001all right the time is now 502. I'll go ahead and call the special meeting to order roll call has been taken and will stand and do the Pledge of Allegiance all right so now we're on to item three which is public comment public comment percent of the meeting is set aside for the public to address the body the board as a body it is not time for board response our public to ask questions Do Not Free and generate a privacy of others please sign in and spot your first and last name you are limited to three minutes any public comments CNN we'll move on to item number four which is a demographic report update and I'll go ahead and hand this over to Mr McHugh all right thank you um so we uh We've contracted
002with uh Matt Cropper and Dr Jerry mcgibbon to provide demographic work um they have both provided services for us in the past uh in the demographic uh analysis area and in uh our space utilization and um then the overlap between the demographic information and our space utilization so um this is a great opportunity to uh to hear from these folks and to uh answer questions um they have a PowerPoint presentation and uh we we went ahead and copied that for you all so you could see the numbers I know it's hard to look at numbers on these screens so um there's it's very much a number driven analysis and and uh uh we're excited to have these two gentlemen with us and uh looking forward to hearing their report so Matt Jerry are you uh
003able to join us yes sir thank you Pat and uh thank you for the opportunity to present to you tonight can you guys hear me okay yes okay well I'm going to go ahead and share my screen like Mr McHugh said I have a we have a PowerPoint presentation uh is it possible to give me the uh or uh screen sharing or do you guys have it on your machine by chance it says it's disabled uh when I try to screen share you may have to make me a co-host to do or yeah I think I need to be a co-host in order to be to share Matt are these uh the screen you want to share are these pages that are in our document are these separate they're in your document I guess I
004could I could just go you could give us page numbers hi there I I could just go through the PowerPoint if you have a hard copy in front of you we could just go um go through it that way if you'd if you'd like um I will share with you first so she can pull it up well we'll just wait a second looks like we're going to get you able to screen share but just so you know every person in the room has a copy hard copy of your report in front of them very good thank you I think if you go to participants you'll see my by my name under more I think you can promote to co-host um that would probably be the way to do it we don't have that ability for
005some reason I'm not sure why it's not showing up on our Zoom options but it's it's not there so we'll go ahead and just start screen sharing from um from email Jerry can you hear us I think he can yes yes I can thank you it's a little distant and echoey but I can I can make it out well I think just in a so we take our time valuably let's let's just start by you directing us to page numbers and if we find a way to co-host you in and you can screen share um let's go that way so we can get off the ground okay okay that sounds fine we'll just go through and uh and do and you know do the presentation verbally with without the the PowerPoint sharing and we can
006always um clarify if if need be so I'll go ahead and get started but thank you for the opportunity to be here we are here tonight to talk about the results of the demographic study and utilization forecast that we had recently completed uh this uh forecast incorporates the fall uh 22 23 enrollment data and so it is a fresh forecast that uh it gives you a 10-year uh glimpse into the future uh as it which is forecasted by our demographers um so I am Matthew Cropper I have more than 23 years of experience in doing this kind of work across the United States uh worked with K-12 schools um and our specialty is just this type of work we do a lot of demographic study work uh we do a lot of school redistricting and
007facility planning um and so this is right up our alley just the type of work that we uh that our expertise we also have some history with Missoula and have done um some work with you in the past a particular done a capacity study and prior demographic studies so we're very familiar with the area and the region and um and uh the the school district what you have on the screen is actually the report uh what I'm I am referencing the actual uh PowerPoint presentation that we that we've sort of a truncated version of the presentation uh tonight but also tonight with me is Dr McKibben uh he is a uh we have worked uh aside alongside each other for almost 20 years um and he has his own business as well and McKibben demographic
008research but um he's one of the best in the business at doing this and uh we we we work really well alongside each other because uh my specialty is mapping and um and data and and Dr McKibben is a demographer and so um so we work hand in hand on uh me providing him data and analyzing interpreting data and him doing the same and forecasting population and enrollment um as it was for the demographic study so like I said our we were tasked to do a demographic study to upload update this demographic study for you and then also I'm going to talk a little bit after Dr McKibben about uh utilization forecast and what that does is basically takes the forecast enrollment and looks at it as it relates to your school capacity and how
009your buildings are being used so I'll give you a little glimpse of that at the end of the demographic study presentation um and so with that I'm going to hand it over to uh Dr McKibben and let him take it from here uh thank you Matthew uh one thing I want to point out before I get into the results of the forecast results uh these are forecasts they're not projections a projection is um where you take a variable usually year-to-year survivorship second to third third to Fourth over uh three or four or five year period create an algorithm and use that survivorship to literally project into the future uh very quick easy simple cheap the problem is they're almost never correct and the reason for that is only a projection can be correct or accurate
010is it what's happened the last five years replicates itself over the next five or ten years I don't know about anybody else but I'm hoping we don't see the last five years again anytime in my lifetime um these are forecasts a two-step procedure the first thing we do is do a full population forecast for each one of your Elementary attendance areas building specific fertility mortality and migration models based on the characteristics Dynamics uh demographic trends of each area each area is unique um we get any daily layer hands on um existing home sales new home construction uh birth data Economic Development Aid structure which is your probably most important variable um and we use all this information to build these uh mortality fertility and migration models the results of that population forecasts then used to
011drive the enrollment forecast so it's your current future demographic Trends and Dynamics it dictates what your enrollment is going to be not your past trends now anytime you're doing any kind of a forecast you must have assumptions these are broad socioeconomic demographic parameters so to speak that we use in building our forecasts if none of the assumptions are violated we should be plus or minus two percent uh over the life of the forecast for total enrollment about three and a half percent the school level course the last series one of the biggest options was we didn't see a pandemic coming that kind of really affected everybody on that um so I don't want to go through all of them for a point of program but I do want to go through the top three and
012these are the ones that have the highest amount of variability if there's going to be um random error in the forecast these are the three assumptions that's most likely going to uh cause that and the first one is B we're assuming the 30-year fixed mortgage stays between five and seven percent for the 10-year life of the forecast now this is a very key variable because a it um dictates what your migration patterns are both internally and externally and also drives your housing market now a year ago today the 30-year fixed rate set at 3.8 percent this morning it was 6.45 it's almost a two and a half Point increase um it's going to have an impact on home sales going forward and covert has really really messed up the housing market um you probably noticed
013that the the builders anything they've got on on on the charts on the on the board they're trying to push through right now and the reason for that and you talk to any realtor in any town and across the United States or city they will tell you the supply of homes in the market for sale right now is it a post-world War II low one of the big reasons for this is because the elderly stopped moving for the most part during covet um the backbone of existing home sales is people over the age of 65 downsizing and why would you move during a pandemic uh leave your friends family health care System doctor support providers and all that so elderly turnover rates which should be going up due to an aging baby boom right now
014literally just rolled off the table starting in 2020. it's creeped back a little bit but we're still seeing relatively small numbers of holes being put on the market so you're seeing not just the Missoula but but uh all over the country areas we're seeing in many cases unprecedented housing unit building but at the same time your total home sales new and existing are 10 20 30 where they were in 2019. so and this is a major assumption going forward because after you get past 25 uh 2025-26 you're going to have an increasing number of homeowners over the age of 70 in the district going forward till 2033 and beyond that so you're going to start seeing more and more of these houses go in the market um you see a slight uptick at 62 another
015one at 65 but most elderly do not downsize children in their 70s it's not retired with the trigger's downsizing it's either the death of one of the spouses if they both lose the ability to drive then they have a hard time maintaining any kind of a lifestyle living in that house and you start seeing more of those homes go on the market so with an aging population and this is the trend in the United States and particularly in Missoula moving forward what is the rate and magnitude of these homes going on the market okay on the other side of the equation it's the home buyers um most these kids today under the age of 40 have seen nothing but three three and a half four percent interest rates 6.4 6.5 sounds like highway robbery to
016them it was a great piece on CNBC just a couple weeks ago if you bought a four hundred thousand dollar house a year ago and tried to buy the same house today the increase in interest rates would cost an extra eight hundred dollars a month in the mortgage payment and that's going to put some pressure in the supply side if it stays above five and below seven we'll have a halfway healthy housing market I don't think it's going to go below five percent not with Jerome pile keep us throwing the gas hopefully it won't go above seven okay we did touch that briefly last year and the housing market really almost collapsed uh the next assumption I want to go over is our next slide and this is um on the housing market itself we
017assume that the district will have 950 existing home sales per year okay uh right now this morning when I looked at your your Zillow sheet you had about 200 on the market right now that's about where you should be in uh in mid late April it should pick up after Memorial Day most people with kids when they move they um uh move between basically April and August makes sense that's don't pull their kids out of school now your existing home sales a lot of those people are coming out of apartments in in the school district they're staying in the district that they're changing attendance areas the most part your uh Apartments tend to be concentrated in the center city your single from attached homes tend to be more towards the outlying areas although there are
018some Pockets within the city uh this is the number I'm really worried about because it's not so much of the demand side on the supply side um people putting their homes on the market particularly downsizers going forward so this is this is probably the number we want to keep number the most look at as we're going forward doing the evaluations again this 950 is an average okay the next one's on the next slide and that is we assume the district is going to have an average of 130 single-family housing units constructed per year now you should probably make a little typo there that probably include some apartments in there too because you have a lot of apartment building going on in the uh in the district and while I'm on that point I I do
