strict for staff than it is for board members but u we'll we'll kind of go back over that so everybody's clear on yeah that'd be great if that could be emailed out again or something great yes Dr. Robert, thank you team. Thank you. Um, nothing else to add. Um, now we are off to the races. The real work gets started now and
246so there are more gray hairs to be added, Matt and Amanda. But board, um, I cannot overstate um, your enthusiastic support, your um, just inspiring position around let's make sure that we reimagine education for this district because we deserve it. This puts us in a place to get back to that place of preeminence that De Mo public schools once had. And to both Neben and Ox's point, um this work is not just about De Mo public schools in central Iowa, but it's a model potentially for the state of Iowa in terms of how we offer public education and across the country. So, the work continues. Thank you, Matt and Ma. Thank you, board. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. [Applause] Wow. And we have a few more things to do. Yeah. Um I am
247going to take a quick look. I think we have Neil's ready. Neil. Oh my gosh. How this is I'm excited for this one. We are fired up to here. CIO. This is going to be great. Um, I I will also say offline, Dr. Roberts, I'm going to be texting you just about our close session and get some feedback and input from you on that. Um, take it away. All right. Well, you know, I noticed I get the the 900 p.m. uh prime time slot after Seinfeld, right? Like this is the this is hard to follow. So, no, I you know, this is my first kind of uh update to the board. And what I want to do before I even start is kind of set the the tone and the stage for not just this
248but all the discussions you'll hear from me going forward. And it really is the technology function philosophically. We are not here to fix computers to manage servers to deploy networks. We are here to be a strategic partner in collaboration with all the functional offices in this district. especially our teaching and learning partners to fundamentally shape and reshape education in a modern environment. We know we can do differentiation, personalized learning, multi multimodal instruction at scale. We can engage students in new ways we never have before. give them voice an opportunity to be seen that they've never had and really prepare them for the dynamic kind of tech infused world they're going to graduate into. So we fix computers, we manage servers, we build networks because it's the foundation of doing that and we need to do
249even more and I'll start revealing some of what more means going forward. But we're also tech nerds and we do like doing tech stuff. So that's fun too. So when you bring that all together, that's the real power. So tonight we're going to go quick. The each one of these could easily be a 30 minute an hourong deep dive. This is very wavetop level to get you all familiarized and to bring some context on a lot of activities that have been going on in the last year. We'll start with cyber security that's been important to us. We'll talk about our current state and some ongoing actions to make sure you all are aware and then really look at the strategic plan and look uh what are some of our next steps are all right so
250cyber security many of you were here for this but for the those in the we have a lot of new members um and those that are online let let's talk about the event in January 23 a highcapacity threat actor a very capable bad guy was able to compromise uh de mo public schools technology systems. They encrypted a number of capabilities resulting in having to effectively shut the district down for a number of days and created knock-on effects for weeks and months. In and in in some ways, we're we're still dealing with some of the implications therein. It really made cyber security uh our top priority for the last few years. The good news is we made a lot of changes. Um, we fundamentally changed how we segment and architected our networks and servers. We brought
251on board a managed security operation center function through a partnership with H Heartland Business Systems that can detect and respond to bad guys 24/7, helping us stay in front of it. We employed a virtual chief information security officer to help us with policy and other functions that we would normally get out of that without bringing that person on full-time. We changed how we do privilege account access control. We've expanded policies in testing like testing and incident response plan and have made many other improvements. But what I wanted to bring tonight around that was how do we know that we're making progress? What we've done over the last couple years is leverage really an industry standard best practice put out by the National Institute of Science and Technology or NIST called the cyber security framework. There's
252a lot of smart scientists and sort of technology eggheheads that went and said what do you need to do to be a mature organization in cyber security? They broke it up into the categories you kind of see over there, different functions, 22 categories, and actually 108 subcategories. And they went so far as to build a rubric on scoring yourself one to five in how well you're doing that by asking a variety of questions. So, you conduct this assessment to really be able to benchmark yourself and see where you're at year-over-year as you lay in fixes and new items to make sure you're making progress. What I wanted to show tonight was our results in 2024 versus the results in our recently completed uh review. You can see in 2024 as we came out of the
