001good evening the reano Public Schools Board of Education meeting for Monday September 23rd 2024 is now called to order if all would please arise for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge alleges to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all thank you uh J can you take a roll call for usid pres vice president Morgan pres secretary Tyler pres board member trip board member Miller presentent okay thank you I would like to excuse board member trip tonight he wishes he could be here um and we wish him well um and we're just welcome to everyone who's here in our meeting tonight we always enjoy when we have a nice um a full boardroom it's always nice
002to see so many um individuals from the public and also from our schools um so welcome we'll start with our um introductory comments by our superintendent of schools Dr visu Cleveland good evening and thank you for being here so uh we have just a few business items this evening the first uh the real Rancher board of education is being asked to consider the approval of the revised purchase and sale agreement for The Shining School shining stars property and is being asked to provide authorization to close that transaction this uh involves the selling of a portion of land located at the northwest corner of monuma and Kaiser Road Northeast in Rio Rancho the agreement is between the Rio rancha Public Schools Board of Education and the Westside Cumberland Presbyterian Church uh this presentation will be presented
003by Lauren hatch Chief legal counsel for the district this agreement was part of a larger effort to provide land for a new Independence High School campus the current Independence High School campus is too small and must limit the number of students at the school and unfortunately every year students are turned away because we have reached the limit the capacity of that building the current building where independence's house will be used as a centralized location kind of a One-Stop shop to meet the uh needs of students with disabilities and their families this agreement is subject to final approval by the New Mexico School Board of State Board of Finance after it's been approved by the riar Rancho Board of Education F Grande Elementary uh is here this evening to talk about their ramp application the board
004will be asked to approve an application uh for the rant program uh for uh vist Grande elementary this program will be uh explained by Mar Mariah aent tranger director of counseling and Angela Brown vist Grande counselor who you might remember was recognized with by the board at our last meeting as New Mexico's 2024 counselor of the Year ramp is a a recognized ASCA model program and they will uh share with you why becoming a nationally recognized ASCA model program is important and what it does for our students uh all donations uh under Schoolboard policy must be accepted by the Board of Education the riar Rancho board is asked to consider accepting a decommissioned police vehicle for a variety of CTE programs including the automotive program but certainly is not limited to that Rene Renee solo
005Secondary School Improvement officer and Larry Davis our director of Career Technical education will be sharing with the board this evening uh some of those applications and will'll make the uh request to accept this donation we value our partnership that we have with local law enforcement agencies including the riancho police department and as I said uh previously this donated police vehicle will provide a uh many unique learning opportunities for our students in a variety of different classes and applications we have have the request this evening for a calendar change the board is asked to consider approval of a change to the district calendar based on a request from the public education department failure to make this change would result in loss of revenue for the school district Peggy Johnson our Human Resources Director will present the
006proposed change and explain the need for this revision calendars have been a challenge this year due to uh some public education department and legislative changes uh parents will be notified immediately if the change is approved this evening and that's all I have are there any questions or comments no okay thank you all right thank you Dr Cleland appreciate it okay well now go to approve the prioritized agenda and proposed time allocations Madam president this is board member Tyler I'd like to make a motion to approve the prioritize agenda and proposed time allocation Bo M Jeff Morgan I second okay we have a motion in a second all in favor I any opposed okay motion carries 4 Z okay we'll now move to the public comment portion of our meeting tonight um we receive public comment
007in two different in two different ways and so um we have a pretty good amount in both of those ways today so one of those is through our online form um where individuals get on to um the on Public Schools board page um and they give public comment there those comments I summarize um and those individuals are always welcome to come into the boardroom and to give public comment here and have their voice be heard and we also uh take public comment here in the Board Room in person and so for tonight we have 11 that came in through our online form and we have eight that came in in person so we welcome all who are here tonight I'm going to start with our public comments that came in through our online form tonight
008and just summarize those so of our 11 we received five of those were from um Jackie [Music] air nette jock sorry I'm going through my papers um Austin Rogers um Adrien lawyer and Katherine Perez and all of these are in regards to the lgbtq um signage in the schools and we also received one public comment um in regards to reanal Public Schools um ought to implement a college preparation and Readiness program from Faith young and then we received five more public comment through our online for um in support for Bibles in the school libraries and the good news clubs and those are from Karen green James Stevenson Denise day toosso Gonzalez Alex Madrid and Georgia grid so those are from our online uh form that we received we'll now go to our inperson public comment