019want to make a very very important distinction there's a variable in demography we call housing tenure owner versus renter they have two completely different Dynamics okay owners tend to be older uh because they're older they're wealthier have completed their family formation in most cases and moving average 14 years renters tend to be younger single still having kids we call Apartments family formation areas and then moving average every two years now there's a very very important number here also called children for household and there's also another number school age kids per household in single-family detached homes that number tend to be very very close together because most people when they buy their their new home have probably completed their child during might have some preschoolers in there but it's their school age number and total kids
020per household heavy rooms are close together for apartments there's a wide Gap um you see this in some of the the population pyramids in the report um you'll have a department area that's where you don't come out of college and buy a house your own apartment that's where you tend to start your family so you see a lot of kids in the apartment complexes but a lot the majority of most cases are preschoolers but most people don't want to raise their kids in the apartment so if they have the economic resources to do so when the oldest one gets to be about five six years old they're looking for a house somewhere in the school district in Suburban areas so uh you'll see a lot of zero to four-year-olds in apartment dominant area but they
021don't show up in school five years later because those parents have moved out to houses again in a major metropolitan area like Missoula usually the other areas within within the school district uh I I don't think that the district's going to have a TR uh any trouble making this 130 single-family home or housing units in a year that's 1300 you you went up about 2 300 housing years in the last decade so uh I think it's 130 is a very very safe assumption the 950 that's going to depend on the pace the magnitude of early downsizing uh next slide please the aforementioned population pyramids this is a graphic um description of your asex distribution asex distributions your number one predictive variable population enrollment change um here's an example this is a U.S from 2020 I
022think is the next slide um zero to four at your preschoolers five to Nines Elementary 10 to 14's middle 15 and 19 is um high schoolers 20 to 34 year olds will referred to as famous formation ages eighty percent of all births occurred women between the ages of 20 and 34 years old despite what you'd read in the popular press fertility rates in this country have not changed that much in the last 50 years they've stayed in a nice tight 15 ban between 1.6 and 2.0 children per woman in our lifetime some variations I worry about the bottom of that Trend right now too it's a national Trends about 1.65 but when you see changes in an area's number of births it's usually not due to changes in the fertility rate is due to changes
023number woman prime childbearing age and that's a very key factor for Missoula um 35 to 54 are the ages where most people have kids in school okay 55 to 69 are the ages we call empty nesters now this is where it gets confusing for people you get the Smith family down the road live in the same house for 20 years but 10 years ago there was Mom Dad and two kids in that household today kids have grown up graduated going off to college Mom and Dad's still there so same house same owner same roses but the household side has been cut from four to two you know as the darks backside of the equation and there was a lot of empty nesting going on in uh Missoula the last 10 years like the rest of
024the country the person's per household in the city and the district dropped he went from 2.22 in 2010 to 2.19 in 2020. now 0.03 doesn't sound like a lot but a real crude measurement here you're looking at household size two point whatever it is Mom Dad whatever the point is is kids if the household size that stayed the same in 2020 as it was in 2010 for the district that would have been 930 more people the majority of those would have been zero to 18 year olds so this change in household sizes empty nesting is a very very key and frequently overlooked demographic variable and then finally 70 impossible called the turnover population this is where most people start to downsize um you start seeing downsizing start in large numbers in the late 60s is
025now cripped into the early 70s to mid 70s people living longer uh spouses both both saying living longer uh want to stay in the same household the neighborhood most people like where they're living and don't want to move so but you really don't see large numbers of turning over now until early to mid 70s and again it's the death of one of the spouses or they won't lose the ability to drive now the next slide in the next pyramid this is Missoula in 2010. now that large bar there 20 to 24 year olds those are college students for the most part uh college students are kind of where they go to school not where they're from but even if you pulled the college students out you'd still see a relatively large 20 to 29 year
026old population there because again when you come out of college you get a move to an area to work you don't buy a house in many cases if you're young you run an apartment where the apartments Metropolitan Missoula the rooms of the school district okay if you go forward the next slide this is 2020. and you can see you still have this large 2024 bubble but you'll also notice there's a slight bulge now getting into its early sixth to Mid 60s and that tells us that at least the district level and particularly some of your attendance areas you're going to see an increasing number of households move into the turnover ages right now they're empty nesters okay and you're also going to see an increase of households or empty nesting of Elementary age kids you
027need to expand your definition of empty nests we tend to think of some of the last kid graduates high school okay well you can be empty nest of preschool preschool Elementary Preschool Elementary Middle School there's a lot of households in the district that have school-aged kids in them but they're Middle School and High School the parents are in their late 40s early 50s they're not going to have any more kids you know so you're not going to see any more elementary kids come on those households you know probably for the next 20 years so this this empty nesting Trend as it goes through the life course again a very very key area and it varies from a tensor area to attendance area depending on what the age structure is a couple of examples here just
028show how how different your areas can be uh next slide um this is Jeanette Rankin uh classic Suburban pattern very few apartments down there so you see uh older uh parents 40s you know and the kid they brought in with them but notice how the zero to Four Bars smaller than the five to nine okay uh it's because there's not many people they're having kids they have to move in so if no one moved into the area this attendance area would would have a drop of about 150 kids in the elementary level next 10 years now there had been a lot of the migration on building going on here but you have to fill in that deficit first conversely on the next slide here is an area that's Franklin which is dominated by apartments and
029you'll notice the zero to four bar is much larger because a lot of young people that sort of start their families but you go forward five years you don't see this huge growth in the Franklin Elementary because a lot of those households move to other single family attached homes in other parts of the district took their kids with them so it was much more much more muted increase um next slide a population forecast results now each area has its own population forecasts male female 0 to 485 plus okay the net uh slide is the sum total for the district and I want to go through how you read this there's two ways to read this all right one is you can follow an age group over time five to nine is of course your Elementary
030so it goes from 3 300 to 35 to 37 in 2020 drops down to about almost 36 and then 35 5 in 2030. zero or you follow cohort Through Time Zero to four in 2010 is five to nine in 15 they're 10 to 14 in 2020. they're 15 19 20 25. and then they're 20 to 24 in 2030. uh across the bottom is median age uh okay that's for age where half of the populations older half is younger uh Missoula because it has a major university in there that artificially drops your median age at 32.8 urban areas tend to be younger anyway because they have so many young people living there but it starts creeping up to 34.3 again that's due to an aging population um you know as you go through the next 10
031years The Columns at the bottom kind of splitting the other columns is your cool call components have changed your births your deaths naturally increase net migration and um change you'll notice the burst drops slightly across the 20-year period not because of a drop in fertility rate but more of a drop of women in Prime child during Age particularly learning College population deaths go up not because of covid uh but more do a factor of an aging population uh natural increase which is shrinking which is happening all over the country even before covert we already had four states and about 1400 counties with more death than births uh way higher during coven now but we're still seeing an increase of zpg states and counties now if you creep it up a little bit Matthew the net
032migration now this is a net number I people moving in Hobby are moving out okay your biggest non-college in migration flows are people 20 to 29 years old let me bring some zero to four year olds with them your biggest non-college out migration flows is 18 22 year olds and people over the age of 70. now the the district has just slightly more people moving out than moving in okay the results of the population forecast then drive the enrollment forecast which is next um next slide okay now um one of the key points to look at here is go back to the code year 2020. the district didn't have 244 students leave the district like most of the school districts and Country they just chose other educational options Muslim State put so the last couple
033years you're seeing a return factor you've now kind of got back up to where you were pre-covered all right the other Factor at work here is you're having um increasing High School graduation classes going out and the analogy of users a bucket of water if I have a bucket of water and pouring water in the top there's a hole in the bottom as long as I pour in Faster it's going out the bottom level will go up but for some reason the hole in the bottom gets bigger it's going out faster and pouring any but keep pouring in the same rate below will drop enrollment works the same way at the district level what's the size of the K and one's coming in what's the size of 12th grade code where it's going out you
034can see that the modest increase in the K in the Warner enrollments particularly after 25 26 we start seeing an increase in downsizing but that is kind of um negated by the fact that you're going to have a progressively larger 12th grade classes going out over the last 10 years you've averaged about 850. over the next 10 years you're in average about about 950. so you have a hundred more kids graduating out each year than you had in the previous 10 years you would need a hundred more coming in as in migrants and births to make up for this shortfall so that's why you see um uh kind of a of a stabilization one exception of course being you know 29 30 you up 130 students well the reason for that is you have an
035abnormally small 12th grade cohort of 924 kids going out the year before who are called a one-year abnormality it's not really a trend it's just a free occurrence of the numbers um K5 uh basically stable till about again 25 26 and 27 then it starts going up as you see more and more of the existing empty nest homeowners start to turn over their homes creates a bit of a wave in your Aroma and starts going through and towards after 2030 it starts affecting your Middle School enrollment um and that's I did that in 20 minutes Matthew that's pretty good for me yeah absolutely I think before we go to the next uh stack should talk about the utilization forecast do you think we should see if there are any questions about the demographic study I
036I do the utilization first okay okay we can go go to the utilization forecast so if you go to the next slide you'll see that um just a little overview of what a utilization forecast is so this takes Dr mckibben's uh forecast enrollment uh at by school and by each elementary middle and high school level and Compares that to the capacity of each building and then also it rolls up to the district total and also for elementary middle and high school it's a really good way to kind of look at the forecasted growth uh with through a lens of school use and school utilization and so it's really good and it helps to give you indicators and maybe uh suggested and it depicts where you may be able to where you have imbalances in utilization
037where you have overcrowding where you may be able to make uh changes to try to balance out utilization um or whether that may not be an option so if you go to the next slide you can see how this utilization forecast looks and you see that we apply a color key to each a cell and and basically the color key anything that is in the deepest green it goes from uh from under utilization all the way to over utilization so the deepest green is the lower utilization side of the scale and the deepest red is the over and so under 65 percent is the deepest grain over 105 is the deepest red and um so ideally the district would want to be somewhere in that light green the the sort of the green uh the
