RRPS - School Board meeting - October 28, 2024

001Welcome to our board meeting tonight our rear rch of Public Schools Board of Education meeting for Monday October 28th is now called to order um if all would please arise for the Pledge of Allegiance Gary trip will lead us oh I will lead us I pledge ALG to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands Nation God indivisible with liy and justice for all that's fine okay we'd like to welcome everyone out to our meeting tonight um as it's always been when we have a nice full board room so um welcome to everyone who's here we do have a couple of special guests who are here with us as well we have County Commissioner David H who's here thanks for being here uh rear we have the

002rear Rancho mayor Greg Hall is here with us City councelor Bob Tyler is also here with us we have a couple it's kind of fun we have a couple past um School Board presidents Ramone Montano and kathern colen who are here with us tonight so thanks for being [Applause] here and also we have uh Billy Helen oh I told her I was gonna say your last name right I was trying so hard but she's the uh the president of the Rano School Employees Union so we want to welcome all them for being here [Applause] okay so with that we'll go ahead and start our meeting tonight with introductory comments by our superintendent of schools Dr V Cleveland good evening everyone you know what Dr Cleveland hold on because I totally forgot to ascertain a a

003COR can you please take a roll call for US president galri presid vice president Morgan pres secretary Tyler pres board member trip pres board member Miller present you have a COR okay thank you so much I just got so excited about all of our visitors it's me all right go ahead thank you Dr Here We Go Again everyone thank you so much for being here we're really glad uh that you have come out on this Monday evening uh before the uh the board meeting we had an audit committee meeting it met at four o'clock uh the committee is chaired by Dr Beth Miller and it was held as an executive session as permitted under the open meetings act um and the confidential and confidentiality requirements of the New Mexico Administrative Code uh we will be

004having a presentation uh from our auditor uh at the next regular board meeting so uh you will have an opportunity to hear um the findings and uh we look forward to having the uh the uh audit reported out and then we also had a finance committee meeting uh at 4:30 prior of the regular board meeting and this committee is shared by Jessica Tyler rally the only um agenda item at the meeting was an update by our chief of operations M Baker on the district's General obligation bonds and um we're excited about uh some possibilities there uh because we have so many needs in our district we have a report this evening for the Schuman Foundation it's a donation uh the rear renal Board of Education will be asked to consider the acceptance of a $110,000

005donation from the Schuman foundation for the level all program Sher Carver executive director of student services will explain this program and we'll discuss how it will benefit our students the Schuman Foundation has provided donations to the district for many years um Mr Schuman uh was interesting gentleman and they may share more information uh he uh was a counselor for many years in Brooklyn New York and when he retired he came to Rio Rancho and was a a really uh powerful voice for Rio Rancho kow's Club and uh and so we appreciate that ongoing support of our schools also uh T Bergos who I think is on that Foundation board uh and began this conversation many years ago with the district uh is here as well so T of welcome we uh what we have had

006in the past is a program called Naviance that helps guide our students helps counsel our students on uh where they might go uh following High School school and uh helps them plan uh how to get there uh this uh report tonight is a new program greatly improved greatly enhanced called level all and their mission statement is to provide every high school and postsecondary student with um the uh personalized in-depth support and guidance uh needed to realize their lifelong dreams Navan served us well for many years and really grateful to have had it but this is a really nice upgrade and really will meet the needs of our students a much higher level than in the past so uh we uh we're looking forward to that donation this evening we also have a donation from the

007Fe Freemasonry Miss Masonic lodge number 76 and Janice Chenal who is our elementary school Improvement officer will share some information regarding this generous donation to some of our uh elementary students for the purpose of improving uh their achievement in the area of reading this donation is the courtesy of the Masonic lodge number 76 here in Rio Rancho and it is a direct donation of computer tablets to some eligible students in our in our elementary schools want to acknowledge Richard Cullen who has been our contact uh for the coordination of this uh donation and other members who are here from the the lodge this evening the board uh does not officially accept items with when they go directly uh to students rather than becoming District property but we still wanted to uh acknowledge it and express

008our appreciation and uh and let the board know uh of this very generous donation and uh again uh we thank the Masonic lodge and Ria Rancho for their ongoing support of families they've been very generous to us over many years and we are really grateful for those donations and then as we had shared with you um we will just do an update on the prek committee we said we would come about halfway through the process and share with you how that's going and what's been happening on that committee and so I I want to kind of go back a little bit about the why and the challenge uh what we are looking at is how we can maintain the number of students we currently have at shining stars we are forced to go to a

009full day and the state has been moving toward full day for the last several years years and if we are forced to go full day we will have to cut the number of children served in half unless we come up with some other options we did survey our parents who had children in that age bracket and it was very interesting we had a really good turnout in the survey and what we did find is the majority of our parents and families did want full day service we are not serving all the students who want or need those Services here in Rio Rancho and according to the legislative finance committee and the secretary of the early childhood and Care Department uh we have one of the lowest percentages of students served and what that means is

010students who need that support early on are not getting it and then go to kindergarten and they're considerably behind our teachers as we've visited across the district have shared that they can easily identify students who have had the opportunity to attend shining stars preschool versus those who have not had that opportunity the other concern is we've looked at this is uh we've been very proud of our um peer model program because we think young children learn from each other um just as much as they learn from adults and uh without additional space we are really much in in Jeopardy of losing the uh the peer models so the the committee activities um has met three times this school year and is coaching shared by Janice Shanel and Jerry reer and uh tonight we'll give you

011an update on the progress of the committee including a visit uh to Sierra Vista Elementary School uh we will have the corly human resources report uh this report will be presented by Mike Chavis our executive director of human resources and it will include the following uh the human resources departments organizational structure the breakdown of District Personnel by functional category ories our hiring data for this school year and where we are in terms of of vacancies New Mexico has made a lot of progress in terms of vacancies and teaching and other uh related POS positions but we are still not we are still not full um we still have well over a thousand vacancies for teachers alone in the state of New Mexico and then Mr Travis will provide you with some information on recruitment hiring

012and retention efforts um in in in his Department we have an update uh for policy 806 it was brought to the board last time as a first reading and uh proposed changes to this policy will be presented by Sal maniai our executive director of Safety and Security and Sher Harver who is our executive director for student services these recommended policy changes have also been uh reviewed by our our our legal department by Lauren and David and all the changes do adhere to the New Mexico state laws and regulations I would want to certainly emphasize there's an exemption for uh law enforcement animals as well as legitimate Service uh animals and since this is the second reading this evening then the board will be asked to consider and act on the proposed changes and I stand

013for any questions or concerns any questions from the board question okay thank you very much thank you thank you Dr Cleveland okay we'll start um by approving the prioritized agenda and proposed time allocations Madam president this board member Tyler I'll make a motion to approve the prioritized agenda and proposed time allocations board member Jeff Morgan a second okay we have a motion in a second all in favor I I any opposed motion carries 5 Z okay we'll now move into the public comment portion of our meeting tonight um Sorry let me get my papers organized so we received a number of public comment both through our online forum and also here um in our boardroom tonight um and so I'm going to start by summarizing our comment that came through our online form first um

014so we received 21 through our online form um and we received 19 in regards to the safe space signs and two in regards to pesta so for our safe space signs we received public comment from samtha Young Jade debaca Maggie young Melinda Nickerson Gage Chavis CS Elise Mont Emily Sal savini Savinelli Brandy Moore Melissa Lawrence Shannon derell shaa Wicks Rachel mcleland Melanie Lucero Wendy Leighton and Jan Chavez Amanda Sal salvad Heaven Haven levit Ashton Nichols and kyomi wils so those were all in regards to our safe space signs um and then we received two in regards to pesta um in regards to the prek program possibly going there and those were from Leilani zaruma and Elia Gonzalez um oh there was actually one more on that um um I apologize I'm take back so Amanda

015cedra was also our was one of our pesta I think I have that written in wrong on mine so okay um so those were what we received on our online um now going into what we have here in the boardroom so we have 10 individuals who are signed up for public comment in the boardroom tonight for various topics um as we invite you up and we will have three minutes so J will have a timer that will sound right at three minutes we ask that as those three minutes pass and that alarm sounds if you would please just sit back down we reserve 30 minutes total in the boardroom for public comment and so this will allow for others to be able to give their comments um and so please when that alarm sounds please

016sit go ahead and sit back down um I'll name each individual and then you'll be as soon as you come up to the podium you and you start uh JC will go ahead and start your timer I asked that if you just go ahead and check your this the agenda which is also up on the table up here it has um all the things in regards to our public comment being given in our boardroom so with that we'll go ahead and get started and we'd like to invite um and I am so sorry there's so many different names I feel like I take on every place in the world as we go through public comment trying to get everyone's names down um and so if you if I say it wrong please feel free to

017go ahead and say it correct uh correctly when you come up but our first will be Angela turra T tchra if you want to come up if I said that so wrong that there we go thank you it's funny how in your mind too it sounds different than when you try to say it out loud it's actually uh just how it's spelled TI stra okay sorry I hi my name is Angela Tira and I am a social worker at Colina still Norte Elementary I'm also a parent of a student who attends Colina still Norte Elementary um I'm here tonight to talk to you about uh a pretty serious issue that we have been having I'm going to address my school but I know it's happening all over the district um I'm 30 years in as

018a social worker I'm in LCSW I'm also a little bit halfway past my uh Doctorate of Social Work focusing in trauma in elementary education so um I'm here to inform you of a major issue that our teachers are uh facing it's aggression in our schools and yes I am talking about elementary schools um personally I have been hit kicked bit spit on or stabbed with a pencil approximately 20 times since August it's a daily occurrence it happens at least once a day since August we also have 62 reported incidents of aggression 23 teachers have reported violence or injury from a student to the teacher 32 incidents of student on student violence this is since August and this is only the data from my school across our nation we're witnessing an alarm an alarming Trend recent

019studies show that approximately 30% of teachers have considered leaving the profession because of behavior and disruptions additionally surveys indicate that 30 to 40% of Educators report that disruptive behavior plays a significant role in their decision to leave the class classrooms these numbers reflect a crisis that extends Beyond just statistics the disruptions affect not only our special ed our our sorry special education our teachers but also the general education students that are in the classroom during the disruptions there's classroom disruption frequent interruptions steal precious instructional time emotional trauma witnessing a aggressive behavior and aggressive acts towards your teacher can instill deep fear and anxiety in students they may experience trauma that affects their sense of safety and well-being in the classroom the emotional toll hinder their ability to focus engage and participate in learning activities leading

020to long-term effects on their academics and their mental health there's diverted teacher attention if it's teacher has to pay attention to one student who is disrupting the learning of others the other 20 22 children in the class at that point are not learning anything negative classroom environment if there are constant disruptions in the class it's a negative classroom environment thank you than [Applause] you next is Billy Helen thank you board president gy how do you say your last name grith GTH okay thank you board president GTH board members and Dr Cleveland I'm Billy Helen um I normally present to you as the president of Riano School employees union today I'm actually here as an educator and as a c Community member I want to be clear that I'm speaking today as a concerned Citizen and

021Ed educator and not as the president of our Union as a second grade teacher I don't find that safe zone signs directly affect my students or me very often but I often think about my former students and what they need as they finish their educational path with our district I always come to the conclusion that every single former student of mine is entirely unique and has specific needs that only their current teacher or teachers would fully understand I believe it is important to create safe and inclusive learning environments for all students while some people may object to the idea of lgbtq plus safe zone signs in schools I believe that these signs serve as a powerful symbol of acceptance and support for students who may be struggling in their with their identity they serve as