009and so as we go into this I ask all those who are going to be giving public comment tonight to please refer um to the board policies that are within the agenda for um the rules of that I'll go over a few of these um so JC here will have a timer and you have three minutes to give your public comment when you step up to the microphone and start once you start speaking I'll go ahead and start the timer and when it goes off we ask that you will go and and take your seat again and as I always like to say because it's awkward um at times is that as a board we are not able to address the public comment here in this meeting tonight unless it's on our agenda and so
010you might just see some some nods or some um politeness as you as you go and sit back down but we're not able to address those public comment here in the boardroom tonight so we do once again want to welcome you and thank you for being here tonight so we will start um with our first I'm just trying to make sure I have okay okay you're gonna have to help me out so our first one is um Andrew Ryan is that correct okay come on it good evening Madam president Dr Cleveland members of the board every student deserves a place to live learn grow and figure out who they are in this messy world of ours in safy and indignity if there were ever an oath to swear for the education profession it would be
011something along these lines because these are fundamental truths that anyone across Rio Rancho Public Schools would agree with unfortunately according to a training required of us by the district quote 58% of students have heard homophobic remarks from a teacher at school unquote again over half of the lgbtq students have heard teachers people they're supposed to be looking up to say things that are demeaning and hurtful to a Dem graphic to which they belong personally I've had to write up students for using slurs in my classroom before that I've also dealt with an incident with students particularly targeting and tearing down posters for the gay straight Alliance Club these vulnerable students hear things that people say and do that alienate them and tell them that they're not welcome in our school and according to that same
012required training put them quote at a greater risk for bullying depression dropping out and suicide last year when the safe space signs were banned under board policy 404 we were told that it was because all spaces are supposed to be safe for all students but this training that you've required of us tells us that it's not putting up signs of visible diversity provides support where these students need it and it's an obvious sign that this sort of abusive Behavior has no place in our schools saying rainbow safe space signs discriminate against students that are straight makes about as much sense as saying that IEPs discriminate against general education students or that mckin vento discriminates against students who aren't homeless these all exist to solve problems that not everybody experiences and that's okay so I ask
013you in the board respectfully if not all spaces are safe then why is it us who are stepping up to make the difference who are being told that we're causing controversy not staff members who are causing this unsafety why is the district's solution to unsafe spaces to micromanage how we support our students and not take the advice of its own training and stand firmly for visible diversity and if this is to avoid controversy for the district then why are we okay leaving vulnerable students to stand up for themselves as individuals instead of leveraging the strength of one of the biggest institutions in Rio Rancho the most rigorous School District in the state to support what we know to be educationally sound and social emotional best practices please hear us on this because none of us
014want this to become a situation where it's the students here advocating for themselves because we will always have one thing in common and then that is that we respect the students enough to want a district that works for them not one that they feel like they have to defend themselves against I urge the board to reconsider this specific board policy or at the very minimum its current interpretation in regards to Rainbow safe space science in our schools thank you very much thank you all right our next comment is from H Jenny Beetle uh good evening Dr Cleveland and members of the board my name is Jenny and I am the local director for CF child evangelism fellowship and I we sponsor the good news clubs in the public schools so I had started the first
015Club in real Rancho in 2017 and had an amazing response from students and their families um over the years the last few years we've had several clubs again with many of them over 30 children I have already been contacted by several parents from different schools on when the clubs will start when they will begin and in particular Enchanted Hills Elementary was a CL a school that we had clubs in last year however when their parents have contacted me I have sadly had to tell them that we have been denied to be in their school and again this we we have a Supreme Court ruling which I did remind uh principal Jennifer Bartley that states that the good news clubs must be given the same access to school facilities accorded to any other non-school related outside
016group so Jennifer Bartley has uh emailed me several different excuses and I've had solutions for every excuse from and I do have those emails from not enough space to impending construction which I knew was probably just that an excuse so about a week later I receive a flyer for Enchanted Hills chess club that was handed out at their open house and then I receive a list of other clubs opportunities including martial arts and book clubs from Enchanted Hills Elementary now this is to me clearly discrimination and I have filed suit with Liberty Council we have contacted Dr Sue Cleveland on August 12th and have yet to receive a reply I am here because I am hopeful to avoid avoid the media and continuing the suit with Liberty Council however however I am asking for Dr
017Cleveland to please advise all the other schools I truly believe that it is up to the superintendent it is the responsibility of the superintendent to let them know that we have the legal rights to be into these schools thank you thank you our next public comment is Dan Z Zimmerman thank you for allowing us to come here today um I'm just going to make just a few quick little facts I'm not going to spend a all three minutes up here and it's about Bibles in the school libraries um for 200 years Bibles were allowed in schools for the children to read and study and it was part of the curriculum and in the early 1960s the adults got involved and they end up getting taken out by through the Supreme Court um there are two