038light the lightest color green or that pink color somewhere in that range is probably ideal but you start getting up to the higher side of that pink uh up close to 95 you start you know it may be suggesting that you may start feeling pressures of enrollment and so looking at this particular slide this is your elementary school or your elementary schools and you could see across the board that um I like to first look at this Elementary School total so all the elementary seats all of the students that are forecasted and if you're just looking at all of Missoula as a whole for elementary use you're really in that light green at that 80 percent it's the high 70s it's really a a good number and then this the the forecast uh this this
039utilization forecast uh suggests that you probably don't need to add uh much elementary school capacity to the district because you're operating efficiently right now and then you're not gonna we don't see any overcrowding in the um in the out years of the forecast but there are some imbalances you see in some places where you have the dark the Deep green and such as Lowell that has a little bit of under utilization going on and then Paxton is on as it is nearing that darkest red it's a 96 and it gets up into the hundreds up to 103 at the end of the forecast and so those are the ones that I kind of or that I always look for the district total and then I can look at individual schools and then I start to
040look at where there may be adjacencies where there may be able to be some adjustments to make all of these green or light pink or you know another thing that could be considered to help relieve capacity is things like program adjustments and things like that that may be causing if students are coming into a school from out of Zone that could help provide relief to capacity so um so if you go to the next slide you'll see how middle schools look and you could see Middle School is a little bit different of a picture you're in that light green you're hovering around 87 and 92 and then you go back down to 90. so you're you're right you're you're in the comfort zone but you're getting you're close to getting on the high side of
041utilization and then Washington Middle School has a little bit uh you're right at 100 and getting over 100 hundred percent as the forecast matures and as time continues on so Washington Middle School is one that I would see as one that that needs to be potentially looked at to provide some uh capacity relief and but you got to be careful not to just shuffle all the students to one school like Meadow Hill because then you may make Meadow Hill overcrowded so you want to try to accomplish the any issues or could uh challenges that you have without overcrowding um or creating an issue at another building and if you look at the last one you'll see your high schools and this shows your high schools are the most the ones that are the most pressed
042for space and uh the forecast does show growth in high schools uh and so your um your your high schools are the ones that that we see as uh you know maybe needing to be addressed in the out years as it relates to potentially uh depending on how things go it's potentially adding space to the disc to the nice schools not talking about a new high school a whole new high school but maybe adding some space one of the things to note with this is that Celie Swan is included in here and Seeley swan has is is really an outlier it's not uh it's it's a rural School I've been out there and it's um you know it's really not uh an option for sending students to because it's all nearly an hour drive uh
043out of town and so but if you take that out of the picture then this utilization probably be in the deeper deeper pinks and um for the high school total you'd be up in that probably the not the deepest red but the second deepest red so high school's one to keep an eye on and potentially make some adjustments to help provide some relief to Big Sky um in in the out years in particular looking at as you get up it starts to get over 1300 students um if you look at the yeah and that's really all I have for the utilization forecast I think the next slide is a is just a questions placeholder we do have other tables and information at the back of the forecast uh presentation but with that said we'd be
044happy to answer any questions that you guys may have Vice chair Walker Andrews uh yes I had a question about one of a couple of your assumptions that you didn't actually go over but you mentioned that if there were Charter Schools being built that that might change your um assumptions and we're having two bills in our legislature right this minute that want to build charter schools and then the other assumption the other thing that I found that I just couldn't understand very well I think it's just my head uh later in the report you have some in out tables and I kept losing which is the end part and which is the out part you have a diagonal line going across if you could explain that oh yeah certainly that would be the live attend
045analysis I guess if you could go to uh could you go to slide 34 in the presentation um or yeah if you could look at slide third slide 34 in your handout too since you have a packet in front of you you'll see it kind of gives it's called interpreting livitin matrices and it gives you a little overview on how to read these things um basically what this um shows is the it's a comparison of students living in a Zone to students attending school the the school the zone that the school is designed for and if you look at the green diagonal that represents anybody who lives in a Zone and attends that school so if you look over the very top like left to right that's the for elementary school it tells you how
046many students live in each Zone and if you go and if you look at that downward you could say like uh let's just look at like Lewis and Clark 481 live in Lewis and Clark but 383 and if you go if you track it down 383 attend Lewis and Clark Five if you look right above that five students go to Hawthorne four go to Franklin so you can kind of see um uh in the 41 go to Paxton so you could see kind of like where students are attending that live inside a Zone another way to look at it is if you want to look at say uh rattle let's see let's look at another one no just Hawthorne for example Hawthorne has 403 if you look on the left side enrolled and then if
047you track that table that that line that row to the right you'll see 10 of those 403 that are enrolled live in Chief Charlo two of them live in the Jeanette Rankin Zone and so you can track it that way as well and then to the all the way to the right is a sum of everything that's not green everything those are students that live out of the Zone but uh but attend n and then the bottom is is the is the live-in attend out in most cases these numbers balance each other out and and you'll see sort of a a wash but another in many times you'll see a difference in the more kids coming in than going out and so this is just the way that we track Mobility to understand how many
048students are traveling in and out and it helps us correlate census population totals by via the live-in numbers with the with uh since this population total is with the numbers that live in a Zone because sometimes enrollment doesn't necessarily reflect how many kids live in the area because you know as this as this demonstrates yeah trustee Mercer so to keep that going with a concrete example if you look at packs and witches over utilized but that's a result of not of the boundary but of people coming in from outside the boundary right because there's only 398 people in the boundary which is well under its capacity but it has 479 currently attending is that right 461 attending uh 398 living but you you you are right in fact that's what I I have noticed that
049and that's something that I identified as well in that um there is a uh a larger number of students coming in to that zone to attend school there um then there are students leaving and so uh it's but it's possible that Paxton could overcrowding or some of the over utilization that packs and could be resolved by addressing that that may be a program that's being offered that's bringing students in from out of out of zone or some other reason but that that's that's a perfect observation and an example of how you could be I maybe look at that at programs and how Pro moving a program to a school that may have available space may help resolve overcrowding um without having to move a boundary line at all trusty Becker then back to trustee Mercer
050sorry slightly different topic it's on PS number 17 in the slide handouts that we got about the population forecasts and this took me a second and I was confused and then realized that I think you're only looking at the Elementary District here when you're looking at those population numbers and not looking at high school at all on page 17 because the idea that we've only gained 1400 people in Missoula since 2000 to 2025 that just doesn't really align with what I've heard from other economists and elected officials and economic development types um and then the same for the next five years from 2025 to 30 the idea that our net increase in population is going to be less than a thousand people in those five years that just seems surprising to me and I'm wondering
051if it has to do with the fact that it's only in our Elementary District and not in our high school district that we're looking at or how that lines up I didn't hear any of that Matthew um well she was asking about um with the pop forecast she was uh she was saying that what what she's heard from other uh local uh uh experts and other people who have been just this population discussions in Missoula there's been more growth than what we're showing and she was asking if this is potentially if that's potentially because this is just looking at the Elementary District and not the high school district uh because of the difference in geography between Elementary and high school well the high school of course uh District would include all of the uh outlying
052Ka feeders Lolo and the like and all that this population here is just the Missoula School District your Elementary areas that's the the 2010 and 2020 numbers are the decennial census one so if we were doing a a total one for the entire uh School District including the high school areas yes it'd be much larger but our Focus here is basically in the Elementary's we factor in we looked at all of the your Ka feeders that were coming in with the high school which is why you have this large number of uh jumped from eighth and ninth grade in your enrollment uh in previous studies and we've done a lot of the uh K districts independently but the uh the elementary air areas the your your own K areas has 70 000 people in it
053right now okay um if you did one for all the k-8s and Missoula yes it'd be much higher and one final note on that that Dr McKibben alluded to in his uh in his comments was that the 2020 number that you see uh we do control the population total to the 2020 census total population results and so that's that that 70 000 380 is the uh close to the census total uh 2020 population but to to answer your question there it is that probably is why you're seeing differences in what you have heard or assumed is that this is looking at the Elementary District total population in this particular um forecast or target range or anything like that it's uh those are admit those are all uh not included these population numbers yeah I mean
054most notably it must be excluding Hellgate Elementary right because that's where a lot of part of the because the growth is different it's not just the raw numbers but the growth difference or numbers um just going back to the other one sorry back to the Youth Study I guess I just wanted to confirm them that when you're looking at the middle schools it's different and that the the in students now get back to that sorry the chart slide 23 there yeah so on page 40 the who's where the Middle School populations the actual like in District populations more match the different enrollments and so that's a place where the physical on the ground boundaries are causing it more does that sound right could you repeat that one more time I'm sorry so if you look
055at page 40 of the handout with the like who lives is going in and out of District those FCS Porter at 593 Meadow Hill at 424 Washington at 666. that more correlates with the utilization of the middle school so it appears the middle schools are more a result of actual boundary lines then is what I'm getting from that is that right the um well the there's a you know the are you referencing the six to eight grade limited analysis chart in the report in the report this sorry this thing yep the report not the PowerPoint okay on the report let me go to the page 40 of the report and so it's the thing saying that whether you live in the how many kids live in those areas that's right and so the live-in would