022beacons of acceptance that may prevent vulnerable students from pursuing self harm the purpose of these signs is to let students know that they are welcome and valued regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity they provide a visual cue that students can turn to if they're feeling unsafe or need help by creating these safe spaces we help to foster a more inclusive and supportive School culture I understand that some people may have concerns about the appropriateness of these signs in schools however it is important to remember these signs are not promoting a political agenda they are simply a way to show students they are cared for and accepted I urge the school district to allow Educators using their District approved and profession training and professional judgment to choose between a generic School logo or a

023rainbow flag design for lgbtq plus safe zone signs based on the specific needs of their student population this will ensure that safe zone signs are appropriate and welcoming for all students by working together we can create schools that are truly safe and inclusive for all students every student has unique needs and I know our district is concerned enough to meet every student where they are thank you for listening thank [Applause] you and next is Penelope lyso it's Theo thank you good evening first of all I'd like to thank you in advance for hearing me out this evening um I'm I'm going to try to do this without crying I'm penelo I'm a kinderart and teacher at MLK here this is my 26th year teaching I've been in two states four school districts teaching obviously is

024my passion it's my heart but this year I have been verbally abused physically abused and emotionally obviously I'm a wreck um I have students in my class that kick punch scratch bite I've had things thrown at me chairs tables I have students have even called um my EA's a for because they were told they had to sit out I have a class of 22 students my students two of these students are the ones that are having severe um hard time controlling their emotions and become so unregulated that there's no bringing them back I'm concern for my other 20 kids in that class they go home and they tell their parents that they've watched me get assaulted in class they're concern for me I even had a student say that the other kids would protect me

025they'll get them they'll hold them down so they can't hurt me I had to tell them no please don't do that I'm here to protect you I don't know what the answer is I don't know how to fix this my administrators all of the support team at my school they're amazing they come as soon as they hear the call I'm not one a call I've never made a call until this year have I had to do a cub call a lion call to get help with a student I felt like I could handle it on my own but this year I I can't I don't understand what's happening with these students and it's not only in my classroom it's across my school when we've gone to meetings it's across the district so in conclusion I

026ask that you try your best to help us find a solution for this and I appreciate you listening to me this evening thank you thank you our next is Nicolet Guzman hello my name is Nicollet Guzman I am also a kindergarten teacher at MLK uh I teach inclusion this year I've taught kindergarten for six years and I've been with the district for eight I'm here to speak on behalf of the teachers um in the district and um at my school who've seen a rise in student aggression especially in the Early Educational level this Behavior consists of kicking teachers throwing items in the room cursing screaming tearing classroom items and even hallway decorations throwing rocks at teachers running out of the classroom and students are crying these behaviors occur when a student is disregulated or being

027asked to do a nonpreferred task once students are in this disregulated state there's not much that will calm these students down in the past students who dis who demonstrated severe Behavior were placed in an SE inclusion classroom due to the high amount of accommodations that are needed due to students behaviors triggering other students there's now a need for multiple classrooms to have at least one severe Behavior the district does an amazing job at supporting teachers in including Administration we teachers have utilized professional development training such as zones of Regulation mindset other strategies including calm down Corner break carts however the behavior is so severe that these strategies are only so effective in the classroom with the amount of resources we have uh with especially lack of Staff members whose job is more than just responding

028to crisis calls overall these behaviors require more intensive support furthermore it is important for teachers to have educational assistance to be in the classroom supporting students instead the focus has now shifted for educational assistance to focus on student Behavior rather than academics so the classroom teacher can teach thank you for letting me speak with you all today about our teacher concerns and our schoolwide district concerns and I'm hoping as a district we can further improve education as our community continues to evolve and we continue to see a need for student social emot support thank you thank you okay our next is Ryan Brower it's actually pronounced uh bro as in bro sir as in yes sir no worries it's not last name good evening Dr Cleveland president gbri and respected school board members we are

029speaking on behalf of our students staffs families and the entire pad so Community everything we share with you today is intended with the utmost respect we generally want to be a part of a solution that is right for all students we are excited to hear about the district exploring Arts integration we also wanted to let you know that we have many of these types of lessons and activities at pesto the following is a list of the amazing opportunities and experiences students have had or had at pesta this year in the Native American Club science night literacy night math night Book Fairs raing buddies staff well-being team a choir which performed for a Senior Citizen Center and took part in district 6 orchestra band Good News Club uh a PE that piloted the fresh fruits and

030vegetables program National archery in the schools program kids heart challenge crafty eagles art Club frisbee disc golf club running club Spanish club digital Defenders cooking club bilingual Club cheerleading after school tutoring which consists of seven separate groups a social worker who has developed strong relationships with many students and a general education social worker who broadens the social work reach two speech and language professionals an occupational therapist a school psychiatrist special education instructional leader diagnostician and a nurse a nurse's assistant all of whom have been working closely with and who developed strong relationships and trust with some of our most vulnerable students two counselors who do classroom lessons help teachers with specific issues that may arise and work in small groups and one-on-one with students many teachers trained on in Implement culturally and linguistically responsive strategies

031one reading interventionist and one math interventionist working closely with our students to lead them to academic success through targeted skill practice in small groups and progress monitoring as of October 1st 2024 they serve 66 students to Eld coordinators and a bilingual facilitator teacher that works endlessly to lead students to reading speaking and writing Proficiency in both English and Spanish many educational assistants who work very hard and closely with their students and have bu strong relationships schoolwide literacy instructional coach pres so Elementary wrote a grant and only school is accepted for that Grant two counselors who do classroom lessons help teachers with specific issues that may arise and work in small groups and one-on-one with students sa student support team who supports teachers in pin coting student skill deficients and Target appropriate interventions to practice and

032progress monitor a front office staff and administration that knows and understands our students related arts teachers who have built relationships with students starting in kindergarten and a cafeteria and custodial staff that have built rapport with students what is unique to Presta the Isaiah's backpack and food pantry crucial to the entire pesta Community Tech Team ego eeks that learn technology and create film daily announcements complete with student broadcasters and meteorologists thank you for your time thank you thank [Applause] you our next is Anna Mayberry good evening Dr Cleveland president cth and esteemed board members I'm going to continue where Ryan left off um a piloted we piloted the fresh fruits and vegetable program our fifth grade Traditions a trip to the rainbow pool and the fifth grade tunnel the last day of school wave sending off

033our fifth graders our librarian facilitated the one school one book program in both English and Spanish we're discussing training a grade level to be peer mediators for uh younger students our fifth grade and our El ELD coordinators pilot piloted right to succeed where the only Elementary School to participate in the program pesta was the first Elementary School to host the national dance Institute program our steam lab originated at pesta and is now districtwide Science Club 24 hours of science the science club students assembled rockets and shot them off for the whole school to see quad Del Soul was the only Elementary School represented with a team at the middle school Rob robotics competition and one of our teams placed 20th a new and improved student council at pesta only Elementary School to participate in Rio

034Rancho High School's big event we completed a campus cleanup and ran a drive for homeless Youth and we won the keep Rio Rancho beautiful contest last spring we have a monthly positive behavior and academic achievement assembly attendance incentives and awards tennis lessons are provided by an EA for students with special needs we play music before and after school on Mondays and Fridays last year myself and my dog Ruby completed training and certified as registered therapy dogs Ruby came every Friday to read with students and we also came to the safe program on Wednesdays after school to work with those students uh grade levels do creative Hands-On learning experiences that are extensions of the cka curriculum for example kindergarten hus hosted an English tea party after our kings and queens unit third grade hosted a te

035party after the allice and Wonderland unit fourth grade had students compete in a treasure hunt after their fantasy unit the fourth grade gifted students wrote and acted out skits on major events of the American Revolution after their CA unit and there are many other examples fifth grade had the paleontologists come as a guest speaker presenter thank you for your time thank you you next is Cassandra Reid good evening Dr Cleveland president galberth and respected sport uh respected school board members I'm going to continue where miss Mayberry left off um fifth grade did a river exchange project where they learned about the water cycle in New Mexico and then planted trees on the BOS 180 students on IEPs that is 31% of our student population students in special education teachers have built strong relationships and the

036teachers genuinely know and care about their students cafeteria and custodial staff have that have built rapport with students uh pesta has was established in 1983 it became part of rear ranal public schools in 1994 over 40 years of History generations of families have attended Pua many upcoming Generations are looking forward to attending the school of their family members all of the above lead to improved student achievement engagement and overall well-being leading to Leading students becoming productive successful citizens the following are some other thingses we do to improve student academic achievement our nm- goal which is focused on student Improvement the goal is for 100% of teachers to explicitly post communicate and utilize learning targets daily students will understand these goals and their progress toward the learning targets we have schoolwide walk to intervention as mentioned

037above targeted intervention practices weekly progress monitor monitoring by all teachers student data folders data studies weekly plc's weekly mlss meetings to include student data and work product analyzation regular collaboration with support staff attendance incent initiatives to include relationship mapping and mckenny vento to support students positive behavior initiative with a focus on soaring Behavior tracking meetings professional development which is various throughout the year and summer consistent communication between staff and family members uh Grant from nmp uh ped for structured literacy uh R rigorous teacher professional learning for teachers facilitated by A literacy instructional coach last year we experienced a nearly 7% increase in attendance all grades third through fifth who took the nwaa had increases in math and Ela so there was Improvement in all areas our test scores growth per NM Vistas 22 23 school

038year are comparable to all rail Rancho Elementary Schools we are committed to improving our students scores and academic achievement everything we do is to lead every single student to success quite a bit of what we mentioned earlier helps give our students the tools and resources necessary to be successful we are a very dedicated staff who cares about our students and we are willing to do whatever we need to be successful and giving our students everything they need to be successful if you'd like to know more about anything discussed above we would be happy to talk with you and or answer your questions we happily invite you to visit pesta at any time to see our students and staff in action thank you thank you Serenity O'Brien good evening Dr Cleveland president galberth and board members

039um I'll be finishing up where Miss Reed left off we sincerely thank you for your time for listening to our speeches reading all of our emails comments concerns and questions over the past six months we feel very strongly about the importance of Questa and all that it has to offer we are a well-established Community rooted in culture diversity Traditions Pride multi-generational families hardworking and humble people Questa is a special place and it's difficult to put it into words but you can definitely feel it when you spend any amount of time on our campus we don't always know how to stand up for ourselves but when we heard the news of the possible repurposing of Questa we knew we had to take action we've done everything with professional calm and positive intentions it would be absolutely

040devastating to our community to lose pusta our school is the heart and soul of this community please help us preserve and protect our beloved neighborhood school please allow us to keep Questa forever you um and just on a personal note I worked in APS for several years before coming to rear Rancho when I was at a prek through five school and it was really neat to have those prek kids on campus they did come to the library and so I was able to to build those those routines and procedures and relationships with them before they even started kindergarten and so it's just um I would put in a plug anyway for for having prek on the elementary campus um and then just something that I've thought about that I'm sure you all have too um

041if Questa were to be repurposed I have a very large Library collection and I'm just wondering where all those books would go um and like what the logistics would be for that so thank you and thank you for your time thank you thank you Ramon Montano good evening Madam president GTH Vice Mr Vice President Madam Secretary members of the board Dr Cleveland thank you for allowing me to speak tonight as a proud parent of uh student of Joe Harris Elementary I'm here because I'll let you know how it happened I was in line waiting for for my first grader to come out of school one day and we had just uh completed a jagathon that raised close to 60 or a little over $60,000 that our kids raised for Joe Harris Elementary and I was

042first in line because my daughter asked me to be first in line that day and I could hear the talking behind me and finally a parent grandparent turn around and goes hey you why why don't you guys pay for the ne the the tools that our teachers need in the classroom that's how I got involved I didn't realize that our teachers were teaching from the back of the classroom that uh $122,000 of the60 some thousand that the uh PTO raise was going to go help fund for Podium so the teachers had the adequate equipment to be able to teach from front of the classroom I'm not opposed to fundraising my daughter was very proud she got an award as well uh for that fundraiser for the fastest laps uh plus she raised almost $700 from