018states already in the United States that have uh passed laws to be able to put the Ten Commandments in each classroom and they like Thou shalt not lie Thou shalt not kill Thou shalt honor bother and mother s and when they walk in they're going to see them on the wall and it'll help at least give them an idea of how they're supposed to live their lives Bible is about morality about how to live a life How to Love Thy Neighbor you know just I'm not I know you won't put them in the classrooms but they can at least be in the libraries for everybody to have a chance to take a look and read them um I know new Mexico half of the budget for the state goes to the schools and unfortunately you
019guys not you guys so much because I'm sure you pull up the rest of the state but you're 47th out of 50 you know it's uh then you have like Mississippi they're 50th in well-being Health but their schools are 30 so obviously they're doing something a little better in the schools than we are here and um for eight straight years you have they have been R you have been ranked like 47th or to 50th somewhere in there uh I just ask you to at least think about and actually put the Bibles in the libraries to give the kids a chance you know not all of them are going to go to look at them but there are a lot of religious young people out there and thank you for your time thank you [Applause] our
020next is Denise Weber president galberth Dr Cleveland members of the board I'm here today to voice concerns over recent hostility the district has shown toward Christian values I'm a Rio Rancho citizen a mother of two children and a Christian in this community I volunteer as the local representative for the Bibles and schools organization which has donated over 4,000 free Bibles to school libraries across the country I was shocked when the real rancha School District student services director told me that the district had enough Bibles in circulation and stated per policy 4117 which has nothing to do with accepting free books that they would not accept any more free Bibles so do you have enough Bibles in circulation based on your online catalog only seven of 20 schools in the district to have a Bible in
021their library that is not sufficient nor enough for all children in this District to have access to a Bible why is Bible why are the Bibles important in education the Bible has impacted Western culture literature and political structure more than any other book in history for its literary and historic importance especially in our nation school librar should not censor the Bible from their shelves Professor Linda Peterson director of Graduate Studies at Yale University agreed stating I think the Bible is one of the foundational text of Western and American literature and so I think if you don't read it in some religious context you should read it in an educational setting even atheist Richard Dawkins who uphor the Bible as a source of morality wrote an editorial stating that all children should read the Bible saying
022quote the native speaker of English who has never read a word of the King James Bible is verging on Barbarian all of our founding fathers knew the value of the Bible including Noah Webster who said education is useless without God and the Bible but is it legal to have the Bible in public schools the Supreme Court ruled in Abington School District versus skimp that the state may not establish a religion of secularism in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility toward religion accepting this donation and placing a Bible a copy of the Bible in the library does not violate The Establishment Clause the Supreme Court has made it clear that Bibles can be included in public schools instead excluding the Bible because of its religious content is violates the Constitution which prohibits government officials
023from acting out of hostility toward religion let me be clear we are only requesting that you make Bibles available to children in each and every public school by putting at least one in the library and the Bibles and school organization will give them to you free of charge the real problem here is what appears to be a pattern of hostility toward Christian values from this District whether it's principles refusing Christian clubs while allowing secular clubs or allowing the student services director to pick and choose which free bike by free books they will put in their library is discrimination you are now all a all aware of it and it is unacceptable and even illegal and we are asking you to step in and address it we the citizens of this community will not stand quietly
024by and let this happen and neither should you thank you thank [Applause] you our next comment will be Janine Patterson good evening Madame President Dr Cleveland and additional board members my name's Janine I'm a retired registered nurse um living in RI Rancho for my whole career and my husband's a retired Riano firefighter of 29 years we've raised our children and now we have additional grandchildren also living here the comment I wanted to throw out there is our our country was founded on biblical principles and the Bible itself had a very strong direct influence on the founding era Americans who drafted and ratified the Constitution and I feel that the Bible should be a standard stock book in all School libraries the good news clubs are voluntary programs just like all the other available programs that
025are offered to school children and if children want to attend they should have the opportunity to participate in these clubs and have easy free access to the books and the Bibles and any other resources needed for participation the first amendment is freedom of religion speech press and peaceful assembly and to deny these clubs and bibles in the schools to me to me feels like it's a conflict of the First Amendment thank you thank [Applause] you our next is Kelly bo bo BS BS bo bo okay good evening thank you in regard to riancho Public Schools rejecting free Bibles in its libraries uh RI Rancho Public Schools should absolutely accept and allow this historically accurate book and resource in its libraries for the students and families in our community to utilize as needed our founding fathers