056give you the numbers of students living inside each Middle School Zone and then the enrollment would be on the other on the left side putting that together with the utilization it appears to me because it matches up like Porters may be fine Washington's way under Washington or Meadow Hills way under Washington's way over that fits with Meadow Hill being 424 in Washington being 666. so the boundaries are drawn to just put a bunch more kids in Washington is that right yeah Washington but Washington is interesting because Washington has 75 going out and they got 81 coming in so that's that's a perfect example of uh where they kind of that that Mobility washes each other out um and they were sort of like that sort of neutralizes each other so you know washing so but
057but there is a number of students coming in and then and then also students going out and um there are many reasons that that they that they could be doing that but um but that's definitely something to look at that's the first thing that we always look at when we look at utilization pressures is identify students that may be coming in from out of Zone and trying to control that maybe you can control and limit the inflow but keep the outflow going to help provide relief without even having to look at boundaries foreign I was curious about your methodology on forecasting is that just based on Trends and you know age Trends and student trends for all or do you actually look at like for example we have a couple large developments of like apartments
058condos and and a few of our spots in town that should draw in a lot of families that I don't feel is reflected in here do you go that deep or is this mostly a just a trending sort of thing what what don't I look at Matthew um he was he was saying that um that that's there are things going on at the micro level at uh like the housing developments and activity going on within attendance areas and as you go are you looking at that deep diving that deep into yields of developments within attendance areas or are you just looking at more overall uh overarching General trends well with math geocode which takes the students down to the you know pretty much the Block Level you look at yields like that um it's also
059a great way to pick up um what we would call them the non-public option you see a lot of kids in the area Matt lewd to it before we get a count of kids in the area we look at the number of school age kids that gives us a really good proxy on um who's going to private who's going to uh homeschool going to Charters things like that um so yeah we tend to look at you know household size very very key variable um but again it goes back to my earlier comments Missoula like a lot of other areas of the country saw a drop in household size that's that's something we take a real real close look at the variable that I would recommend looking at that a lot of people don't you talk
060about well household structure and size kids in them but they're not looking at is how many empty nest households are there okay how many households are are losing their kids through graduation or aging through the life course going from elementary middle to high school so when you tend to focus purely on well here's an area that's got a lot of households with young kids in a particularly preschoolers that are aging in you've also got to see what's happening on the other equation too how many are are aging out I mean I always tell people every for the for the district level every child in the district great third and higher right now is gone by 2032. okay all your elementary kids they're in the school right now are in Middle School by 26 27 okay
06127-28 time is the variable to forget about they're going to age through the process as I show in the pop pyramids there's a couple areas in the district you don't have as many preschoolers as you have Elementary age kids right now so unless you see households moving in with preschool-aged kids okay you're going to see a drop even if you do have some moving in you know they give both sides of the equation my concern is um particularly those new uh Apartments they're building there uh particularly in the Lowell area there are three and four bedrooms okay now three three particularly uh four bedroom apartments the difference between that rent and a mortgage for a 30-year fixed rate for starter homes not that much different okay so if you're going to see more and more
062houses come on the market I see a lot of people starting their households in those apartments then move into the parts of the district so that internal Mobility is another big factor I think needs to be looked at as well and then also another thing that we we capture like you mentioned a uh is there an area or a part of the community or the zone that has a high yield of students and a lot of kids coming out of Apartments whatever it may be we do capture that when we do our population pyramids for each area because that gives us a total pop count within there by age and so that that helps us identify where we see those Dynamics going on but I think it's important that most people uh you know that
063we talk to and communities that we that we present these to they focus strongly on new home construction or things that are being built and um the things that are shiny and new and that's what they they kind of keep zones their eye on that and they attribute growth to to to that but the the key thing with the demographic method that we do is that we're looking at not only that new home construction and kids coming in and or areas that may be growing but also the balance of the other parts within that attendance area that may be aging and students are becoming fewer and so it's trying to it's it's making sure that you not only capture the the new stuff that's happening and or hot spots of activity but also where you
064have cold spots or things are starting to get cold and what is that net effect and that's and that's the key the key to uh to doing this demographic method that that we that we Implement all right so we are at time I'm gonna go ahead and close this out from questions you will be back with us next at our next meeting for the boundary study and so I will encourage the other trustees to take note of any questions they want to ask them and we will see you guys at the next board meeting um it is now 601 is there any public comment on item agenda for I am seeing none it is 601 the meeting is adjourned for the special work session and we're going to take a five minute break before we
065start our next school board meeting regular school board meeting five minutes from now thanks Dr mcgibbon and Matt appreciate the input thank you have a good night guys yeah appreciate it thank you recording in progress foreign [Music] we'll start shortly all right we it is now 607 and I'm gonna call the meeting to order thank you for um being patient with us our last special meeting went over with the demographics roll call has been taken and we'll go ahead and do the Pledge of Allegiance all right and so now we'll move on to item three which is to review revise and improve the agenda is there any Tracy who wants to move or remove an item from the agenda CNN I'll take a motion to approve the agenda as written moved by Trustee of care
066second by trustee Decker any trusty comments any public comment on the agenda item all in favor for a proven tonight's agenda please indicate yes by raising your hand unanimous all trustees prison agenda approved on to item four which is to approve minutes from the last regular board meeting on April 11 2023 is there a motion to approve the minutes moved by trustee Wallock second by Tracy of Garris any trusty comments seen in any public comment on the agenda item seeing an Ultra season favor for approving the regular board meeting minutes of April 11th please indicate yes by raising your hand unanimous all trustees present we're on to item number five which is public comment regarding non-agenda items the public comment portion of the meeting is set aside for the public to address the board as
067a body it is not a time for board response or for the public to ask questions do not infringe on the right up to privacy of others please sign in Inspire your first and last name comments are limited to three minutes per speaker their chair May terminate an individual speaker if the statements are out of order or over three minutes any public comment we do have public comment tonight our first speaker is Alan Alt and passing our next speaker is Rebecca Dawson if you want to say and spell your name out loud my name is Rebecca Dawson r-e-b-e-c-c-a-d-a-w-s-o-n I'm coming here tonight to discuss the experience that I have had with Big Sky High School this year with my freshman student I want to start by reading uh section 2 section two of section two
068Senate Bill 99 that says any school implementing or maintaining a curriculum providing materials or holding an event assembly at which district provides human sexuality instruction whether instructed by school Educators administrators or officials or by guests invited at the request of the school shall adopt a policy ensuring parental or Guardian notification no less than 48 hours prior to holding an event or assembly or introducing materials for instructional use on October 6th I was notified by my daughter's 9th grade English teacher that they were reading the absolutely true Diary of a Part-Time Indian she said that she was required to notify me that there was some adult content related to the narrator's discussion of human sexuality when I asked her to share this with me she did and I was sent images of the book which in
069which a boy describes masturbation and how proud he is of it again these are 14 and 15 year olds why is this being presented in a 9th grade English class it has nothing to do with human sexuality to read an English book in the same class on November 1st the students were given an assignment on micro Memoirs the accompanying handout was pulled from The New York Times Learning Network and had multiple examples of micro Memoirs or these were writing prompts for the students the assignment was given by a stu by a substitute and the parents were not notified in advance that one of the examples contained transgender material when you were born we sent announcements name wait date engraved on thick white cards with pale pink stripes and polka dots it's a girl we said
070we were thrilled now 16 years later so much is new the pink was wrong the name was too this time we know it's a boy there will be no pastel stationery this time we were telling everyone face to face he's ours again this was presented in an English class after I addressed my concerns with the teacher and the administration the teacher complained to the students in the classroom that she didn't think she should have to tell parents what's happening in her classroom while this teacher finds masturbation acceptable she did find it necessary to tell the students not to read parts of a book written by a holocaust Survivor apparently accurate historical depictions of Nazis using babies for bayonet practice is unacceptable while 14 year old boys masturbating at school is perfectly acceptable on October 5th
071I was notified that they would be starting their human sexuality unit in health class I responded the same day asking to review the curriculum on October 6th I was referred to the district website on the scene same day I emailed saying that I would like to know how specific units would be addressed and to please send me any media used in the instruction on October 7th I was told what they will discuss and to please reach out with any other questions my request for media was ignored again on the same day I asked about media being used I was told that the teacher will use a PowerPoint and a packet on October 10th there was a weekend in there at the start of the unit I again asked for the media to be shared with
072me or I would be forced to opt my child out on October 11th the teacher said she would opt my child out I responded that I was only excusing her from specific units that I have concerns with the teacher said that it would be too difficult your time is up thank you any other public comment can I use my email saying spell your name out that when does My Time start when you start your comments okay uh you heard what uh Rebecca said and I'm going to follow up with the Parts some of the slides from the units and this here's one and this is what they're teaching our kids this is entitled safer anal sex these are 14 year olds it tells all about condoms safer oral sex oral sex on a penis condom
073oral sex on a vagina a dental dam oral sex on an anus dental dam get tested it's really good advice for the kids this is a really Classic this is what we're teaching our kids do I want a method I can hide so let's not tell Mom or Dad sometimes and this is a quote all the things that I'm reading I'm quoting sometimes people may need to hide birth control from a parent guardian or partner wow this is what is going on in Missoula County Public Schools thank you any other public comment seeing them they're we have oral we have written correspondence that we have seen and now we'll move on to item six which is reports and announcements item aided health insurance trust fund report there's no oral report for that one and we'll