043family members throughout the state of New Mexico and I want to teach you the importance of giving back not only from the community but to see how many people are involved and we have an outstanding PTO but ultimately I'm concerned because it's a fair balance and I understand the balance but I'm concerned when we're having a fundraise to offset some of the deficiencies maybe in the classroom or the instructural tools that our teachers need to be able to teach our students and I'm asking that the Board of Education look at a a mechanism or a policy in place where we're not uh relying on fundraisers to offset those because ultimately it's not sustainable and my concern ultimately is sitting there where you guys are sitting now is the big picture I know in our community

044not every school can raise that type of money and I'm wondering if they don't raise that money do those classrooms go without do those students most importantly go without and I'm just trying to bring shine a light to this that with a fair balance I think there's a little bit of give because I've hear both sides you know it's great Community Support businesses are enjoying uh commit you committing to support and then I hear the other side as well of having to use those dollars instead of for after school programs or curriculum or the Arts that we're struggling to fund because budgets are tight I'm just asking that the board look at a fair balance and and and come up with some some policy that we're not uh U utilizing too much of the student

045fundraisers uh to offset deficiencies within the district thank you than [Applause] you okay and last is Lind Scher got the rest of the consonant right doesn't always happen yeah my name is Lind schrier um I'm a doctor of nursing practice and a psychiatric U nurse practitioner I have a private practice called safe space Psychiatry I am here to comment on the safe zones U policy which I I think those um safe zones stickers are very are a very important part of um of a pres a safe Pres for LGBT students um I also uh work at UNM and I lecture on inclusivity in healthcare for the LGBT community um but my angle on this is actually a little more personal I learned of this meeting and that this was a topic in the ril ranch

046of public schools from a newsletter in lgbtq newsletter um and I learned about this topic and my um the reason one of the reasons this is so dear to me and this is really not to be sensationalist but to connect with you all um my sister-in-law killed herself in 2021 um she identified as bisexual and I'm not drawing a causal relationship between the sticker policy and her death but what I do know in the work that I do is everyone's dealing with layers of trauma uh you know every layers of obstacle even and um you know and for this person she had a lot of invisible obstacles and this was one that could have safety could have been presented to her and we never know at what's Gonna Save someone but this is something that

047truly has an influence on people um so the reason is in large part youth when they learn that they want of their identity they are riddled with uncertainty like am I going to be included am I going to be safe um is my family going to kick me out is my church going to support me all these things are present so this is a positive visible symbol a lot of times we don't get any symbols and if we do they're not positive um the the um the opposite of a positive positive inclusive sign would be one that's shaming or excluding right and so I wanted to just share this idea from a a b Brown who many you may have read her books she's a very um famous researcher on shame and she says that

048if you put shame in a Petri dish andow it with judgment secrecy and silence it will grow exponentially that's what the taking these stickers away is doing right it's dousing the shame in the petri dish um the antidote she says to shame is empathy and I think that's what the stickers are that's a way that we can show empathy to LGBT students thank you thank [Applause] you all right um that wraps up our public comment for the evening I'm grateful for public comment because it shows that we have a community who loves our students who loves our teachers and wants everyone to be successful so I want to thank everyone um for expressing those public comments um and so with that which is great is that we get to go into um our reports tonight

049which also gives us um some really great insight into how our schools are supported um by our community and we're really grateful for that so our first report tonight will be on the Shuman Foundation donation of $10,000 for the all uh the level all program Sheri Carver executive director student services will present I'm sure she might bring some possibly some guests up with her I'm not sure so leave it to good evening president galberth members of the board and Dr Cleveland yes we're very honored tonight to have the Schuman some of the Schuman board with us and we're also very fortunate again tonight to have their contribution and their support they've supported us for many many years and we're so fortunate that they continue to do so so if I could ask uh the president

050of the board is now Tana Bergos who you all know she will come up and also we have commissioner Dave Hy with us and he serves as a secretary treasurer for the board and then mayor Greg Hull is here and he serves as a board member yes thank you again for coming tonight and supporting our College and Career Readiness program they've supported it as I said for many years I believe thas started that years ago we are switching to a a different platform we've had navian uh in our schools for a number of years I couldn't remember T may remember but for quite a while so we looked at a a new program and it's a program a platform that the peed is actually uh piloting in some of our New Mexico schools and Rio

051Rancho is one of those schools so we're very fortunate to be piloting that program um and it's it's very similar to navian it provides uh college options career options planning for the future um looking into act planning uh and those kind of things so it's very similar but it's just kind of a new look something new and different for kids and um so we're excited about implementing that this year we will use the funding to implement that program uh do professional development as well as other um um professional development for our staff in our community so I'd like for someone to speak on the behalf of this human board well thank you for having us here president gber Dr Cleveland members of the board and this brings back memories for sure and but we will

052keep this brief because I know you have a big agenda tonight um but we're just um very excited to be able to offer you the $110,000 again and I think it's awesome to be able to have a different program and something that the students can engage in that's it's newer fresher and you know we constantly are having to do that right in education just to give more in-depth information so I um we gladly um want to continue to support you all and hopefully you have success with level all you want to share anything Dave other than we do have a check for you yeah that's what I want to share I was just wondering who I hand this to I think they'll I'll be glad to take it and I'll do that in just a

053minute but it is a pleasure to continue to do this you know our mission as a Schuman Foundation is to help people through their education have a better life that was um Doug schuman's uh and Marie schuman's Mission and we're so happy that they were able to leave a sizable amount of money that we're able to do that not only to give this donation to the school for this program but um let's see I think so far this year we've provided scholarships for somewhere in the area 50 um members of the community they are not all just graduates from rear Rancher Public Schools or Burn Leo Public Schools some are as old as 50 years old you know that are just starting a new career or trying to change their Direction in life so it's

054a pleasure to be able to talk about this and provide this to the schools and over how much funding over the last schar how much total well I can tell you in 10 years we've been invested over a million dollars in the community and [Applause] scholarships could we have a picture taken we get a picture you could hold the check and do you want to just stand up or do you want to let's go ahead and let them get their picture first and yes I like to say a couple things okay I'm in a weird spot I'm just going to come stand come on over otherwise we're awkwardly iny we good picture now hold on one more if you'll give that to JY she'll take it for you yeah do you want to jump in

055[Applause] wonderful thank you so much for this generous donation um one of the things we know about students that students who have plans and who have dreams and see a pathway for getting there I have a much more successful High School experience than those who do not and this program helps our students find that pathway and more importantly helps them figure out what they need to do to get there and that their dreams are achievable and so this is an incredible gift and we are very appreciative we've been appreciate appreciative of navian as I said this is a wonderful upgrade and uh we know that our students our counselors our teachers will uh will really benefit from it you know we um every little bit helps and you know that every little bit helps this

056year the state of New Mexico as it worked out its budget cut the school district $24 million and we're not quite sure how that happened uh we were not the only one but we were hit harder than anyone else but there were other districts like Hobbs and Los cruus and gats and others we were not alone in our misery so to speak and so um but in years like that when we lose that much money uh it is uh every every extra bit helps us a lot make that budget work for kids so we uh we are very appreciative and uh but more importantly we're appreciative of the long-term relationship and partnership uh that has produced so many good things for our kids in this District so uh again I just want to thank you

057for your your generosity and assure you that it'll be put to good use and if you ever want to come and see it in action we are we would be thrilled for you to come and and see it in action because sometimes it's really nice to just see how things work and uh we would welcome you anytime uh once we get this up and going so again thank you thank you so much oh thank you clap one more time okay we'll go to our next report which is the freemasonary Masonic lodge number 76 donation of tablets for elementary student reading achievement um Jan chanal she'll present she has some guests here as well good evening president GTH members of the board Dr Cleveland adults like money and kids like technology so this is going to

058be a good evening I'd like to introduce Richard colon and members of the Freemasons for Masonic lodge number 76 in Rio Rancho this year they are generously donating 11 tablets one for a student at each of our elementary schools previously our school librarians received bicycles to raffle to one lucky student but since another business is now donating bikes the lodge has pivoted to tablets The Librarians at each site will work with their Administration to determine how the tablets will be distributed our lead librarian who couldn't be with us tonight Amanda ball will receive the tablets on behalf of the elementary school librarians for over 15 years our elementary schools have been grateful recipients of the Lodge's kind and consistent support we truly appreciate their dedication to supporting our public schools and students in RI Rancho

059through this long-standing relationship I will turn it over to Mr coland to introduce additional guest from Lodge 76 thank you um like like uh she said we've been donating bikes for 15 years or better uh to the schools directly but we pivoted to the tablets this year because of some situations but uh so I'm just going to turn it over to John Keel because he is part of the leadership of the loget currently uh thank you Richard and uh good evening uh Dr Cleveland and uh president galb and uh the members of the board we thank you all so much for the opportunity to speak here tonight um on behalf of our lodge um and our uh the master of our lodge who couldn't be here to because his wife is potentially giving uh giving

060birth to their uh child tonight so um on behalf of our lodge we appreciate the opportunity to speak and um and to donate these tablets if if we can make a difference in just the life of one student then uh then we've accomplished our goal and uh and that is to help our community and as Freemasons in this F as uh Freemasons and uh one of our our biggest uh goals is charity for our communities and we actually have a school at our lodge for children with learning disabilities um that we actually um offer to our community as well so uh it's a it's a huge part of our heart and soul and we're happy to be here to do that thank you thank you thank you again the same thing we said earlier it

061just applies to this how much we appreciate it is that these go directly to students and when students get access to the internet it opens a whole new world to them and you think about everything we do every day that we can't do anymore without technology without that access you can't register for college you can't get airline tickets you at so many things and so it does just open that door for children but this focus is primarily on reading and reading achievement how we can improve the achievement of uh of our students in uh the most fundamental of of skills and that is that is reading so we really want to thank you for for your effort and thank you for the good effort that our Freemasonry does in the community not just in education

062but in so many different areas and uh have a lot of Freemasons in mine and my former husband's family and uh we know the really good work that you do and we're so appreciative of that so thank you for coming this evening thank you uh for for this very generous donation yeah thank [Applause] you thank you very much we like to get a picture yeah let's turn around get a picture and everyone can have that and thank you come tighter [Music] [Laughter] [Music] tighter thank you thank you thank you very much I do appreciate it thank you thank you thank [Music] you with both of those reports once again like it just shows that we have such a wonderful Community here in RI Rancho and in the area and I'm just so grateful for all

063those who are willing to think about our schools and help us with all those there's so many needs that we do have all the time and so we're so grateful anything helps everything helps so thank you um thank thank you for being with us tonight and we'll go into our next report for the evening which is our prek update um Jan Shanel our elementary school Improvement officer along with Jerry reader um our executive director of special services will present good evening again Madame gbre um members of the board and Dr Cleveland we wanted to give you kind of a midpoint review about what's happening in the prek committee what you have in front of you is our buildout timeline what our goals are through December if anyone here is part of our prek committee will

064you please raise your hand you can see we have several people here um we want to thank them for attending and being part of our team this has not been an it's been very informative but it has not been an easy task we have approximately 30 members sometimes more depending on what the meeting is covering which consists of current parents of prek students we have a grandparent teachers both at prek level and Elementary shining stars preschool staff quested Del Soul staff we have representation from MLK F Grande we have special education staff and seals special education leaders on the committee we have a representative from Child find we have Administration from multiple sites School sites and executive directors from each department that's going to be impacted here at the district office if you go to