026among those responsible for creating our United States Constitution used a wide range of resources to draft this document which has formed one of the greatest if not the greatest nation to date the United States of America in which we live and serve the Founding Father recognized the Bible the Mayflower Compact ancient governments iroy Confederacy the English Bill of Rights enlightenment philosophers and other state constitutions upon writing this document that is now known as the supreme law of the land here in the United States to not allow the Bible as a historical reference and resource material is not only a disservice to our community now but for future Generations our supreme law here in the United States is deeply rooted in The Guiding principles found in the Bible to allow all of the above references in
027school libraries but omit biblical references is allowing a misunderstanding and a compromising of what it means to live and abide as a citizen and a free Nation by the precepts of the Constitution as a whole our national and local state governments now trickling down to our local school boards have slowly progressed walking further away from acknowledging and understanding the basics of our human rights and freedoms I believe that if we continue down this path of rejecting truth dismissing objective opinions and ideas we may not like such as those the Bible proclaims violates our own freedom to speak which in effect will lead our nation to its own demise it's important we understand the gravity of this situation not allowing access to the Bible in public school libraries is one step closer to losing our unalienable
028rights defined in our constitution I challenge each and every one of you to read our United States Constitution in its entirety this document and the freedoms it guards and protects its citizens with wouldn't be what it is today without the Bible our hope is that every member of the Ria Rancho School Board understands that their main priority is to serve the community and pride for the provide for the greater good the priority isn't to decide which books are relevant or not they are self-evident in and of their own to dismiss the Bible as a resource in your library shows exactly why and how we've landed in our modern society I don't know if you've all heard about recent school lockdowns violent crimes the rising of abuse addiction and the abandonment of respecting human life this
029is the America we live in right now we can turn this around if we start taking our freedoms seriously respecting where our laws come from and accepting who they are rooted in except the Bible and public school libraries thank you thank you [Applause] our next is Roy Weaver well good afternoon and thank you board for the opportunity to speak here today my name is Roy Weaver I am a pastor at Calvary Rio Rancho and I wanted to thank you for your service to the city of Rio Rancho and its taxpaying citizens it is an admir admirable cause that you would spend your time and energy investing into the health and uh just of the health of the children of our city so thank you for that my desire to be here today along with many
030others is the exact same as yours and that would be concerning what's in the best interest of the children of our our community a 29 Pew Research Center study showed that people who are active in faith-based congregations uh tend to be happier more engaged civically and are generally healthier people they smoke less they drink less they use less illegal drugs and all other criminal activity is way down on the scale and also from our own intelligent observations we can see faith-based people are more engag in the activities and well-being of their children this would relate to School attendance parental participation in schoolwork and extracurricular activities and the overall health and positive growth of the children we also see this in the explosive growth of private faith-based schools and those who choose to homeschool their children
031a study in the Journal of school choice found that homeschooled children outperform public school children by anywhere from 15 to 30% in standardized tests I would also say that New Mexico schools rank at or near the bottom of of all public schools in the United States and I would beg to say that the difference is even higher in New Mexico as a school board designed to promote the best possible outcomes for our children we are asking you to examine and enact those principles that give each and every student the highest chance for Success we can use the home schools as a model and a goal for us to improve the overall health of Rio Rancho Public Schools it would be a logical step to evaluate those things that work elsewhere in order to graduate our
032children into higher achieving students allowing the Bible to be in our school library should be the easiest decision we could possibly make morally ethically and constitutionally this is a right and a freedom clearly spelled out and it's at no cost to our school system the same principle here applies to our good news clubs this is also a constitutionally protected freedom and a right that is applied to all school systems across our country The Good News Club teachers are volunteer taxpayers donating their time to help raise responsible healthy children at no cost to the taxpayers of Rio Rancho as a school board is it is expected that you would step in and correct members when they choose to step outside of their bounds we appreciate you coming up make their own rules thank you we appreciate
033it thank you okay and our last is Christian D good evening uh Dr Cleveland good evening Madame President members of the board thank you for taking time out of your evening to hear from the public um so I do want to tell you that I am a uh I'm a product of rear ranal Public Schools K through 12 I went through all of K through 12 my entire career and I am really proud that this is my school district coming back as a teacher after graduating college um it has been nothing but a fantastic experience um my comments here are in regards to board policy 404 which is in uh reference to the safe space signs um my opinion has been the same since the last time that I made public comments to you guys