074move on to 6B which is announcements from the superintendent good evening everybody just a few announcements tonight um April 27th Thursday night we are having our inspired student awards dinner at the DoubleTree 6 30 to 8 and I would invite people to come if you're so inclined it's been a tradition now in Missoula for maybe 10 to 15 years somewhere in that range so it's it's a really nice event and if you'd like to join us at the DoubleTree you're welcome to do so April 29th is coming Saturday is um a double event the powwow begins at Central High School at noon and goes to the evening and then there's a recognition of our seniors our Native American seniors that goes well they're kind of combining both events this year so if you'd like to
075join us you could come at noon you could come about four it's a seven eight hour long powwow and it's lots of people lots of food and I think you'd enjoy it if you've got the time to do it so those two events are coming up this week in addition I'd just like to tell you that we are she's sitting over there her name is Barbara she doesn't want me to mention her name but um I did so Barbara is submitting two grants for the district you're gonna we're gonna ask you to approve them in June and both of them are a lot of money multi-million dollar kind of things we think we've got a chance we're looking for licensed clinical social workers we've lost a lot of our CST csct services and through both
076grants we think we can provide mental health support substance abuse support to especially our non our title schools one of them is working with the friends of the children the others working through an aware Grant we have two of them present to you Barbara's gonna make a presentation so you exactly you know exactly what we're talking about this is the foreshadowing comment so uh we're coming to you soon maybe in early June late May with the presentation information and probably make a recommendation the grants are due in July and the you know if they have already been board approved it's going to strengthen our opportunities they're one of them is a five-year Grant multi-million dollar kind of a situation so anyway we are one of them is uh we think we are not competing with
077a lot of people so we're optimistic right now but we'll find out but at a coming board meeting we're going to give you the specific information and I just wanted to mention it tonight as a foreshadow of what's to come so those are my announcements tonight thank you all right so now we'll move on to item seven which is the consent agenda there is no board discussion for consent agenda items as these are routine items if any board member would like to remove an item they would need a motion in a second and voted upon to move the item off from the consent agenda item or is there any board member that wishes to do so CNN so we'll move on to 7A which is to approve revenue and expenditure reports we'll have two motions
078Elementary and a high school is there a Elementary motion to approve the elementary consent agenda items moved by trustee F Garris second by Vice chair hobbins there's no board discussion is there any public comments on this agenda item CNN all elementary trustees in favor for a proven to consent agenda item please vote Yes by please vote I need more coffee please indicate yes by raising your hand unanimous to all elementary trustees present now we'll move on to the secondary recommendation for a high school motion moved by Vice chair Walker Andrews second by Chelsea F Garris there's no board discussion is there any public comments on this agenda item CNN Ultra season favor please indicate yes by raising your hand unanimous Ultra sees present motion has passed now we'll move on to item eight which is
079new business and we'll move on to finance operation and maintenance topic one is the general fund update this is information only and I'll go ahead and pass it over to Mr McHugh all right thank you um so the page 30 includes the report these are the budget and expenditure Recaps through uh through March 31st through the third quarter of the year um the expenditures that I wanted to to highlight there's just a few of them and what I did is I went back and and looked at our expenditures through this time period in 2021 and 2022 and of course the 2021 expenditures were were lower in all these categories this was the first year of of covid and we were in remote learning and a limited time in classrooms so uh that that it's interesting
080to look back and see how those expenditures have changed um first under the the salaries um the certified salaries because there are larger salary line item you can see despite having just one more quarter remaining there's there's a gap between budget and expenditures but we do pay triple checks in June so that that Gap will be closed and these expenditures um are are more in line with what we'd expect and more consistent with what we had seen in 2022 in 2021 they were down 1.5 million in the elementary and and 1.3 in the high school the expenditures this year and are higher as you know we've been counting on Esser funds to offset general fund expenditures including certified staff salaries so by the end of the year we'll also make an adjustment to this expenditure
081item um the same can be said for the para educator line item that's object code 117 about a fifth of the way down and these expenditures compared to to last year are are up about 200 000 in the elementary and they're also up in the high school about a hundred thousand um given the budget amounts the it it reflects the ability to hire staff in comparison the last couple of years so it's actually a good sign to see those expenditures up the same with substitutes there were very little expenditures in this categories you know back in 2021 but more in line with with last year's expenditures as well the two other ones to to Really highlight are utilities and I think and insurance so these are down below in the spreadsheet and and um you've
082probably noticed with your home heating bills that they're they're up and I think they're up about 17 percent uh for us so if you look at the utility expenditures and the elementary to this point where uh 1 million eighty seven thousand and when we were in remote learning the same time in 2021 is about six hundred thousand dollars and then last year is 772 000 so we're we're looking forward to ending the year with a significant increase in our utility costs on the high school side similar but not as as drastic the uh We've expended 900 000 to this point um in 2021 where you're at 650 and then 760 last year um the insurance piece you'll see the expenditures this is our GL Insurance not health insurance for staff but general liability insurance and
083and we see this pretty or we see this annually or you do when we talk about increases and and um and this has been increasing pretty regularly and and in 2021 it was a 450 491 last year and 580 for 2023 um and uh and this is for the full year so we won't see any more expenses um these these this obligation has been covered on the high school side is 390 2 and we are at 300 and then 335 in 2022. um finally one last item to point out is is over time obviously very little overtime in 2021 when we were largely out of the out of the school buildings but but we do have seen quite a bit of overtime last year and again this year um really linked to our subs or
084lack thereof in a lot of areas so there's there's been more overtime that's been paid finally under the elementary budget column near the end you'll see a transfer to other funds that's a holdover from an interlocal part of our spreadsheet so that's that'll be cleared up and removed when we present at the end of the year so that's the general fund recap through the third quarter any trusty questions or comments trustee Mercer what's the 2.5 million on supplies and equipment that's not expended at all yeah so so there's a um there's a number of expenditures that that happen near the end of the year um in this category some of the expenditures relate to uh to purchases to teaching and learning purchases to expenditures um for curriculum and also a lot of times there's an
085adjustment here for Supply purchases that we've had so um I wouldn't read a ton into that at this point you'd obviously see in the secondary side that we're we're right on track and on the high school side or in the elementary side excuse me then that that's not likely reflected of of expenditures we've incurred but there'll be an adjustment Vice chair Walker Andrews Yeah you mentioned the utilities and you said something about 17 and I was wondering how much of that is indeed the increase in cost of gas oil Etc and how much does this particular winter yeah it's a good question I'm not sure I do know that the legislature at one point through um some folks over there were was looking at some relief for schools as a potential and and so this
086this didn't wasn't a phenomenon just in horror in our area and of course the weather wasn't a phenomenon just in Missoula so not sure how much is is attributed to the weather versus increasing rates but we knew do know the rates have gone up and that's that's true trustee Decker thanks um Mr McHugh I feel like I've asked you this question at some point over the past but uh the transportation line item for field trips and student travel is that primarily athletic student travel and then does any of that come out of the transportation fund or is the transportation fund exclusively for getting kids to and from the school day Transportation fund is exclusive between programs the this is primarily as you said activities in athletics sport by sport of that available I do would
087love to see that sometime if that's possible you bet any other questions or comments seen then any public comment on this agenda item CNN will move on to topic 2 which is a technology fund update and again this is information only back over to you Mr McHugh all right so uh not as much to report on with the Tran the tech fund um I would just highlight a couple things on page 32 the uh the revenue reflects the the levy that's the annual Levy of 850 000 the revenue collected to date does not include May collections so they'll be approximately uh half of our budget so that um that's why there's that difference there um also you know when looking at the minor equipment is is the tech fund this really is a replacement um
088Levy to help cover replacement costs for computers and other other devices we oftentimes see expenditures near the end of the year in this in this fund so um this is a fund that can be carried over from one year to the next as well so those expenditures are typically timed to meet replacement time schedules any interesting questions or comments seeing then any public comment on this agenda item see you then so we'll move on to at topic three which is a transportation fund update and back to you Mr McHugh oh thank you sorry I didn't do the high school one on the last one on my apologies so the the second page is the high school side the only thing I was going to add is that the uh the revenue to date is wrong
089it shows 9 600 the the actual revenue is 424 000 which is more in line with the half year collection so don't panic on that one nothing else to add on the transportation so the transportation fund on page 34 um you'll see that this is Elementary and high school the primary expenditures under that object code 5xx which is contracted services so the amount expended represents reporting of our expenditures for our bus Contracting Services through March 31st and then you'll see that's the largest part of our budget for this transport for this fund any trust the questions or comments seen on any public comment on this agenda item CNN and now we'll refer to the agenda Dedham addendum the topic for which is to approve amended Transportation Route mileage and this is over to you Mr
090McWilliams yeah thank you so if you look at the uh the attachment there with the information provided if you look at the very last page um which is not far back there you can kind of in the middle of the page in the Bold you'll see miles first semester and miles per second semester and then what we've identified as miles for the third semester um what we're asking is that when we came to the board in early February for the approval of these miles we had taken the count from January 17th the second semester what we've identified over the last few months is our our special needs routes have increased drastically in route in mileage which is what we've identified as a third semester and I want to correct that number at the very bottom
091as it looks like 2320 it's actually 2206 um so that number was corrected because we do have some half day routes that were counted twice and some noon routes that were caught twice so the the new number on that is 2206. if you look at the 200 the 2216 and you deduct what we had for a second semester of 1896. it's a difference of 310 miles per day um and that's 90 routes so that's 27 000 miles 27 900 miles of reimbursement that we potentially could be losing at 95 cents a mile that's 26 000 26 505 so um we've learned a couple things from this one we likely will not come back to the board in March or February January February of next year we'll likely do April May like we are currently now