065the next slide we broke down the agenda for each meeting so we just want to give you an overview of what we talked about at each meeting in the first meeting we spent quality time doing introductions and getting to know each other so everyone would know who was on the committee Dr Cleveland gave an overview of the need for prek in R Rancho and spoke to the committee we went through our purpose and what our desired outcome and Norms would be and the previous pre work that we did starting in September of 2023 we learned at this meeting that going back and sharing information more deeply from what we did the first time we had a prek meeting or committee which was focused on full expansion into full day that's why we started the meeting

066in the first place was that was our goal because that's what we were told we went back and gave them information about each of those meetings and the different options we had brought forth to Cabinet we talked about what happens at shining stars which is a lot of information for families that haven't had an experience at shining star so what does it look like with three and foury olds there what the expectations are of the prek grant which includes training lure curriculum standards and that was pretty much the first meeting that we ended with at the very end or I guess at the beginning is why are you here why did you want to be part of this Committee in meeting two we had to do more work about what happens at shining stars we

067ended up not finishing our agenda the first time because we spent a lot of time just kind of building our committee so we got into depth about what happens at shining stars Mr reader went into more depth about the special education services and how child qualifies and what that looks like at shining stars and then we went into more of the pre Grant review after the second meeting we did a survey just a quick survey with the staff about where they or with the group of where they stood just right now meeting number two do you see that we should have a center or should it be at school sites and that was really the only question we asked and Dr happy Miller took those very secretive Post-it notes and you'll get to see the

068the survey results from that in between the second and third meeting we had oh go back um thank you Claudia we had a visit at shining stars and so we invited anybody from the committee who wanted to come to do a tour of shining stars so they could really lay their eyes on what the facility looks like what the expectations are and principal Ramos and assistant principal gagos that are here took us around the campus and showed us all the different parts 3y versus 4y what the outside learning time needed to look like where snacks were kept and really took us all over the campus so people could see what happened I talked to both the um the parent from pesta and the grandparent from pesta and that was very perplexing for them as much

069as their heart is into pesta they understood why we had one Center so I think that was very eye opening for them to see what it what it really looks like when it's in a center base the grandparent was also very informative in our second committee because she didn't know about child find so she didn't know that they could get help for her grandchild earlier they didn't they didn't have any idea and so finally when she got services and was able to go to shining stars they were start then they started to see advancements with her and so she really pushed for the committee as we look at prean Rio Rancho to share more information about what child find is you know we have clinics and and Jerry can talk to you about that we

070think we're doing a good job but to hear from a Community member that she didn't know about it for her grandchild was important information for us to receive so I think the value of having family members on the committee is really important in the third meeting that we had and this is the last most recent meeting we had we will share with you the survey results that we gave to the committee and those were around just kind of where everybody was standing after the second meeting community members that had children under four that Beth Pendergrass sent out a survey to see would they prefer half day or full day and would they need Transportation if they were to access prek and we'll be sharing that information with you um Patrick Patrick Martinez shared information about

071facilities and that was a lot of information he did a fantastic job going to the five different Elementary sites that we were looking at to to see if they could if they had the capacity for prek which classrooms they might use he did a wonderful in-depth job of a building may have capacity for 800 students but when you look at the different programs what is the program capacity in the school and really just tried to give the committee an overview of if we were to repurpose or to add pre to sites what that would look like inside the building and then we shared research and best practices but we again ran out of time to really go into depth on these and we had we shared the information with the committee but we are going

072to have to come back to that because we sent it as homework and I don't think a lot of people had time to read the homework but these pieces are really important what is the principal's role in early childhood what do Transition kindergarten classrooms look like that's another part of what the committee is looking at what are the prek learning experiences we looked at research from a company that we work with called EAB and then we also when it talks about principal role in early childhood the focus is the success of prek truly depends on that trajectory from prek to third grade if that trajectory isn't smooth and consistent then they find by the time a child is in sixth grade you can't tell who went to prek and who didn't like that has to

073be solidified throughout you know within the district think it's you now [Music] right all right as J said we did a we called it the prek team Post-It note vote just to kind of see where everyone um was at after our first two meetings and we want to again thank Dr happy Miller for tabulating our information so if you go to the next slide um 17 people were still looking at a second prease Center as the top possibility and seven people um stated that they wanted to look about look look at Distributing our students across across our elementaries and then one other person said we possibly look at other information okay the next slide and we want to thank Beth Pendergrass for surveying our community um we had 1,323 responses from parents with children four

074years old and younger um those with children 0 to 12 months um 93 participated Oney old 124 participated two years old 269 participated threeyear olds 412 participated and foury olds 398 um participated and they were asked three questions the first one was um whether they had a full day or half day preference and the the answers were full day um 51.2% um half day 26.2 and either option 22.6 the second question we asked them is if they need a transportation 60.8 said they do not need Transportation um 25.5 said they do need it and 13.7 um we're not sure at this point in time this was our padlet that we used for our articles and so just a big part of this was really looking at research and what's happening across the country and even

075though we don't have all of that information for you right now some of some of the research I can summarize for you is that it really it depends on the quality of the program not necessarily the location but that that alignment from prek to 3 is significant to the success of the program we'll talk to you a little bit about Sierra Vista and our visit there though because I think that'll add something extra to what we're going to share what we asked was for the committee they're going to have to summarize their five most important takeaways from the article that they had to read what do they still want to know and how will that information inform our recommendation Miss um Miss wamos informed me the grant is only 410 not 420 students so it's

076410 students that are in our halfday program so just to remind everybody if we go to full day at shining stars we can have a grant for approximately 205 students in 4y and then we will have to find a location for 205 of the remaining to maintain the same number of students in the grant if we expand our capacity at a facility or multiple facilities then we can add students but that's how many students we will have to find a home for if we go full day which seems to be what the committee I mean excuse me the community is asking us to do so right now we looked at the center being pesta although we know that there could be a possibility if there was another location but these are the plus Deltas that

077we found just looking at the information in the committee so we have to be able to expand at a manageable weight a manageable rate we have to consider room for growth this is why we would have a center at pesta we would need to make facility adjustments according to specific plan and to shrining Stars preschool standards and we already have facilities looking at that we would have all of our prek students in two facilities instead of spread out throughout the district we would be able to honor the parent survey responses for full day prek we would be able to have more students hopefully through the additional students going to the second Center preparing students for kindergarten and we'd be able to house all of our ancillary resources and specialized support staff in those two places

078instead of having them move around the district some of the Deltas and these are real concerns whether we go to a center or we go to the school sites is hiring enough staff that are pre- certified as we expand the lure requirements for additional staff I believe they have 24 hours of professional development every year that they have to take in addition they have to be early childhood certified and if they have special ed students you have to be special ed certified the location of pesta isn't necessarily ideal the bathrooms are not attached to the classroom they do have bathrooms in the Pod but when we visited Sierra Vista there they could not imagine bathrooms not being attached to the classroom when they had pre students transferring 542 students this is the current enrollment at

079pesta will put three of our other elementary schools close to 800 students and then large school size with limit transfers we can accept and repurposing schools typically have an enrollment of 1 to 200 students when they repurpose a school if we were place these um classrooms at sites these are the plus Deltas um student the the Plus or students can attend their home school for prek um according to the research and successful prek programs prek-3 alignment is the key to prek success um easier transition to kindergarten because families are part of the school Community increasing the numbers of prek students um the Deltas would be we would only be able to take students um not on IEP or speech IEPs at the school sites um overwhelm we would then overwhelm um shining stars with students

080with IEPs and limit the student role numbers and not really following the same inclusion model we have across the district um we'd be removing kindergarteners kindergarten students from kindergarten classrooms to place prek um in those classrooms because they have a bathroom and then adding prek to to related arts rotations cafeteria schedule and pick up and drop off we then took a group to Sierra Vista and I think we had 13 or 17 it was an odd number I do know that I remember that and we met with um Delila Lopez is the principal there and so she arranged for us to meet with two prek teachers they have three at their school they added this year late birthday 3y students so they have threey and 4y in the program so their three y students have

081to have a birthday by December and they have a threey 4y classroom at their school they do not have students that are on IEPs that require more than speech at any of the schools in APS that have the 3y 4y program all students that require extensive support are at a separate facility with a separate ass assistant principal the school enrollment enrollment at Sierra Vista is 398 and that includes the prek their prek classes are maxed at 16 and they would not take more than four spee students with iups that receive speech so that means they would have 12 that don't receive any services and four that receive speech they do have two adults in each room APS has specific classrooms for DL IEP needs and they're at different sites and the one that Delah Lopez

082came from she was the assistant principal at Petroglyph Elementary the committee was interested in visiting that school just to see what that would look like and then they did tell us that APS is moving towards Center based as they repurpose their smaller schools did you want anything about Sierra Vista it was actually very surprising to me at Sierra Vista to see classrooms that didn't have that special education population in them um especially coming from all of our schools that very inclusive population um I I to even have something like that I would almost have to see those classrooms in every single School in our district which we know it's not possible just due to space but to to manage something um I don't know as perfect as that for the classroom teachers and and have

083very minimal needs in the classroom our classrooms here have at least two education assistants um with the teacher to support all the needs in the classroom can I add one more thing um the other thing they told us is they have a director that oversees all of the prek the district so the principal doesn't do any of the work that eccd requires they do their peed required observations but everything else is managed by a District representative excuse me and then they also have an instructional coach I think three instructional coaches across the district that support all of their Elementary prek programs so that person is not on site they typically meet with them once a week maybe we have our instructional coach on site at shining stars so they had access to her every day

084and they'd actually asked for one for three Y2 to support both levels of teachers because it's it's different and then speeches also just the facilities the classrooms were nice they had their own bathroom the playground was not even a quarter as nice as the shining stars playground which you know I think they had maybe two or three just different types of um swing sets um playground equipment and and a shed with some other equipment in it like bicycles and so forth and then their ancillary service they do most of their speech IEPs virtually so the students don't even have they'll have somebody come in and sit with the students and do their speech services they don't have somebody face Toof face with their students that do get speech which of course ours are on site

085and just on that speech portion we we heard was it 40% of APs does virtu ual speech because of the difficult difficulty finding slps sure so we're looking at our next steps you know we still have um is it three more meetings two but probably three two more meetings that are set and we we think we want to add a third um so what we want to look at is if we had a second prek Center you know we still have to look at all all the options and and at our next meeting um we have several executive directors and directors presenting to share with us the information about um budget resources Transportation Food Services um my staff and I are going to do special education services Patrick already kind of spoke a little bit

086about the facility pieces um accessibility restrooms Cafe playground and boundaries um if we look at so when they come they're going to come and present on multiple options what is it going to look like if we have two sites what is it going to look like if we have one site and um are at multiple schools and then if we have any other ideas we are going to look at that and I'm not sure we have one other idea but I'm not sure where we are on that so our next meeting like he said will be executive directors so we'll hear how this will how having it at multiple sites versus one site will impact their department and what that might look like it's it'll be very interesting to see what the budget will be

087right now shining stars basically runs flush with all of the the funding that we get and the grant it's about with the budget that I put together it's about eight million just the cost to run the school that's not overhead costs so if we open a second Center we would need similar type of funding but our our prek funding would double but of course we'd have the kids all day instead of half day after the executive director information it it may be beneficial for the board for us to have another time to get together to share that information with you because it'll give you more Department's impact in this decision the other when it said other idea the other idea that came out at one of our committee meetings was to look at a possible

088prek 2 site within our district to be able to expand prek and have the three four five kids be the ones that transfer out to the other sites if we were to do something like that Dr Miller let us know that our our school evaluation would be based only on Ice Station and right now it's based on we have a new Messa assessment and Ice Station so there would only be one data point that would determine how the state would evaluate the school so that's one consideration to think about and so right now we stand for questions and want to know if there's anything else you would like us to look into that we haven't shared with you at this point okay thank you thank you welcome good report um Dr Cleveland do you want