034um I don't think that love should be discriminated against I don't think that students should feel unsafe in their own classrooms I don't think that they should feel unsafe at all considering we are in charge of their education and their betterment so my comments are definitely not going to be nearly as eloquent as my colleague Mr Ryan but we do share the same sentiment and I really highly suggest that the board reconsiders its position on board policy 404 again thank you very much for taking time out of your evening thank you thank you thank you we appreciate it um we're going to go ahead before we go to the rest of our meeting we're going to take a f minute recess just to allow some shuffling that that might occur in the room that's all
035of our public comment for tonight so we're grateful for everyone that came in tonight and we'll go ahead and go to that five minute recess now [Music] just living a dream every day oh I know I know no way no not e e e love seconds you know what 12 11 10 9 [Music] 8 okay we'll Now call our meeting back to order thank you everyone um we'll go now to approve our consent agenda we have a motion Madam president this is B Tyler I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda member Beth Miller I second motion do one more time Beth now do that one more time for me just so it's I second the motion thank you so we have a motion and a second um all in favor I I I
036any opposed okay motion carries 4 zero thank you okay we'll now go into our business portion of our meeting tonight and we'll start with our first which is to consider the approval of the revised purchase and sell agreement for the shining stars property and delegation to close transaction Lauren hatch our chief legal council will present evening Madam president members of the board Dr Cleveland I am Lauren hatch um here to talk about the revised uh agreement for the shining stars property uh as the board probably remembers a few months ago um there was a transaction proposed that the school board approved to sell some land about three acres of land uh that's excess in the area of shining stars uh to the Westside Cumberland Church um we then go through a process of of uh
037submitting to the State Board of finance and seeking their approval of that transaction we actually uh had a meeting with the State Board of Finance uh on September 17th and we got preliminary approval there are some conditions that we have to meet one of them is that um they want to see an updated uh purchase and sale agreement that has a couple of words stripped out of it um You probably have in your packet the materials the changes are on page 10 and literally what we're doing is taking out the word warranty warranties from it okay um this is a comment that came from the Attorney General's office um and frankly we thought we had all those out of there and we missed a couple so that is the change that we're asking for the
038the board to approve today in addition to that the the State Board of Finance would like to see uh in the notes uh in the um the minutes of the meeting where this was approved that it says that once the State Board of Finance has given its final approval that Dr Cleveland is authorized to close the transaction on behalf of the district and so that's why it's presented in the way that it is so really the ask is uh approve the revised agreement with the warranty language stripped out on page 10 um and then uh authorizing Dr Cleveland to sign the transaction to finally close it once the State Board of uh Finance has given its final approval and I stand for any questions okay do I have any questions from the board on no
039on this Dr clev did you want to add anything okay we go for a motion on this two do you have a question no no no I know you're going to do this but are are you going to repeat what he just said or does the title cut the title covers it since it's the revised purchase agreement I think yeah it's approving the revised purchase saleing agreement and delegating to Dr delation okay all right then finally appr I thought maybe you wanted us to spare that out when we were making the uh I I think the title of it captures it okay all right I'm I'm good with it I just want to make sure okay go ahead make sure it's clear in the minutes okay then Madam president I will make a motion to
040approve the revised purchase and sale agreement for the shining stars property and delegation to close the transaction board member Jeff Morgan I second okay we have a motion by Jess Tyler second by Jeff Morgan and then JC if you could take a roll call vote for US vice yes secretary Tyler yeser yesid yes motion carries Z awesome thank you thank you all right our next item is to consider the approval of the ramp award program we have Mariah aant tranger our director of counseling along with Angela our V Grande elementary counselor good evening Madame gbre Dr Cleveland and members of the school board it felt like we were just here yesterday honoring our amazing school counselor of the Year Angel Brown and so Angel is back tonight but she also brought with her her counseling
041partner from Vista Grande elementary school and I do want to introduce Katie dos she's a longtime counselor she was at Mountain View Middle School she is currently at Mr Grande and not to toot our counseling horn but Katie is also the president currently of the New Mexico School counseling Association so Edy and Angel are going to share with you a brief overview of the American School counseling Association ramp application they have been working toward the last two years their proposal requires a school board presentation and approval so that is why we are here this evening but before they briefly share the work they've been doing I do want you to know how special this recognition is there are only two schools in the state of New Mexico who are currently ramp recognized schools and no
042Rio ranto public schools counseling program has ever applied for and achieved ramp status so we are super excited about their upcoming application we do have one additional elementary school Maggie cordiva who is also working on their ramp app proposal they're not quite ready for a board presentation so we are hoping if their application from Vista Grande gets approved then we could just ask on the side for a second approval if that second school is ready um in time so without further Ado may I present Katie Andel thank you so much for having us today we're so excited to share with some of the amazing things that we've been doing at our school um first I'd like to go over three things that we're going to talk about I want to clarify what ramp is for