253cyber event, we were just starting down the road. We have such a phenomenal team that really put their heart and soul. They took it personal. This was a a massive thing. They've busted their butts for the last couple years. And I'm I'm really pleased to say that we've made big strides. This level of improvement is not necessarily normal. It's also not necessarily sustainable. And when we look at this kind of uh rubric that they lay out in front of us, we will never be a five. We will never be an adaptive organization. We're a K12 school. We have to make certain allowances. That's just the way it is. We're not the bank. We're not the military. Can we still grow? Yes. We we'll talk about some areas for improvement, but if we were upper threes,
254low fours, we'd never stop trying. But I I try to set that expectation that, you know, we'll never be perfect as far as the NIST framework goes. But this is big news and it's boardw worthy and it should be uh it should really be celebrated. Thank you. And again, that that's kudos to many many people working behind the scenes. Lots of blood, sweat, and tears. Um what are some next steps? Well, in that list, and I didn't really want to publish the full list. We don't want to obviously reveal all of our all of our secrets, but a sampling of what we get. We have sort of a little bit of a playbook there. We were fortunate enough in De Moines public schools to be awarded the - uh cyber security pilot funds, one of
255just a few districts in Iowa, one of a few across the nation. That's going to provide us $400,000 per year over three years. So, a little over a million dollars that allow us to focus on continuing to shore up the cyber security environment. We're looking at those things you see there. Vulnerability management, hardening some services, student password management in multifactor is a little bit of a nettlesome challenge for us. We're going to work through that. Device tracking and some things don't cost money like ongoing policy refinement. So, is this are you in year one of what what year are you in? We are in year zero. In fact, we are soliciting uh bids right now. So, we'll actually this this year will be year one. We'll be going into year one. Yeah. Okay. So, we
256focused a lot on cyber security, but also as I came on board, we were coming out of that and like I said, the philosophy we're not the most secure district doesn't mean you're the best district. We have to serve the needs of our teachers and students. Full stop. So, are we? What's our plan? what's going on? We didn't necessar the strategic plan was was percolating. Reimagine, which we just saw, was was still well underway. So, how do we know what we're supposed to be doing in technology? Well, we're we're guided by that charge, but overall, but as I worked with Dr. Roberts, we kind of honed in on just some very obvious questions. If we're trying to impact instruction, are we staffed adequately and appropriately resourced? Do we have the systems in process in place?
257And if we don't, how do we get there? Well, we're a big district, so to try to get there quickly, we employed a two-step strategy. One is I blasted a survey out as the new guy and said, "Hey, I know you get a lot of surveys, but please indulge me." We got over a thousand respondents across four groups, mostly teachers, but some administrators, office staff, and our our building technology uh support specialists, as well as we employed some two super dynamic H Heartland Aea consultants to do a deep dive in-person in-class audit from September through December to go into our rooms, talk to our teachers, observe what's happening, help put a little color into it so that we get more context than just survey responses. This is what I again I could really do a
258a a very long discussion about the results and really dig through it, but I'm just going to keep it very high level. On the left hand side, some of the statistic hikes I just pulled out of the teacher group. This was not a good news story, period. Um 65% self-reported having inadequate technology training especially around integrating in the classroom. 75% of our teachers reported that our students and this was at all levels lack basic technology skills. I'm going to take a quick bird walk here. We loved this came out a couple decades ago or about 15 years ago. The idea of a they're digital natives. The problem is they might have been born after technology existed, but nobody's taught students how to use tools in an enterprise context. You might understand how to boot up
259your Xbox. You're comfortable with texting or using Tik Tok. But that doesn't mean you know how to use a word processing software, how to save files, how to send emails. I always said it was kind of like if we went back and said everybody that was born after the printing press and there was like books, like they're all book natives. they know how to read, you know, so we don't have to teach reading or we can make a lot of assumptions. We can't do that. We have to teach our students. Um, so that that's a quick aside. Uh, we we know our teachers were dissatisfied with some of the hardware tools. They reported a lot of disruptions to instruction w with challenges and and I I pulled out a couple illustrative quotes, not to beat