089to do you want to add before we go into questions you have some things you want to add no what we let the board ask ask questions I uh we're halfway through the process so that's what we really want to stress if there are things that you want information on now would be the time to say I'd like to have more information on this uh the only other thing I would emphasize could we go back Claudia to the um the the slide that has the the survey on it one more back no no the one that had the for right there perfect thank you thank you so just to keep in mind that right now we serve a little over 400 children and a half day so a couple hundred in the morning couple hundred

090in the afternoon if the state forces us to go full day we will go down to 210 students served that will be all that we can serve you can see the number of children in our community who who would probably like to have Services they liked it enough to at least fill out the questionnaire and give us their feedback I think you can see why we're one of the districts with the lowest percentage of children served in the state of New Mexico and it's it's related to space it it always has been and uh we have tried over the years very hard to get a second prek the state made a decision many years ago not to fund the facilities for prek and the thinking behind that we think was there were so many districts

091declining with empty buildings they wanted them to use those buildings first but we've never been in that category we've never had empty buildings sitting around waiting to be used and so that's made it harder for our district there are there are districts across the state of New Mexico where 100% of the children are served in their school district that qualify so it puts us behind the curve a little bit in terms of getting children ready for kindergarten because a lot of our children aren't getting access to those programs where other districts are providing their children all that want access to those Early Childhood programs and so um there's one other thing they're looking at won't go into that at all today but that's the transition kindergarten which has been spurred from parent requests and another

092piece of the the puzzle not the big one not a dominant one maybe a little piece but transitional kindergarten and and that is a a two-year kindergarten for children that really in one year are not ready to move on we have a lot of parents who ask for that under State regulation you can't do that you um the the the age limit for prek is is set but it isn't set for kindergarten so you could you could do a two-year kindergarten uh we we wouldn't anticipate it be a very large program but there are a lot of families who have asked and so what they do is they pull their children out for another year who are these children uh they're often children that have a language other than English that need an extra year

093of language development or they're just very very young um kids that are are are born in um July August and September and the parents know their children are not ready to go on yet um and uh and so that's the discussion about just one other small piece and that is a transitional kindergarten that may be part of these discussions I just want to kind of bring that to your attention right now Dr Cleveland U may I add one more thing that you reminded me of e we will have a representative at our next meeting from eccd coming to the committee meeting I did meet with them a couple weeks ago and asked some questions and there the other members weren't there so we had to circle back and have another Mee meeting so they're going

094to have a representative there I provided the questions that the committee might want to ask them they already know they can't tell us about full day half day one of the things that is a focus for EC ecd is that even if we do expand they don't want private facilities to be shut down and so when we're taking students in the community they still want the parents to have that option within the community because they know some dayc carees will you know they rely on that for y population as well so they wanted to have a convers ation about that with us as well to see what our enrollment would look like and what that if we could then serve every student in Rio rancha with our expansion and with the private dayc carees okay

095we're going to go to questions and comments um Gary trip are you willing to start us off I I have several questions I'm trying to remember for 26 is the rule we can still have half day kindergarten right now in statute it is so okay um oh you say I'm sorry did you say kindergart or prek prek I'm sorry prek yep um I'm I'm curious because we keep hearing that we're 50th in the nation so I was just wondering if there was a possibility that we saw other best practices in the country maybe outside of New Mexico where how they do it and not just Sierra Vista because and I'm not trying to knock APS but we keep hearing that we're so bad so I'm just wondering if there's other best practices of what's going

096on out there in other states that may have similar laws and rules that that uh how they're doing things compared to one site versus another and so that was another possible topic and then I I was wondering if there was any research studies done on one site versus um a program at each Elementary School there's any kind of research done out there and um I think I think the um the other thing and I know this is probably way too much work but is I wonder if there's Pro uh Pro Delta done on on each site in the elementary I mean I know we're talking about pesta but is there is there an elementary school that's better suited to be the the site if we went to one site but I know that's a lot

097of work it maybe too much work but when when are we do we have a goal for a final vote or decision or whatever but do we have a goal on that I can't remember our goal is to bring you a recommendation in January I think right now our paperwork says January 13th which I think will be here very fast we're hoping to stick with that I I do think you could get the plus Delta information probably from what Patrick shared with us at our last meeting if you guys were interested in having him share what he shared with the committee he had some he went into every every school and looked at capacity and program capacity so I think we could get that information as far as capacity I I will tell you that

098in the research that I found it wasn't a site versus School sites it was really a budgetary decision by districts they made the decision based on what their budget could do and having them at school sites was cheaper for some school districts than than building a center and I do know that in the wonderful state of Iowa they just recently built in the De Moine anony Area a a pre- center that went full day so I think that is the trend that we're seeing nationally is going to more center-based prease great thank you I think that study if it's available would be good to have knowledge about thank you yeah I agree I think that would be really important for us to have um go ahead just just the one thing to Echo what Gary

099said just more information about what some of the other districts are doing that's what I want to see how impactful it is that District's in New Mexico oh well well yes please yeah anything else Jeff good oh that's it yeah thank you okay um Jessica Tyler would we entertain as long as State Statute as well as the funding would allow to have both offer both full day and half day to be able to accommodate more students remember Tyler we have talked about that I'll be interested to see what Transportation says if that's something that we can do based on the survey about 75% of those who responded said that they could transport so if it was that they had an option at to go half day at shining stars versus full day I will say

100personally my concern with staying half day is the needs we're seeing from kids coming who've even attended prek they are not sustaining well in elementary we're having a lot of as you heard tonight some some issues with regulation and so how do we build that sustainability with kids and transition kindergarten one way but I think that's one of the conversations we're having in the committee but that has been brought up I think there are parents that would like that option yeah just thinking about the total number of students that we're not being able to serve so is it more beneficial to serve them for at least a half day than not not at all so just thought going through my mind just as far as Transportation some preliminary information that Nick was giving us and

101please correct me if I'm wrong we're GNA need more buses just to go full day and that's without transporting the the grant or the GE [Music] students anything else Jessica okay go ahead um my head's just kind of full of stuff here but I thank all of you for the work that you're doing um and I would just encourage you to keep added and make sure all the voices are heard uh it it's it is a bit concerning to me that the state department doesn't know exactly what they want to do yet so um and if they do make what whatever decision to go full-time how much time do we have to make that conversion I think we have to keep all those things in mind as well I would also support uh research from

102other states what's what's the best out there and why and is it good for us to consider that or not so I appreciate your work thank you um board member Miller I believe um Dr Cleveland is it November 15th or November 17th uh there's a presentation for psfa and looking at pesta as a site or looking at um prek will be presented up there and they told us they're interested in hearing what we have to say and which direction we're going so we'll see what they'll help us with so that we can get the building converted in a timely manner they also told us that if we were to repurpose Questa and we outgrew on our other schools that would not prohibit us from getting funding for an additional Elementary School at least at that

103[Music] time okay okay I have a few questions okay first what would be and I'm not saying a building but what would be the most ideal location for for our prek if we could pick anywhere where would we want it to be um Madam president I know when Kim Johns was here the state had told her out by SEO AO in that area that they felt like we didn't have enough students served in that area it's you know shining stars is kind of centrally located but we really looked at something in the south side because that's where the majority of our the largest population that attends shining stars comes from the south side so really something on the south side of town to serve the students that are there okay did you want to add

104to that well I I could add a couple of things I think uh based on your question as I understood it is our all along was the second prek I'm feeling that would have been our number one choice and um we thought maybe we had support for that when the LFC director and then he retired so we we lost that support um but that I think we had always considered maybe would be the the the best shining stars um has the highest parent approval rate of any school in the school district year after year it has had State and National an international recognition over the years and so people come to this District all the time to see shining stars and when um David Abby came from LFC and those of you who know David

105known him for many years uh he's not easily impressed with much of anything he kind of a crusty guy you know and uh and he called on his way out of town and said I've never seen anything that has moved me more than what I saw today at uh at at that school so we think it's done a wonderful it's one a wonderful job over many years and so our our our ideal mam president would be another shining stars and uh to build it is probably on the south side but depending on land you you you could carve in and bring the Southside to shining stars I mean there are ways that you could do that um also just very quickly um one of the things that uh looking at what other states are doing

106that's where we came upon this transitional kindergarten because it has been a resounding success in California and uh and so that's that's that's why we looked at it was because of the uh incredible uh results it was producing particularly for children to speak a language other than English and as I said very young children who are not mature to go on to the next grade level so I throw that in now that's good thank you all right and I have a couple more questions can you just explain and I just because we hit on a couple of things and I just think it's important to to make sure that we talk a little bit about about it more but why is it important do you feel to have an instructional coach on campus um you

107know we talked about having that APS or whatever has three instructional coaches right that just go to these different sites so why do you feel that it's important to have an instructional coach there on site great question Madam president the grant requires and they'll correct me if I'm wrong the grant requires that they do coaching Cycles with the teachers we've had a coach on site for very long time since they they initiated this other districts have used to get or other places in R Rancho got support from UNM the coach was based out of UNM and went to all the campuses so they're required to do to do coaching Cycles with the teachers and meet with them and that's part of the grant requirement so having them on site they're be a they're able to

108get to all those teachers very efficiently and provide feedback in a timely manner so that's the benefit I can't imagine having three for an entire district and getting all of that yeah okay so that's good and then another so just something I think we also need to clarify um is I I know a lot of our parents are concerned um as we talk about pesta and the possibilities of I mean there's lots of concerns but I want to just address one of them since it was brought up in the report is that we say as we move these students we have about 500 550 right that it's going to bring our population ations up in our other schools to close to 800 um so what what are the capacities for those schools I just think

109it's important that we understand what those capacities are because I get a lot of letters about worrying about we're putting children into overcrowded schools so I think we need to talk about what does that capacity look like at those schools Madam president there's I've learned from Patrick there's two things there's overall capacity and then program capacity and so overall capacity is about 8800 at each of those sites program capacity with the special programs that we have and the small groups especially for special education and some of the related arts classrooms taking classes program capacity is typically smaller and each of it's a little different for each school right now but 800 is the max like if you had 20 some kids in every classroom it would be 800 students okay also on that we we've

110grown from being about 16% um students with disability population to a little over 20% now that that are on IEP to serve their disability so those programs have increased at all of our schools okay okay anything you want to add Dr cl to that question I don't know if you want to add anything on that just just to give us a reference point um what is the I'm just picking wh I know you were there for a while uh what was the enrollment of MLK when you were there and what is the enrollment of MLK today Dr Cleveland when I I was there it was 951 to too many and then um I think now they're like about 540 and so they're not utilizing their Portables we used all the Portables they're not utilizing all

111their classes are in the building now so they have capacity there Capac there's one other thing that came up in the committee I just want just it's a personal opinion that's all it is uh when we started this District 23s to three4 of all of our kids in the ri Rancher Public School District were importables and most of those Portables were deplorable and so we have spent the 30 years as a district trying to eliminate as many Portables as we can they are hot in the summer they are cold in the winter if you've ever had to work in one and I have uh but the biggest issue that drives Portables today is they are they are as expensive as brick and mortar now so there's no savings financially for them and they last about

112half the time that a brick and mortar building less so going back to more Portables to me would be a a huge step back for this District uh and so and Patrick's very much in agreement with that and uh and and indicated that at the at the um at the meeting but Portables are you we don't want to go back there probably the biggest thing that drives Portables today is that they are not they are dangerous in terms of trud intruders and we have spent we have spent lots of money making sure that all of our students go through and families go through a controlled access and go back to start putting in Portables all of that really just kind of Fades away so there's been some discussion not a lot but some of a