092um so that we can ensure we get the most accurate uh reimbursement for the miles we're we're utilizing uh to get kids to and from school so we're asking to rescind the approval in February and approve this new route mileage route um the other Advantage is the these routes go to the Missoula County transportation committee which meet the first week of May um so it's it's really perfect timing any interesting questions CNN this is a full-born motion is there a motion to prove the request by Administration moved by trustee Decker second by Trustee of Garris any final comments by trustees CNN any public comment on this agenda item CNN all those in favor for approving this agenda item please indicate yes by raising your hand unanimous of all trustees present and now we'll move on
093to be teaching and learning the Missoula County Public Schools school counselor leadership team presentation and I'll go ahead and pass this over to superintendent Lodge so it's my pleasure to introduce Barbara Frank and Erica Sim and would you like to present and introduce the folks who are going to actually make the presentation um we have three school counselors one from high school one from middle school one from elementary school doing the presentation today there's Kate and Scholl from rattlesnake Leslie gigiri from C.S Porter and Heather Williams from Big Sky High School all right I'm sorry I have to ask you to speak into the microphone yep you can turn that one on here all right hello thanks for having us um we are here representing the counselor leadership team um tonight we're going to go
094over what we're doing as a team um we'll talk and review a little bit about our role as school counselors across the district and then we'll highlight what we're doing at each grade level Elementary Middle School and High School to share about how we're addressing needs for student outcomes so some introductions I'm Caitlin scholey I am the elementary school counselor at rattlesnake Elementary we have Leslie here from CS Porter and Heather Williams from Big Sky High School so the reason why we're here tonight in our agenda for the evening is to obviously go through introductions we'll talk about our goals as the counselor leadership team we'll also review and talk about our goals as the school counselor and role of the school counselor um how it has adjusted to fit the changing Landscapes across the
095district we are going to share about what's happening at the elementary middle school and high school levels and what we're feeling like is working and we're proud of and then we'll leave some time at the end for questions and comments so just a little bit of history for the counselor leadership team we were originally formed in order to create a streamline communication and collaboration team also talk about curriculum Development Across The District in order to teach similar things from the counselor level as it has evolved over time we've really become advocates for not only our role as school counselors but also to address the needs of the students and how we can advocate for the students needs and we're seeing a big increase in student need this year in the past couple of years yep
096and then this is just a list of all of our CLT members you'll notice that there are names from and representatives from all the different levels elementary middle school and high school and this is just to ensure that we have a wide variety of perspectives and that we are able to communicate clearly across the district at every level okay so overall the council leadership team we're an advocacy group and we advocate for this role of the school counselors in our district our purpose is to assist our school counselors in improving student outcomes in academics social emotional learning and also career development we also help guide professional development opportunities for school counselors and we facilitate communication at all levels of the district so there are three domains in the role of school counselors which I mentioned
097before academic social emotional learning and career development um the social emotional mental health support domain has become pretty overpowering in the past couple years um and it makes it that makes it crucial that school counselors have appropriate duties um in our jobs so the American school counselor Association the ASCA um that their model guides our use of time and their model recommends 80 percent of our time be used providing direct and indirect services to students and that includes Direct Services are individual counseling spending time with students and parents and collaborating with staff and mtss teams so we take a lead role in assisting with data to guide our interventions a couple of examples of the tools that we use to to gather data for students are the Montana youth risk behavior survey and this is
098a self-reported survey that students in 7th through 12th grade take and it shows us the prevalence of health risk behaviors in our Montana teens another one is the student my voice survey and this is another self-reported survey that students in 6th to 12th grade take and it gives us data on how students view the climate and culture of their school and also how they experience teaching and learning at school so another important aspect of the American school counselor Association recommendation is around student to counselor ratios and our school counselor to student ratios have been up for debate recently in Montana and the counselor leadership team has advocated for keeping and even lowering our ratios and we've communicated with our district school counselors about the potential impacts that changes would have on us and on our
099students so um as everyone here Works affiliated with the school systems um we know that the discussion around student mental health needs is nothing new to everybody however the current numbers of the trends are really alarming so we just wanted to highlight a little bit of that you'll see here I won't go through all of the data but you'll see that the rates of depression the rates of adolescent suicide rates self-harm mental health related emergency department room visits and inpatient admissions for youth have all jumped dramatically I mean you'll see percentages here from 54 percent to 60 percent in recent years so it's been really really dramatic these increased needs have really impacted our school counselors and their roles so school counselor Services have become more on demand and devoted more to crisis response we
100recently just surveyed all our counselors in the district and 85 percent of those surveyed said that they could not meet the needs across the three Realms we had talked about the academic the career development and the social emotional that we couldn't get and even addressing all three of those and the main reason why was because so much of our time is being pulled into crisis response recently it's leading to a lot of counselor fatigue and burnout we're seeing an increased amount of time that our school counselors are using having to support our staff in the district too for similar reasons um and that just really highlights A continuing need for effectively addressing the mental health and social emotional development district-wide of our students so how is this impacting the kiddos and what we're seeing in
101our schools um we're seeing new and intensifying issues the loss of the State Mental Health funding that resulted in our csct Mr Lodge just discussed that and Barbara's Grant's going to really hopefully help us address this but that was a real big hit that we took losing that csct teams from many of our schools we're seeing a very large impact in student attendance and tardies the rates of anxiety and grief and loss were dramatically increased and our staff wellness and mental health burnout um the skills that we're seeing that our students are really lagging behind now compared to before the social skill development seems to be about two years behind all that executive functioning and planning and organization and that School Readiness those skills are really lagging as well student resiliency and their coping skills
102versus kind of we're seeing a lot of what I call tapping out or falling apart in school and the study skills and lower academic performance are all things that we're seeing really impacted okay so we're gonna um talk a little bit about what strategies we are using to address the changes and the needs in our district um the first thing I want to talk about is the new whole Child Development curriculum for K-8 so we are piloting that this year it's called character strong teachers are implementing that into their classrooms and then counselors are then able to support it and reinforce it on the school Community level um also in addition we are implementing research-based policy and training on suicide and threat assessments through the Colorado safe schools University of Montana and Montana Office of
103Public Instruction provide the safest and effective approach to keeping our kids safe and then we in addition are also providing we're bringing in Stacy York and she's educational educational professional who specializes in training Educators on Stress Management and well-being all School Employees got that this fall and that's really helping add Tools in our toolbox for managing our stress and well-being throughout the school year this year in addition we also have two positions I want to highlight so Erica zins is our student service coordinator this year and she is helping us with a variety of things she's helping streamline communication at our district levels for mental health needs in our building she's also helping Design District rights supports for mental health needs and something that's really helpful is community engagement and Partnerships with Community organizations to
104address mental health and connect our students and families to these organizations that counselors can then connect families with in their buildings in addition we have a behavior interventionist roles last year and this year and this is in hopes of helping fill in some of that need of our csct program that we've lost we are unsure of how long the support will continue due to the funding that it was created through but we are hopeful that this can continue and really work alongside the counseling position as well um so now we're going to go into examples of interventions that are happening at the elementary the middle school and high school to really highlight what we're proud of and what we feel like is going well this year um so we'll start at the elementary school again
105we are using a whole person development curriculum called character strong kindergarten through fifth grade is called purposeful people um and it's really highlighting different character treats each month that students are then able to learn and apply and use in the school in the community and in their home and then in addition to this we are working on monthly staff Wellness challenges um part of character strong has staff Pursuits that staff can use as challenges to really work on a goal that in relation to what students are working on and then we also in my building in particular are really focusing on how we can bring fun and wellness together and collaboration in different in a variety of ways so if some of that might look like monthly challenges like self-care Bingo or just getting some
106more potlucks in and some food to connect with each other and build community um and so another way that we are addressing the needs is we are using the srss which is a screener a universal screener it stands for the student risk screening scale um we are using this three times a year to highlight student needs who who are exhibiting internalizing behaviors or externalizing behaviors and this is really a way that we can use data and form decisions on how to respond to our needs and then I'm going to let Leslie jump in here and talk a little bit more about what strategies we're using great so a couple more things that we're using at the elementary and middle school levels are having groups based on need as far as working on skills social skills
107or academic skills organizational skills we also use check-in checkout which is a way for students who are in that program to connect with their teachers on a on a meaningful level at a meaningful level several times throughout the day um and meaningful work that's just having jobs for kids in um with adults in the in the uh in the school um and also structured recess really helps for kids who um outside with a couple hundred kids is hard sometimes for some kids and so it was structured recess we're able to have a more monitored maybe playing games or playing some type of sport inside um so at the middle and high school levels um one more intervention that we have is a suicide prevention program called signs of suicide SOS that's used in health classes