043you guys because we like to talk a lot about um acronyms in our school system so I'll clarify on what ramp is um and then I really want to highlight some of the amazing things we're actually doing within our program um and then we'll also talk about where we are in the application process what it's been like for the last two years um so a recognized ASA model program is essentially a a national model program that exemplifies the mission of Asa um ramp is a data informed decision-making program where we are delivering systematically to all students a comprehensive school um School counseling program it's developmentally appropriate curriculum that's focused on specific student mindsets and behaviors so those are aligned with a lot of Standards um and they result in in improved student outcomes and so
044it's data driven where we look at achievement attendance and disciplined data um what we've looked at a lot this year um is intentionality this program allows us to be very intentional with how we support students how we can support our schools Dash goals right and how we can help them support our students so some of the highlights for our school this year um through data collection we have realized um in aligning with rear Rancher public school goals as well as our own Dash goals um that we have focused on our attendance Behavior data because we felt like that's where we could do the most support um between the two of us um and we collected so much data over the last year um the amount of graphs and student surveys and parent Communications and staff
045surveys student surveys looking at outcome data such as attendance behavior um NWA test scores we've looked at a lot of data um we have focused on outcomes um one of the outcomes that I really want to f focus on is we looked at um attendance within our third grade students because we noticed that there's a lot of third grade absenteeism and so we took a small group of students um there was eight students and their first trimester they averaged 10.3 absences um in one trimester which was significant we worked um with them doing Simple interventions such as a check-in and checkout system building relationships with them working on creating goals for themselves and by the third trimester they had an average attendance rate of 3.9 for the group so we are seeing amazing outcomes um
046just by focusing intentionally and using our data to drive our decisions amart impact is significant um with attendance and interventions as well as it has allowed us to reflect on the program that we want and what we provide to the students and the community that we have um we have been able to work so closely with Community stakeholders um to support our students and we have just been so so blessed to see such amazing things yes absolutely and we've been fully embraced by our our Administration which is super helpful um they have just taken this on because you know it's a it's a Time process and so I'll explain what this has looked like for for us um Miss Doss and I have worked together for the past this is our fourth year together um
047and in our first year together we were just talking about ramp because it is really prestigious and we were like do we want to do this right do we want to go for this um are we ready yeah and so we decided we did and so our first year was data collection in terms of like how we do this like what this process entails um so we attended many professional developments in the summer and and different things through the American School counseling Association on what this could look like um so we started that research in 2022 um and then at the end of that school year we presented to our admin and to Mariah aent tranger and Sher Carver and said like hey we we really want to go for ramp this is something really
048want to do um and we feel like we could use a little support with this and so we presented on the benefits and asked for a uh American School counseling Association coach which has allowed us to meet monthly and um really work on our data because it comes down to a lot of paperwork right um to show what we've been doing um and so we've been working with um the ramp coach since um the beginning of the 23 24 school year um and then we have just submitted our application to her for review and then we will actually submit to the American School counseling Association um in October of this year with your guys's approval um so it has taken us a couple of years to get here um and if we achieve ramp status
049we should find out beginning of the 2025 school year um and it's good for five years so it's been a lot of work uh Labor of Love U like Miss dos said um having the data to show how we're able to support our students has just been eye opening and and absolutely amazing do you guys have any questions first that's awesome so thank you Mar did you want to come up and say something for yeah okay okay do you want to go to questions first or you want to talk Qui okay okay Dr Glen did you want to add anything well just good luck and you know we know that you were doing hard on this it is really exciting and so really applaud the extra time and effort you've put into this and we
050hope that you will be our our first uh successful application and maybe one of many to come also want to recognize principal uh Prescott is here who also supports that really been a strong supporter of our our counseling programs and our elementary schools so we thank you for being here as well thank you Jeff do you have any questions I don't have a question just want to make a comment um can you tell me ASCA what that is again it's the American School counseling Association okay all right our national program and our national model that's all I needed to know thank you good work I appreciate all the work thank you Beth Miller any questions sir thanks so much for all you've are done toh apply for this I kind of have a question I'm