113Portables and I I just it's uh in my opinion a tremendous waste of taxpayer money but more importantly it really does put our students at risk we'd love to get rid of everyone we have we still have some and we're trying to get rid of them for example you heard a little bit about the upgrade RI Rancho High one of the the uh key objectives of that is to get rid of the Portables at Rio Rancho High School so um I just that's that's a a very far off piece but uh bringing in a bunch of Portables is not in my opinion A very wise move well Dr Cleveland that um speaks to the capacity of the school too I believe I mean Patrick can tell me if I'm wrong but I believe when they

114look at capacity of the school they count the Portables as one that we currently have M that we currently have on campus go ahead Jessica um so I know the goal is to bring a recommendation to the board in January but can you remind me and I think this is something that's definitely been a concern um from everybody at pesta is what would be the timeline um moving forward for whatever decision is made so uh whether we choose to repurpose Questa what school year would that happen would it would it occur all at once or would it be a phased in approach where we stop int taking you know uh kindergarten ERS and allow the current classes to finish there um can you talk a little bit about that because I think that there's a

115lot of still questions out there about what that could potentially look like and what is the timeline would this be something that occurred in the 25 26 school year or not till the year after that remember Tyler I really think it depends on what the grant says if the grant says we have to go full day I think we'd have to move on the following school year to be able to keep all those students in prek I know we're going to start looking at boundaries and looking at redoing the boundaries we have a lot of growth on the North side and that's something that we paused while we were looking at recommendations from the committee but that's something that we'll be moving into now and Patrick and I were talking about that last week we

116need to start looking at what those boundary moves would be like and where all of our students would end up going but I think I think we'd be looking at next year otherwise we'll be status quo at shining stars with with half time and that that won't meet what our community has wanted or what we think our students might need the Early Childhood US Secretary has made it very clear to us that her intent is full day but the question is whether or not she can when when uh when she they begin to push um our uh our state senator began to go back and look through the bills and found that they didn't quite have the authority to do what they were doing so they backed off but she said her intent is to

117to make that change this legislative session but I think that's going to be hotly contested in in the New Mexico legislature and I don't know anyone can predict which way uh that would go that decision would go but basically it is a a legislative decision not a decision of the secretary and Dr Cleveland uh we did receive data from eccd out of all the students that are served in prek across the state there's only about 560 that are half day and 410 of those are ours so the majority of students across the state attend full day okay um one more question well maybe a couple more and some comments um but as far as our survey do you feel like we really got a good representative sample I was actually very surprised and it's totally

118fine that we had so many who wanted the full day I was just surprised um but do we feel like we really got a good representative sample was it most just the kids who are in our current prek programs that you know we're really putting in it was mostly four three and four year olds so go if you count the Sur it's 810 three and four year olds yeah so that's a pretty good sound it is it is I just like were we just hitting that school are we looking at you know I I just wonder if there's just ways to look at maybe more of that population that's coming in versus the population that's currently there which I think we got a good good look at the population that's probably currently there just to

119give us a better feel so I don't know if there's a better way to survey that if there's a way that we can do that or if it's really needed and maybe it's I we still had a large population when you look at surveys that were that were surveyed so um but I'm just curious if there's a way to look at that a little bit differently Madam president I will tell you our our waiting list at shining stars has shrunk significantly and we do have people that left at the beginning of the year because they wanted full day including staff members who are on the committee that pulled their students from shining stars to put them at private because they full day okay so I don't know if that's the trend all across the Rancho

120but that came up in our Comm okay so that's good to know so as we move ahead I think something that I just want to have as depending on whichever way this goes right but if if we decide something with pesta that's specifically that that is the direction we're going to go I want to see very clearly as to why that location out of all of our schools is the best location for for this school I want to see that very clearly um just because I don't think it's and I I'm really interested in Patrick's report um what you were talking about there but I do I want to be able to see that pretty clearly that this is this is the best location if that is the decision that comes um a couple other

121things though and this is just some concerns and maybe some pleads especially since we have some um some individuals who are here um obviously you guys are on that committee is that I still think that we might be going into it with what what we think should happen instead of really opening our minds if that makes sense and I think that's both from the district and both both from Questa and as we go into it because we have a lot of committee members right from that school but as we go into it I My Hope and my plead to everyone is to make sure that we're opening our minds to the whole and what this is going to look for the future of our district as we were in Colorado um a few weeks ago

122numerous schools have been closed there we know that's happening throughout the state of New Mexico it's just changing the way it looks in our Public School System um and so we're losing some of the populations out of our schools um and so when we look at it we want to make sure that we're looking into the future um and not just us specifically um you know as a student who went to pested El Soul as a kid and who was moved into Ernest stapleton's District as a fifth grader it was a hard transition to make and yet here I am today I'm okay and so two as what whatever does happen I think we also just owe it to our students to be really positive um as I have worked with all of the individuals

123um within this District both in the schools and in our district office everyone cares so so much about our students and no one's up there laughing thinking like oh this will be such a funny thing to play on them to to close school and that's definitely not um the case with this and so once again my my plead is just for everyone to think of it in that way and to remember the students and that they feed off of whatever ever we're putting out there and that whatever happens our students are we've got their back we're going to make sure that they're safe we're going to make sure that we're putting them in in good places and whatever does happen but please please to everyone just go into it please thinking about the future of

124our district as a whole um and so that's all I have does anyone else have any other questions or comments to to make on this okay Dr Cleveland anything just one last a couple last thoughts really quickly um apart from the academic piece and I think we have good data uh to show you the the uh the gains made by children at at at prek a pretty impressive data um I think the um we do know that children who don't get a prek there's good data to support that and we get that children who do not get a prek experience are at a disadvantage and and a significant disadvantage particularly if they're children of poverty or they speak a language other than English but all children are at risk with with with that so um

125it is an important con consideration I think um and and there is no perfect location no perfect solution I will tell you that you know it we've looked at others and there aren't any really Perfect Solutions we can sure show you the the reasoning as to to the why so um but again open to some other ideas and and and Jenna uh mentioned one a k through 12 and a three through uh five school is another option and uh there are some other things that that can be looked at I I sat in the last meeting with um at one of the tables and I was speaking with one of our teachers and she said to me well you understand don't you that if it's not full K you've eliminated almost any teacher from having

126access to that for their children and I said I really hadn't thought about that but you're right she said there's no way I could do a half day as a teacher in the school dist so that made me think about okay uh certainly for our own staff and their access to to shining stars um and then the last comment I again I really hope that we don't get to a point where we have to eliminate the pier models because I think that has been the key to the success of that that school is for children with developmental issues have a have the opportunity to be side by side with children who are developmentally On Target they look at them they watch them they emulate them and and and so I hope that in all of

127this we're able to preserve that but we will very likely not especially if we're forced to go full day at the pure model program will will not exist anymore and I can tell you there is tremendous support in this community for prek and I can give you the name of some former board members who feel very strongly about that but it is uh it is as Jenna said earlier there is no easy solution here there's just not an easy solution and we sure wish there were but uh we'll we'll look at all the options and the board can look at those and make a decision yeah as a mom of four kids three of them got into shining stars and one didn't and it was very sad and we we didn't have the means at

128the time to be able to pay for preschool so we did home preek is what we told him um but um I I'm I'm hoping that we can find some things that we can do to help our community so thank you so much for for the report tonight appreciate it okay our next report is our human resources report and Mike Chavez our executive director of Human Resources will present he is working on it just so everyone knows getting up in here all right good evening Madame President Dr Cleveland members of of the board um I am here tonight and I'm very fortunate to be joined by two of the directors from our department and they will be assisting in this presentation um and I will let them introduce themselves in just a moment um what

129we're going to do this evening is a little bit different than what we've done in the past um typically what we would do is present to you um essentially where we're at with hiring um where we're at with opening in the district what we' like to do tonight is give you a little broader look at um the district as a whole um we'd like to give you a bit more of a comprehensive look at the district um so that you can see the makeup of the Personnel in this district and give the board um a little better perspective of what we're talking about um as an overall projection of the numbers of people that actually uh work for real Ranch of public schools um so with uh without any further Ado I'm going to turn

130this over to Peggy Johnston our director of operations and she's going to give you a little bit of an overview of the department itself and some of the some of the things that they work on on a daily basis thank you Mike good evening Madame President Dr Cleveland members of the board thank you thank you so much for allowing us to be here tonight I do want to um start by saying uh as Mike said we're going to talk a little bit more about an overview the human resources staff is really very far-reaching in this District in that we work with everyone we are very fortunate in that we get to work with staff members on every campus uh and we get to work with staff members here at district office oftentimes Human Resources is

131the first Contact for people with the district uh so a lot of wonderful relationships are formed in HR and uh our staff will actually come back to us uh anytime that they have a question about anything in the district uh they know they can come to an HR staff member and we can help them uh if we don't know the answer we can get them to the right person so as Mike said I'm going to tell you a little bit about how our department is organized so Mike is our executive director and then we have three directors so I'm the director of operations medisa is our director of Analytics and we also have a director of Investigations and that's rich missbach and then the majority of our department oh I don't want to forget we

132also have two managers who are amazing and they help us run our department uh Vanessa is our director of op or sorry a manager of operations and uh Jennifer spear is our um employee relations manager we also have an amazing Administrative Assistant who most everyone in the district knows uh her name is Valerie Rue and she has been with us for a long time uh she has a lot of history within the district and she can probably help answer any questions that you might have about HR and then the rest of our department is made up of Specialists and even though we do we are very fortunate and that we have many people who work with us who are specialized in their area they know their area very well uh we also all really encourage

133HR to be very uh welcoming and inclusive to all staff and all members of the community who might be interested in working with our uh district and so everyone who works with HR has an open door policy you're welcome to call us at any time you're welcome to stop by the district at any time and someone from HR will be happy to work with you we also try very hard like I said to develop those relationships so that we can uh help folks as they go through their Journey with reano Public Schools perhaps they want to work on a promotion maybe it's an EA who wants to look at becoming a teacher maybe it's a teacher who wants to look at becoming an administrator uh so might be somebody who wants to move to a

134different location they want to transfer uh someone who's looking at retirement our staff can help you with all of those things and so um within our specialist Department we have benefits and they're going to uh work on your employee benefits um right now we're in the middle of open enrollment was which is a little bit of Chaos as you can imagine so when folks are looking at their insurance they have a chance to sign up at the beginning of their tenure with the district uh they also can sign up once a year in the fall our benefits department will meet with people with open houses and in fact there's one tomorrow if anybody wants to come out and see what that's all about uh there's one tomorrow here at district office uh benefits will also

135help folks with things um like FMLA their leave uh answering questions like that we have a compensation department where we have three folks who are working our compensation off office and they're going to help folks with their salary so that's helping to set a salary we strive very hard to make sure that all of our staff is is earning the amount the highest amount that they can earn and sometimes that might be working with nmped to make sure that they have the right license in place uh that might be working with them to talk about license advancement um our compensation Department also works with our coaches our athletic coaches and helps them get their licenses with nmped we have an investigations uh staff and we have three folks working in investigations when we say investigations

136we're talking about employee investigations uh now this doesn't necessarily mean um discipline it could also be that it is something uh along the line of helping someone with support um in their employment um it could also mean looking at video we have video surveillance here at the district as I'm sure you're all aware of and that video surveillance has to be pulled by someone reviewed by someone perhaps even edited by someone and and by that I just mean we can't of course share student information we would have to blur out student faces so we have video requests that come in sometimes from administrators sometimes from parents sometimes it's an IO request so our investigations team works very hard to do that as well um another big part of our video review is reviewing the uh

137cameras that are on our school buses um so that can be uh a very timec consuming position uh and we have a lot of requests to review those um video surveillances from the buses our next group to talk about is our staffing office and the staffing office again has three folks they're going to help with onboarding of course bringing someone into the district making sure they have everything they need uh from a background check to doing their safe schools training which is all the training they have to do um before they can actually become an employee with us some of that is State mandated and some of it is District mandated uh they're going to also make sure that they have all of the HR forms that they need to fill out and the really