260us up, but just to reflect back to our community that, hey, your voice is heard. You know, we when I hear technolog is a barrier to teaching, not an asset. That philosophy I just gave you to begin with, that's a direct challenge to that. That does I it's cognitive dissonance. And when I see, hey, we we don't get what our suburban counterparts are getting. That's not right. That's not fair. That's not equitable. Our teachers deserve the best. So, lots of themes for improvement. What did we So, you can see those. I'm going to just show you this super dense slide. I violated all my normal slide principles. I'm a Steve Jobs minimalist, but I had a lot to get through. I wanted you to be able to see it. This is a busy, consequential year
261for the district. How are we addressing lack of training in that integration support? We built a brand new team. I I made Jacob sit through this whole thing. Now, he wanted to. He loved it. Dr. Jacob Larson is our newly hired director of digital literacy and instructional technology. Yeah. coming to us uh with a great diverse background in educational technology, language, etc. from Iowa, working at Iowa State most recently. Um we're super excited to have him on board. He is going to lead a team of three instructional technology coordinators who's we'll talk a little bit more about what they're going to do, but they are here to start elevating our game in the classroom and beyond. Um and and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention we've made so many other moves. out of 38
262positions in technology, at least 17 are either new people, have changed uh roles functionally, have changed where they sit in the organization. We've brought the central stores function back to technology in alignment with our print shop. Again, we could do a massive deconstruction on all that, but we've made personnel changes and investments to do this right. We've leveraged to fundamentally redo our network. We have a brand new wide area network that's being built right now. Every site is its own site with a redundant path back out to the internet. Right now, if Lincoln goes down, the entire southside goes down. There's no redundancy. It's it's a legacy architecture that's 25 plus years old. This will not necessarily eliminate everything, but will ex make us exceptionally uh more resilient. We're t we're partnered with metronet. We
263we've brought that to the board. We're still targeting an August 1st completion so that when we go live to the uh back to school window, we're hoping uh network outages are a thing of the past. Um dissatisfaction with teacher devices. We've brought this to the board. We've ordered almost 4,000 laptops. We're getting rid of these tablets that were widely reviled. We actually gave teachers a choice for the first time. If you want a PC, that's great, but you can also use Apple MacBook Airs because we know we can support them. It's not the easiest for technology, but it makes our our teachers lives a little better. We can do it. So, we're going to do that. We've started handing out some of the Apple devices, but the bulk of that will happen uh in August.
264Uneven access to classroom technologies. We brought the light speeded audio classroom audio enhancement platform. We're rolling that out district-wide. We have 11 elementaryaries done. We are flogging that as hard as we can throughout the summer, but it's a large logistical enterprise, so that'll that'll take some time into the fall. We brought a brand new print system in. All our printers were eliminated. That just got completed at the end of June. Um and we're conducting the first uh in the several years centrally managed inventory reimage kind of re um tooling of our student laptops. We're over 50% done with that. So that when our students come back, every laptop's been touched, accounted for, cleaned, reset to the latest software. Now I I do want to mention technology is infused in every office though and I don't
265this is by no means a comprehensive list but I wanted to highlight things like bus Wi-Fi that was our facilities team we helped a little parent square that's all f we helped a little shashank's crew in finance the time clock plus project in migration was was huge it was all done with them we helped out a little bit but it's a huge technology effort they're bringing in new budget software to bear talent talent and personnel is looking at a new employee survey tool. Josie and her team are partnered through all this and data and assessment. It really is a team effort. Technologies everywhere. It's not just some tech stuff. It's all of us. Now, what we haven't had before though was sort of that unifying document, a thing like a strategic plan. So, as we
266go forward now pivoting to this, we are going to move into all that shoring up will start bleeding into the future. the strategic plan. All of that data helped inform the work sessions and the strategic plan. We may touch everything because again technologies infused in a lot of places, but there's really four strategic actions I wanted to highlight just a little bit. We won't go into them in too much depth, but under the you can see them right there. Designing and implementing the digital literacy strategy, kind of modernizing equipment, um language translation, and a new internet. Neil on the digital literacy. Can you define digital literacy? Yeah, you know, digital literacy is really de is a it's a broad concept and it's kind of what we we allude to there, but developing standards, if you