108to teach students how to look for signs in themselves and people around them friends family members around depression and possible you know suicidal ideation check and connect and we already mentioned check and check out it's up there again but check and connect is a really a positive way for kids to connect with another adult in the building it's a little bit more intensive than check-in checkout but they spend time with an adult in the building in order to establish relationships with the we have a lot of information around meaningful relationships even just one or two can really help a kid who's at risk come through and have that positive interaction every day is really really important so at the high school level we have a bunch of different things going on A needs assessment is
109given providing data that's driven from the students on what would be helpful for guidance lessons for them and so push in lessons have been created and given in different topics like motivation and organization Stress Management things of that nature test preparation all of that anxiety study skills there's a 9th grade success curriculum to start the year off strong happening at a couple of the high schools and mentoring program that's also taking place in a couple of the high schools that helps freshmen get oriented and pre-teaching expectations and some whole Child Development the Spartans are doing that as well as Big Sky High School is going to start implementing mentoring programs so lots of really good things happening so in summary we thought we really wanted to share about what we are seeing in the schools
110how the landscape is really changing and how hard our staff are really working to address all of these needs um the current interventions that we're doing across the district are things we're really really proud of and we've really benefited from the support of the board and our upper Administration and really prioritizing student mental health and the needs that we're seeing um we'd be remiss if we weren't kind of naming the elephant in the room which is our mental health staff our burning out there's a really big need it's feeling really overwhelming we're working really really hard and just the continued advocacy that you all provide for us is just so valued and we really really appreciate it thank you all so much and we're here to answer any questions if anybody has any questions for
111us trustee Witcher what's the make uh first of all thank you so so so much for the services that you provide for our kids and our community from the bottom of my heart and so many others I see the work that you do in our schools the hard hard work that takes such heart and such dedication I have a I have a question regarding I I understand that the frequency of of events and incidents is up in your crisis response um and I don't know if you have any specific data to say if it's broad-based or if we have specific kiddos that are frequently in need of these services and I'd be interested to see what other districts have done with uh the frequent kids that are in crisis in our schools and models that
112other districts have taken with those kiddos yeah I think um it um if it's okay for me to address that I'll adjust the parts that I do know and can address and if anyone else wants to jump in please feel free to do so but um as part of the counselor leadership team in our surveying of our staff we are seeing it across the district at all levels that increase just seems to be coming from every building every level we do have some specific data I know I can speak at Big Sky High School we've looked at our data on the increase in suicide evaluations threat assessment evaluations the number of kids that are requesting to see us for anxiety grief all those things so there is data out there that we can share absolutely
113to to answer part of that question I think we're always looking and scanning across ask as one really big resource the Montana school counselor Association is another always learning on what are the different models out there I think our whole child curriculum that we're looking at developing and we're piloting that right now we're wanting to expand that and look at our data and see how the results have shown that kids are really benefiting benefiting from that and it's just showing the need for that I think um we use our multi-tiered systems of support which is that tier one tier two and tier three and really trying to figure out how do we not make it so tier three heavy I think that's where we're really challenged right now is that we're drowning a lot in
114the tier three and really wanting to kind of do more prevention at the tier one level which is that um curriculum that we're discussing but also needing the bodies in the building to start being able to deliver those Services more more groups would be fantastic but we need more bodies in the building to be able to provide more groups groups have really great outcome and we we have lots of great data showing that that really helps teaching those specific skills to the kiddos kind of rambling but does anyone want to add anything to that since no thanks thank and thank you for saying that we really appreciate that oh I said one thing quick um several of our school counselors went to the State School counseling conference two weeks ago um and so it's really
115nice because we were also able to talk with counselors from around the state who are seeing same things we are and um so we were able to do some I guess sharing networking yeah so that's something we just did too he's speaking to the mic please um myself and we're doing a little bit of like uh learning and sharing even within our schools in the district um I was at Hellgate today learning about their systems their brake systems and their student support services and then we had several Hellgate employees at CS border a couple weeks ago to learn from us so it was it was really helpful Vice chair walkaround juice oh yeah I had two questions one is you talked about the changing landscape and you talked about the proportion of depression-related Hospital etc
116those are of course U.S numbers and I guess all I'm just asking is whether ours parallel what what you've put in that box I assume they do but um you're talking Nationwide versus Montana Montana well for example you mentioned adolescent suicide rates had gone up uh by 60 percent in the nation I'm assuming and that you're just seeing parallel kinds of changes here correct and then my other question I was um in a conversation with some people in the last week or two about social emotional learning because that's a very um in the news term and I was looking at the um the standards that are listed at OPI for social emotional learning I'm asking whether the social emotional learning is primarily in the classroom and you're spending more of your time in sort of
117interventions small groups a particular person at that moment that's a great question um it's different at different levels in elementary schools I know that elementary school counselors spend more time in the classroom helping with lessons correct at the middle school level it's a little less and at the high school level I believe it's maybe even less that'd be right um and so in I can speak from the middle middle school perspective we do um the teachers do teach the curriculum that's going on um we find ourselves now responding to a lot of Crisis that seems to take up most of our time right now um and that can look like meeting with individual students or small groups of students but um also just keeping kids in classrooms or helping them get back to class and
118helping them regulate and also um dealing with a little bit more of the social work aspects of working with students um we do have some social work help at our schools for sure but it really does take more than a halftime position or one position per school for that social work and working with families and so we're finding ourselves doing a lot of that right now trustee Mercer can I just add to yes um I think to typically a school counselor if you're seeing a student that's had some distress of some kind in the past you would do maybe six weeks or so of trying to check six visits of trying to check in with a kiddo and if you're finding that after that amount of time that the school counselor is checking in they're
119still needing more support that's often when you consider referring out that they're needing more intensified support and maybe needing an outside counselor or support in some fashion however I think the trends that we're seeing now is that the number of kids needing that the ability of the families to do that and make that happen so the social work positions really help fill that Gap and also help with the connection to those outside services but when sometimes those outside Services can't happen because also in our community we're struggling to provide the Staffing for all of those services our social workers help fill that Gap too but the counselors are also being asked to fill that more so we're doing longer amounts of time meeting that social emotional dysregulation and that need and the amount of Crisis
120say suicidality grief threats anxiety drug and alcohol use on site self-harm all of those things where we're being pulled into that more and more and more and the quantity is just going up that it's taking a lot of our time so our ability to kind of do that academic support and the career and post-secondary development support is not coming off the table we still need to meet those needs but we're struggling when we're having to spend so much time with the mental health stuff so two questions one sort of how many of there are you is there one in every elementary school or are there different numbers in elementary schools and then question two can you and you're sort of getting there can you explain more the distinctions between the school counselors the social workers
121and the behavioral interventionists and what that intersection is after Absolutely I'll I can take the second part if you want to take the first part yep each Elementary has one elementary school counselor um except for any school that has over 400 has a 0.2 so um Jeanette Rankin Lewis and Clark Chief Charlo rattlesnake have a full-time school counselor and then another point two so that's a day and then every Elementary also has a behavior interventionist and then middle school has each of our male schools has two school counselors and one behavior interventionist except for Porter has two Behavior interventions and then our high school has four school counselors a full-time social worker um and then depending upon use of where they put their FTE and stuff some have a one has a certified school counselor
122I mean excuse me classified social worker and then Willard has a school counselor and a social worker so that's I mean it's kind of but generally so the school counselor has a lot of hats that they wear so they're doing their role is really to do the academic support the post-secondary planning and career development and social emotional support what doesn't fall under there I don't know so I think that's a big part of it we wear lots of hats so and depending on the levels you might see at the high school level school counselors are really involved in scheduling and designing the schedule and making sure that students are on track to graduate and meet their needs and meet their goals and that they're taking the right courses whereas you obviously won't see that as
123much at the elementary but at the elementary they might be doing more push-in lessons around thinking about career and different things on their development and and Middle School somewhere in the middle so um the school counselors sit on a lot of teams as well so they'll sit in on a lot of special education meetings some of the system meetings the multi-tiered systems of support things like that so helping design the systems for the building and a lot of times they are pretty tight with Administration and helping support Administration and a lot of decision making I mean the administrators decide but you're kind of a can be kind of a right-hand person to Administration social workers in the building will if they're certified licensed social workers are doing a little bit more intensive mental health support
124but then also connecting the student and the families to outside supports in the community that they might need so they kind of work at in case management as well as doing more intensive mental health support and then our Behavior interventionists are often more classified certified staff thanks and they will be doing more Hands-On in the moment support for students who might be struggling with behavior but they also might help design Behavior plans and support plans for the students so that they can do those learning skills that we need them to do those sense of being in class attending behaving appropriately those types of things anything anyone want to add to that no trustee Witcher um I have a presumption about this answer but I'd like some direct input um in talking about Equity across the
125school district um are there certain schools that have more heightened behaviors um we it sounds like every school gets a counselor or Services based on their population number but are there schools that you see higher levels of need and when we're tiering kids in those behaviors is there congruity across the district when we're tiering behaviors does that make sense you mean like continuity on what would qualify us here to correct yes is it going to be the same if my kiddo goes to Lowell or to Rattlesnake and is there schools that have more needs than others and speak to that a little bit so I would say for the um tiered part and I can see you guys Whispering do you yeah go ahead and take it okay um good job thanks um so um