138nice thing is we can do almost everything online now uh so so that really helps folks who are on boarding with our district uh to save them some time and they can get things done kind of at their own pace really so we're able to turn around folks very quickly uh when they're on boarded here with us they're also going to work with folks as they have their Journey throughout the their District uh tenure so maybe again that's going to be someone who might want to transfer maybe they want to promote um perhaps they have a question again about uh I've been an English teacher for five years I'd like to try math what do I need to do our staffing Department's going to help them with that our substitute services and student and Resident

139teachers department has uh two folks in there and they're working exactly what that says uh they're working with our substitutes which is Kelly educational services so they're a liaison between Kelly and the subs and we still have things even though Kelly is onboarding the folks and placing them with us we still have things that the district is going to require that they do again those safe School trainings a background check for the school district um things like that so they're going to help with that placement uh they're also reviewing all the potential hires for Kelly Services and then we have uh student teachers within the district we have interns within the district resident teachers all of those folks go through that uh office that office also helps to manage and um helps our staff with

140what we call Frontline which is our absence Management program and that is something that everyone here the district uses uh to they may use it to clock in and out they may but they will also use it to manage their leave with the department and then we have one of our staff members and believe it or not just one who works with our volunteers and our contractors Marisa is going to share a little bit more information about the number numbers of volunteers and contractors that we bring in to the district that we have working on our campuses it's really quite astounding uh so we have one person kind of doing the same thing that our staffing office is doing but doing that solely for our volunteers who want to come and work with our district

141and our students and our contractors and then we also have one staff member who is uh dedicated to working on workers comp um workers compensation uh workers compensation has grown exponentially over over the years uh and we really have found that there's been such a need to have one person track workers compensation so that's not only helping our nurses and our administrators at the staff or at the sites I'm sorry um when their staff might be injured um getting those accident reports to us and then being a liaison again with our insurance company any attorneys we might be working with we're also looking at how can we support those uh employees who are on workers compensation Maybe maybe they don't know what the next step is um maybe they just need someone who can kind

142of reach out from the district and help them out so that's the makeup of our department I think it's really important that as we look at being welcoming and helpful to all of our staff here we're also looking at how can we retain our staff because that's a really big question we're making we're doing huge efforts our Administration is doing huge efforts to bring on these folks bring them in train them get them working in our school system and we want to make sure that we're helping to retain them so being just a helpful useful department is a huge way that we can do that there are many other things that we can do to help with retention as well uh but that's a huge part of it knowing that they can call us knowing

143that they can stop by or send an email and we really pride ourselves on trying to get back to people as soon as possible it's usually done within a day uh so we try to make sure that we have that turnaround time that's very important for department and everyone in our HR department really Prides themselves on those personal relationships that they do grow and maintain with our staff members Hy could you make just one quick comment about the mentors absolutely that also help with ret yeah that's a great thing uh so we have a mentor program and it's for our beginning teachers uh so our beginning teachers uh work that is also with our cni department works very closely with the mentor program and they're going to be paired up with our new teachers so

144that they have an experienced teacher uh who can help them along the way they have seminars that they go through they have uh various things that they're required to do throughout the year um but that's a wonderful wonderful opportunity to help retain some of these newer uh teachers I think the resident program The Rise program that has been a really great thing as well because they're automatically paired with a mentor teacher uh they're spending that whole year in that teachers classroom so that's really a great way for someone who's brand new to the profession instead of being thrown right into a classroom all on your own you've got a mentor right there by your side next slide good evening president GTH Dr Cleveland members of the board I'm Marisa theago and I'm going to talk

145a little bit about the district makeup um the makeup of the district is very diverse in terms of skills and experience District employees everything from you know student high school students to employees with phds to employees with specialty licenses such as journeyman this requires vast knowledge of peed and rld licenses as well as working closely with new employees to ensure that all requirements are met and documents received during the entire onboarding process and like Peggy mention beyond that you know if our employees want to advance their license or look at going into a different career path what that means in terms of all those requirements um so our staff stays very very busy um and always kind of learning something new a a new question a new uh license out there but to give you

146a sense of what this makeup looks like our Personnel um the graph is actual individuals that work for the district so regardless of their FTE um but those are FTE employees anyone who has assigned an FTE or an ation uh the vast majority as you can see are teachers and that includes anyone with an instructional license so all classroom teachers Librarians edcs instructional coaches uh SS our next largest group is um EAS and health assistants and again keep in mind regardless of FTE so some of our EAS and even some of our teachers are not 1.0 um FTE um then we have ancillary which is a pretty large number as well and that includes uh nurses social workers counselors um special services staff such as slps psychologists occupational therapists Etc um and then I won't

147go into detail about everyone else other than um I broke out security so you could see what that staff looks like separate and then Transportation because that is such a um important integral um department and then we have of course district office oh facilities as well um but going on to the other staff in the district a lot of times we only think about the staff that's you know part of our allocations or part of our FTE but um that FTE makeup is 2,430 employees of which 46 of those are contractors uh the majority of those contractors are through special services so ancillary um hardto fill SE teacher positions uh we also have 29 non FTE employees and what that means is our hourly employees so safe mentors safe assistants um casuals athletic coaches that

148we on board um 230 alternative contractors and like Peggy mentioned we have one person in the district who handles all of those alternative contractors uh special services contractors and volunteers um and that means you know helping them from the very beginning uh filling out the paperwork um making sure they're assigned all their tasks um making sure they complete their safe schools so there's a lot of followup a lot of questions but we have uh 230 alternative contractors that includes everything from photographers interpreters um anyone who steps on campus you know to provide some type of service um 55 student teachers and interns and 41 student observers and then there's also 165 SF employees and although they're not our employees they still have to go through the HR department to ensure that you know they have

149a background that they've completed their um safe schools training um we currently have 306 substitutes through Kelly Services and they've also launched a pretty aggressive um hiring campaign this month so they're hoping to bring on several more in the month of November and then as of last week's snapshot we have 1,525 Ive volunteers and again all of those have to come through district office to make sure they're clear to be on campus with our students thank you Marisa all right next slide so I I want to before I move on to um some of our hiring data I just want to uh mention that you know I've been in this district for 30 years um as a as a teacher I never even thought about contacting the human resources department it wasn't and it's no

150criticism it's just you know it wasn't it wasn't something that really crossed my mind much I think that over the past several years though as we've seen a change sort of a paradigm shift in the needs of a lot of our employees um changes in you know sort of a generational change um we've seen uh a greater need for people to to have somebody to reach out to to ask questions of and things like that so what we've done is we've truly um expanded our reach to um all employees we communicate a great deal to the whole staff we communicate a lot to specifically to teachers or to this this group or that group and we we truly work very very hard to make ourselves available um and you you saw on the last slide

151how many people we're talking about um we're talking about a lot of people um and in one way or another we pretty much touch all of those people um but I will tell you that we are very very proud in our in our department um there are many times when someone will email us and we'll respond to them within a couple of hours and it it's surpris it's funny how many times someone will write back and say boy thank you for the quick response because I don't think they're expecting that that fast of a turnaround but to us their question is critical to them and the way that we feel like we can help to retain somebody and hold and and help support them is to take that question off their mind what they need

152to be focused on is their job they need to be thinking about if they're a teach teacher they need to be thinking about how are what what are they doing in that classroom to teach those kids they don't need to be thinking about their benefits their compensation their uh open enrollment you know if they have a question we want to answer it we want them to know we're there to help take care of that for them um one thing I I want to uh um we're moving on to um some hiring data and I want to tell you that I'm kind of excited about this number here um I don't know if uh some of you remember this number of resignations was much larger last year last year so from the end of um 2223

153school year we hired over the summer between 2223 and 2324 we onboarded or rehired close to employees well over 600 employees which means we had nearly 600 uh uh resignations this last um spring we only had resignations in the district which tells me that we are doing something right in this District we are starting to hang on on to people people are starting to stay in their jobs um so this past um this past spring we had 135 teacher resignations we had 50 EA resignations 10 custodians eight bus drivers one bus attendant three nurses and six counselors next slide which means that our new hires we had 325 new hires and again if you'll remember we had around 600 the year before so that means that um again that we had a lot of our

154staff that stayed with us um we had 131 teachers 35 special ed 96 gen Ed 74 EAS 14 custodians two bus drivers two bus attendants three nurses and six counselors that's a significant decrease in the number of folks that we had to bring on in the district which is a really good thing can you tell me Mike just real quickly how many of those were brand new positions that we created I can get you that information I couldn't tell you off the top you have a feel at all I mean I know we added uh several new positions we did add then Marisa may be able to speak to that a little better it's okay if you don't have it they we get it but Marisa can get you that that information very easily because

155she keeps all of that we we we keep a running total from year to year to year um so that Marisa and Mike Baker keep um uh they can look back over many years and say from this year to this year we added this many positions we did add a number of positions this year so not only are we looking at um so when we get to the openings we can we'll talk about that a little bit um uh we will um see that we do have some openings but part of that every year is because we also add positions and and and they're not it's not that they're not needed but it does make it a little difficult because a lot of times we don't have folks to hire into those positions and sometimes

156we don't have the data we need until later in the summer and we start adding positions and then we we don't find the folks to hire um I also wanted to point out that we and and and again I think this goes a lot towards what our our district stands for we we had 74 75 employees who transferred locations but a lot of that has to do with we really believe in giving people opportunities if you don't allow someone opportunity to move to another site they say I really want to try this new location I want to try this new job I want to be an edtech I want to be an instructional coach I want to be and that go that goes to the to the true support and flexibility of our principles who

157are saying yeah I I support you in your in your growth as an employee well that's going to keep people around whereas if you tell people no I'm not going to I'm not going to allow you to transfer you have to stay here a lot of times you just have people ending up uh leaving and going somewhere else so we had 75 transfers and then finally um just as a reminder to the board anyone who is employed um even a day after the contract starts they're considered a shortterm employee um and short-term employees can be very beneficial for our uh administrators um because if they're if they're very shortterm it gives the administrator the opportunity to get to know this person well enough to decide whether they um were a good fit um and uh

158to rehire them we did rehire 152 of our short-term employees so that tells me that that the administrators are doing um a really good job of hiring people um that they can bring back we did bring back 17 GE teachers 21 SE teachers and 34 EAS so I'm going to let Marisa take take back over she's gonna talk a little bit about our openings thank you Mike um and back to your point Dr Cleveland um one of the challenges we had this year is that we had some unexpected growth in some of our schools so when we start the allocation process we look at you know what we think that potential enrollment is going to be uh projected enrollment based on next year next grade um where we always where we never have data is

159at the kindergarten level so we kind of have to use our best analysis based on Trends from previous years uh we did have some larger kindergartens at some schools and then just some overall growth at some schools that we weren't expecting so we had to add some late allocations to meet those needs um we also added 11 um brand new GE teachers for the ESS program at the elementaries and in addition to that several um late allocations to the SE pool so um going into these openings a lot of that is um because because of those late allocations um you know if you don't get those postings up early you kind of miss out on um the people who are looking early either to move from another District or brand new teachers so this snapshot

160is as of last week and it has already changed slightly so it's a constant um moving picture but as of right as of that snapshot we have 11 and a half uh 11.5 ancillary openings uh seven bus drivers 27 EAS we've hired three since um but the big number is the teachers and we have um of those 18.5 GE openings surprisingly for 14.5 are the are at the elementary schools um and then as far as SE teachers we have 22.5 current openings with it kind of split evenly across the district um seven and a half at elementary six at middle two and a half at high school and six and a half uh through special services or desert programs that's it thank you sure um um Peggy's going to take the next slide um I