267will, by grade, what should you know as a DMPS student when you graduate high school? Should you know how to operate a computer? Should you know how to apply for a job online? Should you understand what um you know what cyber hy security hygiene is? Should you be able to recognize uh the challenges with AI which we'll talk about in a second. So what should I know when I graduate? But what should I know in ninth grade? Because what I know in nth grade impacts how we integrate technology into instruction. If every nth grader should understand spreadsheets, for example, then I could use spreadsheets in math and science. But if they don't, we can't expect our teachers to teach technology in addition to what they're supposed to teach. Like, hey, I'm a history teacher. I
268want you to build a PowerPoint. Well, I don't know what is PowerPoint. So, now we got that. Now, now the history teacher is a technology teacher. So, it's building this sort of comprehensive curriculum and set of standards and expectations from PK all the way through uh graduation. And it's not just for our students, it's really for our staff as well. What should our student or what should our new teachers be exposed to? What should our existing teachers be retrained on? What are our opportunities to upskill? Maybe you're decent at Canvas, but you want to be an expert. So, it's really a very there's a lot there is the and my only thank you for defining it. My only question comment for later is we talked a lot about the correlation between social media and mental
269health and responsible use and I don't know if that fits here or not but it's just something that I think as a board and I know Dr. Roberts just thinking about how are we going to it's it's incumbent on the district I think to make sure that young people understand the choices uh that they're making and and how to think about that because it's not coming from other places. Yeah, and I I totally agree. And there's not a one-sizefits-all here. I think as you talk about proper use of social media, when to shut things off, digital hygiene and citizenship, I mean, all you know, not bullying online. I mean, all of those are things you can even introduce at a very young age and it's interwoven in existing curriculum and it's not really separate, but
270it has to be consciously addressed as part of the curriculum. So, let me dive let me let me dive into that just a little bit. So, so what what are we doing in 2526? very broadly to start moving down this road. And I I say it in here. This is not I can't solve this in a month. This is a multi-year journey. We're going to start with professional development around technology and pedigogy and a core suite of tools. We've built a basic series of training events this summer. Jacob's team, I mean, we're hustling. This team didn't exist a month ago. None of them. So, well, we had one person. We had Carrie here last year was an army of one, overburdened and running in a hundred directions. And so we just brought this team together
271this year. They're already we've got training. We've already done what one yesterday with some of our coordinators and we're doing more. But this partnership with teaching and learning, this team lives in Smouse 155 where the teaching and learning team lives. They're not they they work for technology through the CIO, but they eat, sleep, and breathe curriculum over at Smouse, even if it's a little more humid than it isn't here, but we're getting through it. Um, we're also looking at ways to get beyond it. It's four people. There's 30,000 students, thousands of employees. Are there models a digital literacy champion? We're actually working with Kaylee on a potential grant opportunity through Google and others to create force multipliers to identify those uh teachers and administrators who are leaning forward, who could help us do additional training
272and help push in in ways that we won't necessarily be able to do at scale over time. That could change, but we're trying to come up with ideas there. We're also really trying to establish ourselves, this team, as a classroom support capability. I need ideas on bringing uh more engagement into a a nth grade science lesson. Oh, hey, you know, we we know some tools that might help you in our portfolio. One of the ones I'm super excited about, I wish you had time to play a video, is our Lou interactive playgrounds. It's not just for regular classrooms. We're bringing this projection system that's fully interactive. It's like a it's a giant screen. I want to say you know 100 feet. It's like 12 feet or something that we project on the gym wall that
273you know has games and interactive activities that are interdisciplinary. So, we might do a math thing where it had like penguins flying and it's like, you know, hit the odd numbers and kids are chucking balls at the penguins and they they pop or there's maps like throw a ball at the countries in Europe or I I mean, there's just and those are super simple, but there's some really compelling opportunities to bring that kinesthetic learning alive through technology. Um, again, this is that work that that you alluded to, Jackie, is developing the framework, the the standards and really be getting to pilot that at DMPS, but it's standards. How do we deliver it? What devices do we need? How do we assess it? Who how do we staff and support it? These are all questions. I