051just curious what's your you've probably had several aha moments through this process what would you say is your biggest one maybe CH one or two I think like one of the ones that we were really like whoa we were kind of Blown Away about is just the effectiveness in terms of like the student check-ins we had when we were talking about supporting attendance um the data is phenomenal um and so we're actually going to adopt this at our school and we want to support the top tier for every single grade level for our students we want to expand this to our entire school because it shows that it's effective and it and it helps and so that was huge um and then I think just looking at the data and um just in general seeing
052how um our input and our interventions and our support for students um we see it when we interact with kids we know it we feel it um but have being able to see it and quantify it is kind of cool to be like yes oh I did something great thank you best Lu thank you Jessica Tyler no questions but excellent job and excited for you guys it's a very long process so congratulations on getting to this point it's exciting a thank you I'm super excited to see it I love this kind of stuff and I'm hopeful that I just I think anything that we can do in this regard helps us to improve in our schools right and helps us to just be better for our students and to uh be more accountable even on
053our end to to see those things so I really appreciate all the hard work that you put into it I'm excited to see how it grows there and hopefully it starts to grow throughout the district so thank you so much Maria you want to add I don't know how to this formally but can you do that process where we ask the board to recommend the approval of the ramp application it needs to be a formal roll call or that yeah you ready for us to go to how about you want to just make Dr CL do you recommend us the board to approve this action here we're gonna this is a great program and I I strongly uh support uh going for this application I said I hope this is one of many and but
054it's always courageous to be the first one to step out and take a chance on it and that's what you've done so wish you well and uh I'm sure we're going to get good news come the first part of of next year all right thank you so we'll go for a motion um Madam president this is member Tyler I'd like to make a motion to approve the ramp award program application board member Beth Miller I second the motion okay we have a motion by Jessica Tyler second by Beth Miller and JC will take a roll call vote for US vice president yes secretary yes yes yes okay thank you so much thank [Applause] you we're excited okay our next is to consider the approval to receive a police vehicle for CTE uh Rene saso our
055uh School Improvement officer for secondary will present along with Larry Davis um our director of C technical education and more Madam president members of the board Dr Cleveland thank you it's an honor to be here tonight uh Renee could not be with us um but uh I got to tell you it's just I'm beaming when I talk about the te teachers of this District we hands down have the best teachers on the planet in this district and Mr Booker is uh certainly exemplifies that Mr Booker is the criminal justice teacher at Cleveland High School and uh CTE students that complete and participate in ctso that'ss Career Technical student organizations have north of a 95% graduation rate and so this is a tangible lever that we can pull as a district it it excites kids it's
056good for kids kids and programs don't build themselves teachers build programs because they're passionate and they're they're well informed of their discipline uh we have Mr Booker here who serves 315 students every year in this District uh at the cost of my operational budget of $35 per student and that doesn't even touch what he does on campus to raise money for his organization this last summer uh he took 10 of our students to compete in Atlanta Georgia in skill USA so he's a he's a true differen maker for this District uh I'd also like to recognize uh Lieutenant NOS is in the audience here as our partner and certainly a a partnership that Mr Booker has created uh in support of uh what we are proposing this evening so uh there's nobody better than the
057teacher himself to talk about the proposal so I'm going to turn this over to Mr [Music] Booker um Madame President Madam president ladies and gentlemen of the school board and Dr Cleveland I'd like to thank you for allowing me to talk to you here today um can I have the next slide please thank you we'd like to request the approval of the the donation of a decommissioned police vehicle we believe that this vehicle will be a tangible training aid to enrich the education of our students throughout many different lessons next slide please with a decommissioned police vehicle we can conduct authentic learning experiences in the career fields of public safety law enforcement crime scene investigation uh we this will not be the only use for this vehicle and we believe that this vehicle will be
058a centerpiece for training for many students across several different disciplines and classes as well as schools next slide please during my time in Rio Rancho Public Schools as a CT director it's been my goal and my vision to have collaboration between all of our Pathways this certainly lends itself with Dr Chris Johnson's Automotive pathway as they will be able to uh diagnose and work on a high performance vehicle they'll just like servicing the rest of the district Service uh physical plant Vehicles this would be another opportunity for those students as well to work in collaboration and uh and get experience to what it takes to maintain a a high-use vehicle uh but also a vehicle that is geared to be able to to go really fast I'm told so the real world applications are endless
059for a police vehicle the training vehicle will deepen the understanding of our students and the roles and the responsibilities of law enforcement while providing a realistic setting that cannot be recreated in the classroom next slide please the vehicle will be a conspicuous signal to our partner uh that of our Partnerships in LA law enforcement and through Community engagement we will strengthen our ties with the Rio ranchel Police Department while promoting Community awareness of our joint programs and further expanding our students understanding and respect of our community's protectors next slide please so the use of a decommissioned police vehicle will benefit our students for years to come and I think uh Mr Davis would be able to wrap things up nicely with just the last few notes on the thank you Mr Booker absolutely so I