161did want to um she's going to talk a little bit about recruiting and and hiring um I do want to point out we are being um I believe very ProActive at the district right now Dr Cleveland has assigned all the executive directors and uh others to and and I'm very excited because I am heading up um a committee called uh well it's Employee Engagement is what it is and um I'm I'm I'm actually on three committees now Dr Cleveland but I'm actually having a lot of fun doing it um but Employee Engagement um we are really um enjoying this because again it it goes towards really Employee Engagement is all about retention it's it's what are you doing to actively look at ways that um engage your employees in their jobs um and we've been

162learning a lot about the difference between job satisfaction and and job engagement um but at some point we will be we'll be presenting to you um our our committee will be presenting to the board um on that topic um I'm also um on a committee with um Mr Morgan um and it's it's actually about recruiting um but it's very interesting because it's a little different spin on recruiting which is a good thing because again we can't look at things the way we've always looked at them we can't we can't say well this is the way we've always done it because people are different now and so we're doing something called what that we that we're looking at called diversity Recruitment and um and we're we're we just started we had meeting the other day I

163thought it was a really good meeting and and uh we're we're kicking that off and we're looking at um and I'm I'm kind of co-chairing that with uh Peggy and and Windom um and we're looking at different ways to reach out and recruit people um into our district in all sorts of areas and then finally of course um we're looking at the the prek U model and uh and we'll have to take a hard look at what personnel will look at look like um in that area as well but I'm going to turn this back over to Peggy and she's going to talk a little bit more about other things we do so another thing that we are tasked with in in HR is recruiting and hiring efforts so how do we get the word

164out to people so it's not only looking at some of these other opportunities that Mike was talking about but one of the things that we started a few years ago was a monthly job fair we do hold them more often in the summer uh of course that's when we see the most people coming to our job fairs because we have got recent graduates uh people looking to maybe make a move to Rio Rancho um it's been kind of exciting to see over the past couple of years people coming from other states as well uh which is really interesting um so that's been something that's been very I I just want to say it's been fun for those of us in HR who come to the monthly job fairs because it's a chance for us to

165get to talk to people who are very excited about wanting to come and work with the district they're very excited about the possibility of working in education and that is such a refreshing thing to have those conversations with people um sometimes I think we get bogged down in in the um maybe negative side of things sometimes uh in HR and so it's really kind of fun to see this positivity at those job fairs uh we encourage anyone to come out to the job fairs and meet the people and have a conversation it's it's really enlightening another thing we've done is hr's been partnering with our Communications Department and again we've done this over the past couple of years uh to adver advertise our current openings not only is that something local in that we're using

166our own website uh other job posting websites our social media accounts uh but we've actually pushed out into other states and tried to recruit in other states uh and it we have seen some very positive results that way uh one thing that Mike and I do is we have a personal meeting with all of our alternative teaching license candidates this has been a huge growth in our district over the last few years a a lot of our teachers coming into the district are coming from a second career uh maybe they didn't graduate with a degree in education but they're interested in coming in and wanting to work with us the state of New Mexico allows us this opportunity to bring them into the classroom right away they get into an approved program uh they are

167able to go in and start teaching right away so we want to meet with them to just to make sure they know what they're getting into um do they understand the requirements their program requirements the district requirements what what's going to be asked of them so we do make a a point to make sure that we meet personally with all of those folks and then we have regular meetings as well throughout the year with our those alternative folks and we also meet with anyone who's looking to advance their lure I wanted to add one more thing to that I've heard from a couple of people recently that one of the things they're very proud of at our district is the professional development opportunities for our staff here so that's a big kudos to not only

168our uh cni Department Department uh but also to our administrators at the sites and our executive directors here at district office we really believe in giving people the opportunity to grow within your profession and we do make sure that we are looking at ways that we can educate folks our own folks uh so that we can better serve our staff and our students and with that we'll stand for questions okay thank you that was a great report um Dr Clen do you want to add anything before we just just real quick thing on the last is to Peggy to emphasize what she said it's anticipated now New Mexico the majority of our teachers will come through alternative education are not coming through the College of Education anymore at all and the colleges of Education are

169pretty much empty so we have really had to to think about and to your point creates far more work on HR it's far more work on our principles assistant principles on our Union on others to help them understand how we How We Do business and so we we have brought in some wonderful people absolutely have but it is a very different situation than coming through a traditional program and it creates uh um it it creates some additional work that being said some of these people bring Wonderful Life Experiences too and our students benefit from that as well so that it's not a negative comment at all it's just the reality of where we are and then one other comment just very quickly on the answer AR back a couple of pages uh that whole issue

170of ancillary is also another really critical Factor as we look it at whether we have um sites site based or try to spread programs because we're we're struggling to provide ancillary now period and looking at at spreading across the district will create some challenges for us all right thank you Dr Cleveland um vice president Morgan you want to start us up any questions appreciate that the only me tell the only thing I would ask is the monthly job fairs that those are the ones that you conduct here right have have we decided to Branch out and go elsewhere participate in other uh job fairs as well that's a great question vice president Morgan we have done that in the past uh Co kind of put a stop to some of that uh and we haven't

171really been branching out as much as we used to but we are starting to look at other opportunities just within the Albuquerque area or even in the greater Albuquerque area that we could do um Workforce Solutions for example has uh several large job fairs throughout the year um could we go to CNM could we go to UNM things like that we absolutely are looking at those opportunities okay okay thank you we are at a disadvantage again though out of state and when we saw these increases in salaries a few years ago wonderful in our applicant pool just Blossom and the states around us turned around and raised STS above it just almost the next year so it keeps it's kind of a a challenge because we' lost that competitive Advantage but for the couple years

172we had it it was really really nice that's another challenge at job fairs that are other places is they're next to people who who are offering considerably higher salaries all right thank you Gary trip thank you I I just have a couple of of comments and it's glad to see so many teachers and staff members join our district um I think we were in a finance committee meeting last spring and we were looking at cutting teachers um but one of the things I I I think we've grown so I'd like to see the numbers from last year to this year and then I would really like us to consider I know Portables is not a very good word but I'm just thinking that if we have a aggression going on on at the at the

173level that we're hearing as board members that um we really need to look closer at teacher ppro ratios that are going on especially in our elementary schools I think that's what we need to really study and focus on I I don't know I don't have the the answer I think one possible solution is lower class sizes especially since the pandemic I'm not looking at it that it's going to create a great deal of academic Improvement but but those giving a teacher a chance with 17 kids instead of 22 kids might be part of the answer when it comes to aggression so if we could look at at what our teacher pupil ratios are to support our our people in the battlefields and if we could look at our enrollment maybe a little bit closer might

174might help us all thank you thank you that was a good bring up you know we looking at like yeah these numbers are great but then we just have a considerable amount of teachers in for public comment that is concerning right we want to be able to keep them and and help them to feel supported in their classroom so I think we do need to look at that here probably soon and Beth Miller thank you for your report um it's just always uh very interesting to me to hear how important the human resources Department really is to the work of the whole District so it's good that um you pay attention to um what's happening in the classrooms and what the needs might be and work with uh the teachers and the administrators to do

175what what needs to happen in the classroom thank you very much for your work appreciate it thank you and Jessica tayor I don't have any questions thank you for the report thank you okay thank you anything else okay thank you so much appreciate it thank you for the opportunity we app that's good thank you okay we'll now go to approve the consent agenda Madam chair this is board member Tyler I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda board Jeff Morgan a second motion a second all in favor I any opposed okay motion carries um and now for business portion will start with the considering the approval of the Schuman Foundation donation of $10,000 for the level all program Sher Carver executive director of student services will present good evening again Madam president members of

176the board Dr Cleveland my recommendation is that we accept the uh the donation from the Schuman Foundation we heard lots already from them so thank you all right do we have a motion Bo you guys this board M Jeff Morgan I make a motion of the approval of the Schuman Foundation donation of $10,000 for the level all program board member Tyler all second okay we have a motion by Jeff Morgan second by Jess Tyler all in favor I I any opposed okay motion carries thank you thank you I think we're good right oh you're still here but I do want to say just I know that they've gone and I know we've talked about it but we just want once again just thank them for for everything that they did so um we're really grateful

177for them um anything Dr CL before we move to the next one I think we've said all of our good thank yous to the shoan yeah all right next is our second reading for policy 806 animals unschool property so Sal maniai our executive director of Safety and Security will present along with Sher Carver so we presented this last board meeting I think it was a little bit confusing because it was so redlined at the time so I believe JC put in a clean copy for you this this board meeting so it's much easier to read basically this policy defines and gives procedures for having animals on campus in order to keep everyone safe uh the first one the first one is about uh qualified assistants or service animals and in that number one paragraph it

178says one thing they have to remain under the control of their Handler at all times um I think we we know what that one is the second one is the therapy and animals I just wanted to expand on that a little bit because as you heard Mrs Mayberry report she brings a therapy animal to school every Friday and it's important for many of our kids who are disregulated I think that's another thing that we can do to help regulate those kids in a in a manner maybe that we haven't used as much as we could but those K those uh animals are to remain um with their Handler at all time and they're there for specific reasons for physical social cognitive or emotional support and to support our our children and their goals uh they

179have to be trained and they have to be uh registered with the national recognized organization to be on campus has to be approved beforehand before you bring them on the campus um and then School sight animals and those are just for those animals that we bring in periodically or we have our science labs uh what they're there for and how they are to be treated and handled uh we can't bring poisonous animals into the buildings obviously and then uh four that there's an exemption for law enforcement animals as s can attest to those are very valuable um animals to have at certain times on our campuses um um liability is listed there if you want to look closely at that because we talked a little bit about liability last time um and there's a paragraph

180B that specifically says and I can read it to you if you'd like me to um any animal brought to school must remain under control the responsible Handler at all times the animal shall be restrained on a leash or contained in a suitable carrier the owner or Handler of any animal including qualified assistant animal is responsible for the animal an's behavior and shall be liable for all damages suffered by persons who may be bitten or injured by the animal and all damages to public or private property so the Handler is the liable person of course you know we're always to the district reserved the right to have an any animal on school property removed based on safety or health concerns if the animal is out of control or the H animal's Handler does not effectively

181control the animal's behavior or if the animal is not house broken or hygienic and then C talks about the Humane treatment of animals and then we list some procedures on handling animals in our schools um documentation is important certification and these are for therapy animals not for the service animals we can't put these restrictions on service animals or the miniature horses um and we also have to have documentation of adequate liability insurance we had that in place recently at REO high school we brought in a horse during their one of their site visits where they're doing different things and we had to have the liability on the horse and they did provide that to me any questions about policy 806 we stand four yeah questions from the board any questions on this any questions no

182Madame President um this is board member Tyler I'll make a motion to approve policy 806 animals on school property board M Jeff Morgan a second thank you thank you thank you all right we have a motion by Jessica Tyler and a second by Jeff Morgan all in favor I any OPP post motion carries 5 Z okay thank you thank you appreciate it and thanks for that clean copy I was looking at both of them today and I was like this was pretty bad so thank you thank you la yeah go ahead Dr Clen uh I just have one quick thing to to share and that is election day is right around the corner and some of our school sites will be used as election sites um several years ago the the county came to us

183and asked if we would not have school on that day um and and the the board at that time agreed to that for two reasons one we did not want to compete with voters for parking spots and we also if there was any kind of Confrontation uh our students would not be uh exposed to that and while I don't think it would happen there was some concern about people wandering the Halls that were not background checked so it just everybody came together and said on on Election Day closed and that we think that's still a very good decision um on the part of uh the district and the county so we will be closed on Election Day our schools will be closed okay perfect of our Advanced planning that's probably the biggest thing is get

184out and vote too um so election day will be on November 5th um please refer to your agenda for all other um dates are there any questions on Advanced planning that anyone needs to okay our meeting is adjourned for tonight thank you everyone David e e e