274have zero answers, but that's what we'll be working on, and then we're going to take a quick bird walk on generative AI. We we have to work that in. AI is part of digital literacy for our staff and students. um our adults. We started a task force in the spring. It helped inform our approaches, but I I'm going to just show a couple slides because this this came up. AI is already here. We can't block it. I ran a twoe sample of activity from DMPS owned devices on site. I filtered out everything we own or are testing most which we'll talk about in a second. Copilot school AI. We had four, you know, over 4,000 students, over 1,500 staff, unique people using these apps. Wow. Mostly on a daily basis. There were some superpower users
275on here. I I will point out um the let's see the fifth one down. Deepseek is of course the the Chinese government's version that may be run by the People's Republic of China. We're not 100% sure. It's one of our more popular ones. Um but you you you can see what's going on. People are using it's it's here. I mean it's it's like the internet. The genie's out of the bottle. So what through our our pilot group ongoing research and again this is a this is a developing area what do we need secure tools training and support with some policy guard rails that's what we're working on starting with teachers and staff to just we need to build familiarity one thing we see is we we know almost 40% in the stud the study from
276Wallace and Gallup of teachers have never even used it once so it's hard to reflect back to your teachers or provide inputs if you haven't used it yourself and don't at least appreciate. You don't have to be an expert, but you need to appreciate it. We know that basic efficiency is probably the place to start. That that Wallace Gallup survey that just came out across education surveyed almost 2400 educators said the power users who were dialed in saved an average of 5.9 hours a week. And this is just an administrative overhead. This isn't This is, you know, helping you maybe get to an email quicker, come up with ideas, augment lesson plans, differentiate, etc. 5.9 6 hours, a couple thousand teachers, 12,000 hours a week. That's a lot of time. I don't know what we
277could do with it all, but we'll put it into reimagine or something. But I mean, there's a lot of professional development. That's right. It's going to become a flywheel of support, but teachers can focus on more value added work on focusing on those guardrails. etc. And we know it complements and enhances the teachers. It's not a replacement. We got to put that out there. But we also know it will become part of our digital literacy and we will have to address this with students. We know we just had a great discussion in executive cabinet about the MIT study that was released that said that if you used it to write an essay and it did all the work, it actually can lead to cognitive decline. But that's offset by other studies that have come out
278especially in developing countries that said in reading and math these generative AI systems were leading if appropriately applied were leading to two years of growth in six weeks a year's growth in four and a half months. There's possibility that the the answer we all been around is is somewhere in between. There will be positive net outcomes, but we have to do it right. And we're going to have to teach our students how to do it right. But we've got to teach our teachers about it first. So there's this whole process to get there. And nobody's done it. I just came from a national edtech conference. Yeah, there's some good ideas, but we're all still figuring out. This is basically about two years old. So um we're not integrating DMPS data systems into into AI systems
279at this point. And we are recognizing the challenges numerous real and they do merit consideration. There's things like a you know an AI search takes 10 times the amount of resources as a regular search natural resources water electricity. We know there's inherent bias. There's hallucinations. We can create crutches over reliance. These are all things we have to wrestle with societ but it's here. Our people are using it. So we can't wait until we have clarity or or we'll never get anywhere. Where I think we can really be smart is in partner. We're looking at partnerships with universities through you and I and one of the providers that we're going to I'll show you in a second school AI in doing actual research. I think DMPS could carve out a name for itself. taking a tool,
280taking something like a board guard rail on ELLL language proficiency in fourth to eighth grade, figuring out how to apply generative AI tools specifically in that context and not in measuring the impact. If we get real impacts, we can share that and be a leader in applying generative AI in meaningful ways to improve student outcomes. It's here. So, what are we doing? We're I have something a comment about that. So, Jackie, you were with me um what was it in the fall? We had the um Iowa School Board Association meeting meeting or whatever and they had little groups and I did go to a group that really talked about AI. Um and then I think that I don't know how we could do it with our teachers or get them in those. It really broke