126I don't know after I lost my train of thought um so yes and one of the goals I know of the academic and career service I mean Community Services Pro department is to have a more equitable services for all students so we do see some schools that have different needs and we try and meet those needs differently um and as Barbara I'm sure we'll start talking about um you know some kids you have one school that has kiddos who have lots of access to lots of things and other schools where they don't have as much access hence why Lowell has our community school approach because then now they have access to everything that other schools have access to so we're slowly working on that um but I know that our our district um admin really
127worked hard to share and make it more Equitable for our mental health supports in our schools these last three years and that was a big Focus hence why we have our behavioral interventionists and our um in our extra social workers that we didn't have before and and how it looks the balance looks a little bit different at different schools just depending upon needs we also have two District behavior interventionists that um kind of float between schools where the needs are at higher and then um you know they'll go in they'll help with some Behavior interventions they'll put some supports in and then move to another school so um yes we're working on that and we do see it it and we [Music] um are slowly build and that's partially what some of our grants are
128for too is to make it more Equitable access for All Families um so and I would add to that that our um we do see disparities in data between title and non-title schools of course because they serve different areas of need so we do use some of our title dollars to add extra supports to our Title One schools for example Lowell has an extra classify classified social worker that they pay for using Title 1 funds so we do use some Title One funds to add extra supports to the schools I think Erica mentioned that Porter has an extra behavior interventionist and that's all based on the data that they needed and extra support there um at that school where the other schools didn't have the data to support that need so we're definitely looking at
129data but your question as to the calibration across our schools it's definitely something we need to work on so that we understand what's happening at every school sometimes you get stuck in your own building and you don't realize what it looks like somewhere else and so we've really been trying as a department to start facilitating more learning walks you heard the counselors talk about doing some of their own we're learning walks and looking at the other schools and the systems they're doing so we're really trying to get our teachers and our mental health staff out to see what good things are happening at our other schools and to really begin to calibrate across buildings so that a tier two behavior is a tier two Behavior at every school trustee Decker I want to Echo the
130the really deep thanks for all the work that you do it's really important and I want to invite you to dream for a second I just wonder if you had the capacity to do the kind of whole child whole school whole staff work that you would want to around prevention what would that look like so that people can see because I think we are culturally in a really reactive place where where we are all crisis responding and I think it's hard to get out of that and picture what our schools might look like if we were able to do what what I think you're kind of hinting would be a different way if you had capacity if you could just would dream for a sec it's interesting because when um Russ first started he reached
131out and asked me a very similar question and I remember answering at the time that kovid taught us something because when we went hybrid it did feel in some ways that really created a lot of struggles because kids being at home was not great but in other ways it showed us that in the building when the classroom sizes were smaller and we had fewer kids in the building and we had the time to address um the the different needs it it was pretty fascinating what we saw in our Behavior data and in the needs of to what was coming through the door so my answer to him at the time was um you know smaller classroom sizes the higher or lower ratios of staff to students I would say that would be the same thing
132for our mental health staff and then it's time I think we survey we just did a survey with our counseling our counselors across the district and when asked what was um what were some of the things that would be helpful it was time it was systems that are solidified in responding to needs it was um there was a third one I just had in my brain and it fell out um oh the tier one and getting that tier one really short up so that's back to that whole Child Development stuff too is just if we can really Shore up all that tier one instruction expectations and support that would help tremendously because I think we're reversing the pyramid the pyramid is supposed to be you know tier three is the bottom of the pyramid and
133I'm sorry tier one is the bottom of the pyramid and tier three is the top and it feels like we're flipped over so did you want to add to any of that a magic wand question you want to add to it yeah yeah the magic wand question is sometimes something we use with students if you could wave your magic wand in the morning when you wake up things would be different in your life sometimes I just don't even have an answer but sometimes when they do it's really um enlightening for them and us um I think yeah I kind of want to reiterate what Heather said about about time in order to in order to do things that are healthy and positive for the culture of the school um would be amazing um one of
134one of the things that's like getting me through this spring this um last push that's always hard for everybody at the end of the year um is helping and organizing uh 14 of our sixth through eighth grade Refugee students ell students on a soccer team and that's outside of school but they they are so glad to see me every day to ask me what time the next practice is and we've had teachers and um out to see their games on Sundays and it's been um really uplifting for a lot of people um and I think it it helps the teacher the teachers come out and they're glad to see these kids having a good time no matter what their behaviors are and how much they struggle struggle at school with language or culture they're out
135there having a good time through playing a game together and um and seeing their teachers out there support them has just been great for them and for the teachers so I think doing more things that are inside and outside of school culturally uplifting and motivating and I think it can help teachers and families and students alike and um feeling like they're a part of something bigger any other trusty questions or comments Vice chair hobbins guys I just wanted to express my deep thanks as well um and um and say that it was devastating for all of us to hear about the crumbling of the csct program and to see what you all have done with what you have is incredibly impressive so thank you so much for coming to talk to us tonight um and
136I also don't want you to think that because we're impressed by what you've done with very little means that we don't want to support you more and I think I speak for more than just myself but we proudly support what you do um and so please come to us with your needs thank you thank you any final questions or comments nope just another big thank you from me so thank you for your presentation as well thank you for the opportunity [Applause] any public comments on this agenda item CNN now we'll move on to topic are two number nine the Board of Trustees topic a which is the Montana School Board Association legislative update by Vice chair Arlene Walker Andrews over to you and again this is information only uh yes um I'm our representative to
137the Montana school boards Association and so I had asked to be able to talk maybe once a month about things that are that are going on with that group um right now of course uh the the scoreboard Association has been looking at all of the bills that are going through the legislature uh trying to advocate for various ones give information on various ones and to provide legal help actually to many of the legislators when they write these bills because they can be more complicated than than we would ever think so I thought I would just mention a couple of the bills that are sitting there right now um I think there must have been somewhere between 50 and 100 education bills and I'm not going through all of those clearly but I just wanted to
138talk about a very few of them one that passed yesterday was on parental rights another one that was passed um was on exactly the the rules so to speak for informing parents about human sexuality instruction and I believe 502 was tabled that one was much more specific five just this excuse me 566 was approved and part of that particular bill was to specify that it's really science or health enhancement courses in which students are either separated by sex or allowed to be separated by sex it also allows discussion of human sexuality if it's a student that raises the question and it adds information about annual notice calendar Etc another bill that was just passed uh that's sitting on the governor's desk was 234 and that would open public library Museum and Public School Employees to
139criminal charges and potential fines um if what is considered pornographic material is disseminated to students a particular Bill wasn't actually necessary because the obscenity bills that are already in in law do that same thing but this particular one added it in terms of of school librarians there are two Charter School Bills currently being discussed I thought they were going to vote on them yesterday but it looks like it'll be a little limit later one of them 549 requests charter schools that would report to a commission rather than local school boards and that particular one the commission itself would sort of sit a little bit under the Montana School Board Association and it would have members selected by two by the governor one by OPI one by the head of the Senate one by the head
140of the I say head the president of the Senate won by the head of the house one by the minority leader of the House one by the minority leader of the Senate if I got them all so it's um selecting people primarily by people who are elected to the legislature the other one would ask that anyone proposing a charter school work with the locally elected officials on the school board to decide if you're accountable and authorized or at that group isn't available that may be another elected group um the other one that I wanted to bring up is the donations to public schools for tax credits remember that's been there and it was such that somebody could give up to two hundred thousand dollars and take that much off their tax bill and last year
141it was up to two million dollars everybody throwing in money and it turned out for the same first two years of this particular bill um more than 60 to 80 percent of the money that was donated by people went to the same school district so this year they tried to make that a little bit less in that direction it's up to five million dollars and any one individual can donate two hundred thousand dollars but the bill places limits on the amount a single District can receive and then the sort of leftover will be divided up among school districts on the basis of other distribution rules for Aid to schools um the one that I talked about very briefly before that was going to change School Board elections to move them to November of even years
142require candidates to State their party affiliation Etc was tabled then it was brought back a day or two ago and now it's been tabled again so it doesn't seem like School Board elections are going to change very quickly anyway and then I'll just mention like two more uh one is to set up education savings accounts so that families can move their children with special needs to private schools and pay vendors for supplies and services that's currently sitting in the Senate finance and claims committee the bill would make it so that these entities private schools don't have to create IEPs I'm not sure exactly how that would work um and finally the Open Enrollment bill passed such that students can go anywhere now no tuition but State funds would move with the child when they're placed
143in another school and I could go through another you know 15 or 20 but I won't but I get a bill tracker every day and I'm sure some of you do as well and it's worth looking at even though there are an enormous number of bills and I don't know how either I or the legislature can keep track of them but we need to know our opinions about these various bills contact the appropriate people and try to provide information where it's needed thanks any trusty questions or comments seen on any public comment on the agenda item seeing and The Time Is Now 7 22 and we are adjourned