281everything down like the good, bad, the ugly and the beautiful of AI. Yes. No, and I agree and everybody we have a lot of re that's part of the the training we'll be bringing to bear is trying to bring some of that to in front of the teachers but also just showing the tools. So I think there's putting context around it, the pros and cons, and there's a lot to unpack, too. So you got to be careful right off the bat. you know, we don't hit people with a tsunami of sort of here's all the the policy implications, here's all the whatever, here's how you use it. You know, we're trying to figure out how do you chunk this out so that we get exposed to it and we build our maturity both in the
282tool, but also the implications over time. So, and again, I I don't have the a perfect answer, but we are trying to build that into the instruction we're developing. So our next steps in the platforms we're looking at that we are actively fielding right now are are really around the Microsoft 365 platform. So we're going to use the paid uh co-pilot premium version targeting towards our back office staff, our full-time administrators, um coordinators, etc. And really our flagship product going into this fall is going to is called school AI. And this is basically imagine chat GPT and this is a protected furpa uh compliant environment that's ours. We they don't use our data to train the model. All the right protections are in place but it's also skinned in a way that reduces the load
283for teachers. So there's buttons like help me create a lesson plan, help me differentiate this instruction and it kind of walks you through the process, uses the best of all generative models. when you see it. Yeah, it's pretty good. I'm telling you. And when you can do a written essay, a assisted grading via a rubric on a long form essay that can get you pretty close the amount of time I think you can save teachers. Now, that does upset people too because it's a little radical, but there's some real time savings. What if I could kind of highlight areas of improvement and all this based on your own rubric? These are the kind of features we'll we'll be bringing to bear. We've already started Ally talked about a mirror. There's going to be a likely
284in the future. School AI is kind of the Swiss Army knife. It addresses a lot of things. Project based learning. We can get into numerous things. Tools like a mirror. There's math tools. There's there's uh language arts, other tools that that we've looked at that are very very specific to a function and they do it very well. So, we will likely build a portfolio. I think Amamira is a great test and even we're seeing some some positive results with with that. This is all in the context of we are working with a third party going through our environment on a full scope kind of security review. There's always a risk of oversharing like whoops cuz the AI search is like on steroids. So you can find stuff that you didn't even know existed like oh
285that's helpful but why do I even have access to this because somebody forgot to not share it. So those are things we need to work through as well as some governance on an initial policy. It's not going to be punitive. It it's in partnership, but we do need to set some guardrails. We can't share student information in non-district approved platforms. That's always been true, but we need to kind of recolor that in the AI era. You know, you may be getting to this, but is there a policy for students and student use of AI as it relates to um writing essays and things like that? I mean, that's been a big topic of conversation lately. I I I think our initial policy take on that because our push, as we're kind of laying out, is
286less student centric. We know it's out there. It's it's really about um you know, plagiarism, academic integrity, etc. It's going to be built into the AI policy, but it's not as it's not a full scope kind of dos and don'ts for students. It's to give us a little bit of policy guidance so that our administrators can work through it. We will have to develop it. It has to mature more. But I keep finding the more we try to get it perfect then we just getting bogged down in trying to get it perfect. Like we just need to get something out there. So there will be a placeholder and mention I mean it will be real for students in plagiarism and all that. Uh but it will take because how do teachers detect it and and
287how do you again I don't know that technology we're looking at I feel like when I just did my master's degree they said maybe they were lying to me I don't know but they were like we run it through the system and if you come back with a ding yeah I would tell you that you should know that right they do right they do but what and actually I went to a couple sessions at this conference I was at they have been proven to be notoriously unreliable so the old school turn it com is very good at like kind of letter forlet context matching where I see you literally copied this paper because I have this paper and it'll highlight you're 90% similar. If you have what is quote unquote original content but generated by
288AI, it's okay, but it's not foolproof. It it's prone to both false positives and false negatives because it's kind of an emerging field. So, we would be I'm not saying we won't look at it, but I also want to be very careful walking into it that I mean, there are stories of professors getting I mean lawsuits of I literally did not use AI and I got an F because he said he ran it through something and said I've got it. So, they were probably BSing you a little bit, but it does it scares you straight. So, I don't know that I probably shouldn't say that publicly because we could have used it as a as a cudel. Um, just a few more things. Uh, we going back. So, so that's kind of it on AI.
289The last bit was on organizational effectiveness, collaboration. We're going to continue modernization, a new alerting system, new service desk platform, ongoing data center modernization, moving our telefan into the cloud, some better internet failover. We found out because a a drunk guy took out a poll on um uh was it Hickman or going up to Prospect, you know, then we lost internet. That was last week. It was very interesting on how the providers have their their internet built. So, there's some things we still have to continue to to work on there. We are going to be working with people like Kelly Scoffield and others trying to really get our arms around language translation. How do we handle this strategically? There's technology solutions, there's human solutions, there's a continuum therein, and we haven't been we we've started
290some pilot efforts. We kind of paused them for a split second, but we'll be coming back to that to figure out our way ahead there. And we'll be working with a whole group, Phil's team and others on how do we better share information. Our current SharePoint uh kind of intranet is is really outdated and and not it's widely regarded as not the best by many. It's been said by some um but so we're going to try to improve that. Uh well, we not try, we're going to improve that, look at some technical solutions and get there. So we've we've been in the lab. I haven't brought much forward, but that's just a sampling. I I actually went over I apologize, but it was about as fast as I could go and try to get everything
291out there. So, we've improved security. We've made a lot of investments and we're going to be a strategic partner going forward. Any questions? It was a great presentation, thoughts, questions. My initial questions are how how do you know that what you are doing is working and what are you using to measure that? And you don't have to answer that now. Um, and another wondering I have is regarding sustainability. You know, 10 years ago, we had seven instructional technology coaches and curriculum um um folks out in buildings helping with integration of technology. It sounds like we're rebuilding that team. So, um what makes this team different? What are we doing differently with this team? And how are we going to ensure sustainability? um moving into a the bud looming budget cuts that um we continue to
292face. So again, you don't have to answer those now, but those are the wonderings I have. I'm just going to say thank you and I'm going to sleep really much better tonight than last night. um just the just the basics here and the language that you use around risk and around how we're setting up our servers and it's the I can say to my board colleagues with a lot of confidence that this is the these are the conversations that technologists are having all over the country and this is the language that they're using about security about AI about how they're thinking about it the the strategic nature of the way you talk really gives me a lot of confidence in um the ideas and I do think there are challenges is uh ahead. But uh
293I have a lot more hope about not just are we securing the district, but are we going to make this a place where technology is something that is taught to students and is a sort of a non-negotiable for our students and I I just I commend you on the presentation. Really well done and thank you for all of the efforts. Really well done. Thank you. I Oh, did you want to jump? I just wanted to first of all congratulations. I have heard wonderful things about all you're doing and I think it's always a testament when you hear it from staff that the IT team's very helpful like that just that that sells me right. So thank you for actually building this great team and for all the work that you're doing. Um, I think though,
294Kim, when we think about why you need to continue to receive an investment and grow and how we're going to protect the investment has to be through going back to Matt's sort of summary of his comments, which is enrollment. And there is nothing like the embracing technology and being a technologically forward-f facing district is going to be key to retaining and and attracting. And like as a parent, some of the antiquated archaic experiences we've had with technology is just I mean it doesn't give you a lot of faith or hope and the and the education that you're providing to your child. So I think this is pivotal. I'm so excited about your energy and um applaud Dr. Roberts for the latitude and investment that he's making in you and it's all part of a bigger
295picture. So thank you for your leadership on it. Thank you for bringing the district um up to date. I you know just hearing about how this helps students. It does, it will help students obviously clearly, but I also heard communication and translation and just the ability that that will give the district I think to be um have a maybe or play a stronger role in engaging parents, families. Um I'm looking forward to see how that develops. So thank you. Thank you. I just have a quick question. quick question and that is uh I believe that we made a significant investment last year in a new HIS system and I'm wondering what role if at all you're playing in assessing department use of technology I know in the same vein I think we're hoping to or
296already moving to a new finance system and so maybe because because ideally there is both efficiency and potential potential uh FTE effectiveness or so can you help us understand how you're thinking about that? Yeah, I you know you you didn't hear me call that out and I that's uh that's a reality I I think um where I wanted to put the priority was in the classroom with students. That's that's our core mission. That's where we have to be. That being said, any good CIO is going to tell you all the enterprise systems have to in processes we need to I need to partner diligently with Shashank on rebuilt, you know, kind of re- imagining and automating processes. There's tools and techniques, right? The university I came from, we had built a new wing in technology,
297but part of that was because a lot of the rest of this was already done. So, we we have to get some other things done. We we we can't do everything all at once. Um, we have to have a there is a question on sustainability. There's skill sets. So to answer your question, I I want to be there. I will be a partner. That's why I said we're going to be strategic. Teaching and learning is is front and center, but it's everybody. It's it's operations. It's HR. It's finance, you know, community partnerships. We all there will be we'll be touching all of that in due time. Yeah, I appreciate the honesty. it is um and I think just as our budgets get tighter and tighter the more we can use technology efficiently the better and
298so but also appreciate how you've chosen to prioritize your time which is in the classroom so thank you for that as well. Yeah. The one comment I would offer um obviously echoing many of the other board members comments um one thing I'm particularly excited to hear is your partnership with local universities. I feel like oftent times there are resources that exist in our backyards and research universities literally pay people to look at this as you and Dr. Larson are probably very familiar with. So to hear that you're leveraging community partners in a sense to help move some of this work forward really excites me. Appreciate that. Well, I mean I thought that was pretty fun tonight. Yeah, it was like a great lineup at 9:00. It was. Thank you, Neil. I I appreciate all y'all's
299feedback and I I I really wanted to say that this, you know, a good leader is nothing without a it's not doesn't exist without a good team and I've been so proud of the the team, you know, that I inherited that I moved into. It's a great group of hardworking people, you know, and and we're just I think we're doing great things. We we've got such a bright future, but we've got a lot of challenges in front of us. But I I couldn't be more excited. I'm we're we're here for it. Every one of them is, too. Uh, and we're going to have a lot more discussions like this that are going to be exciting. And I I tell you that there's something to just creating a little bit of excitement to give teachers a
300little bit more in the classroom. It can't always be whatever. And I know there's budgetary realities. I know that. But as I talked to Dr. Roberts, if we don't create a little bit of energy, man, we're missing the mark because there's so because I love technology and there's a way to do it. So, and you said something about saving time. Now figure out how to save time and I bet people will get super excited. That's right. More recess. Yeah. Thank you Neil. Thank you. Thank you. Um well with that board members I am going to uh make a suggestion. Um we will move our discussion on board planning and calendar because that can wait and uh we will do items of privilege. I would ask that you have any significant items of privilege otherwise we're
301going to move that quickly and then u Dr. Roberts and I just texted in we are going to postpone the close session. It's just a little too difficult to enter into that conversation tonight. So to be rescheduled uh and I will get back to you with a plan on that. We could we could just do that right. I think the the urgency for the close session uh part of our responsibility is to make sure that Dr. Roberts has the evaluation framework. He needs to be successful and that it's approved. I think if we can have a smaller conversation in the interim with Dr. Roberts and the evaluation committee to keep that moving forward so it can get approved and he feels comfortable that he is clear on expectations. I think we're good to go. Dr.
302Roberts, do you agree with that assessment? Yes, Madam Chair. Okay. Okay. So, uh items of privilege. I'll go quick. I just um as we are here um and it's mentioned we need parents uh it's time for school registration uh it started yesterday or the day before so make sure you register your kids for school and then also um August 1st is when the parent square is going to launch. So make sure you upload that app and I think it's on our social media account uh talking about parent square. So do that and that's it. Dr. Roberts Madam Chair 30 seconds. Um first of all again tremendous gratitude to you all. I am here with 25 of our leaders, school and district leaders, principles and associate principles of our transformative 12 schools at the University of
303Virginia, the Darden School of Management where we are um in partnership as a result of support from the Iowa State Department of Education and I have to tell you um uh the DMPS team is representing us very well. I think we have eight school districts here and um the work that we are embarking upon is just really so solid and resource proven strategies to improve outcomes in our turnaround schools, those comprehensive schools, the 12 of them and the team will certainly be excited about bringing back um so many of the strategies as we continue to reimagine education. So wanted to share that they are representing the mo public schools and the city of De Moine very well. Um, looking forward to being back in our homes in a couple of days. Great. Thank you, Dr.
304Roberts. I'll look a little bit longer. Does anybody else have any other items of privilege? Cuz you told me I went too quick. Okay. Uh, thank you everybody for being here. I mean, talk like look at this crowd. It is almost 10:00. So, thank you for bearing with us. Uh, we are going to adjourn at 9:45. Thank you so much. [Music]