060think it's fair to say that that students are just like us when we make decisions part of our decision-making process is based on the experience we've had in the past with whatever it is students are the same way when they're having these experiences whether it's going to Atlanta Georgia whether it's sitting in a police car and learning about all the intricacies of it uh these are the practical application and experiences that they're going to remember that in turn will allow them to make informed choices of their career Pathways and this doesn't only impact one year certainly this this impacts years moving forward uh my my department my operational money is prepared to uh put decals on the car and make it look uh accordingly first rate for uh for this District so in essence uh
061Madam president members of the board Dr Cleveland we're asking that you would approve this uh request so that students would be able to get those experiences that as mentioned will help them make those uh decisions in life that they are going to be facing within the next couple years thank you very much you thank you I just have to thank you both for coming in I when Dr clevand and I were looking at the agenda last week I just was really excited and interested in this and that's why I'm so grateful that that these sort of things come to the board just so that we're aware of just the great things that are happening within the district and so thank you for presenting this tonight it's great um Dr clevel do you want to add
062anything and then I'll we uh definitely support uh uh you're you're working with our our uh police department we want to thank the ranchel police department a good partners in so many ways in in this community and it's been such a support uh to our district over the years and so this is a unique this is just kind of cool kind of thing and I I can see how it will be used in multiple areas not just an automotive so thank you for for making the U the deal happen and uh it'll be up to the board whether to accept it or not but it's exciting and uh you know I can just see this this vehicle it's kind of zipping around town but uh thank you again for your hard work on this yeah
063thank you H Jeff Morgan any questions I just got one question now is it just going to have Cleveland on there because if it's a real School District happy to also spread the news that um Rio Rancho High School has an upand cominging program the Cleveland High School criminal justice program has been in place for about three years and we've competed locally and nationally as Mr D uh Davis has said and we've adopted an after school club that has also been able to through fundraising and Mr Davis been able to do uniforms but to to to your point um um the Rio Rancho High School is starting a program this year and as it continues to grow I see inner Scholastic competition in law enforcement um and other public safety skills criminal justice related so
064yeah it's it will be shared depart uh again it it will be shared okay that that's where I'm going that's where I'm going okay all right so at some point Cleveland Rio would have theirs and I would expect you will come up in another year or so and do the same thing right okay man all right as the news of this had begun to spread other law enforcement Partners had said that we they were open as well to good good other partners other nice all right that's I'm good thank you thank you Beth Miller any questions no questions just congratulations and thank you for what you're doing for students in the community thank you Jessica Tyler anything yes I just I want to share just real quick I ran into Mr Booker the other night
065at um a local new venue the block and Carly had Mr Booker several years ago now I'm calculating doing the math when you said how many students he puts through his classes AAR more than a thousand students ago and he didn't remember her name but he remembered her and came and approached her to say hello which I just thought was amazing but it shows your dedication to our students and so thank you for that and so then I was able to also share with Mr Booker that that's how I got into law enforcement was exposure to law enforcement class through dating myself tvi at the time um and that's what sparked my interest in law enforcement and so you know programs like this I think are instrumental and essential to build the pool of applicants
066for our future Law Enforcement Officers which is extremely important because we know those are difficult positions to fill now so thank you for the work you do and this is exciting and I think it looks pretty cool with the Cleveland criminal justice wrap on it so I will go and drive it for you if you want to see if it still goes fast no I'm just kidding um super exciting and so great work on this partnership thanks Dr Cleveland yeah I uh again I just want to be sure we're clear in this and how this came about this program at Cleveland made uh the uh ask for the uh assistance with this but knowing the competitiveness between the two schools I would be very surprised within a year or so uh we don't have the
067same kind of requests but it the the request came from this teacher uh to the police department okay just want to be sure of understood how that happened I feel I still feel good I forget about it and the kids won't be driving it yeah yeah yeah I I say that and I was just kidding so I just want to make it clear like there's no expectation that the kids would be driving go ahead at the beginning of this year we were allowed to pull all CTE teachers together and and we really talked about that collaboration and so we open up the channels of that and so I know for a fact that the real uh Rancho High School teacher has already reached out to Mr worker so we expect that of our Math teachers
068and our and our English teachers and so forth but we're getting that with our CT teachers and that that's just of huge benefit that's good any other questions or comments or a motion would be great too member or this is board member Tyler I'd like to make a motion to approve um to receive the police vehicle for CT board member Jeff Morgan a second okay we have a motion by Jessica Tyler second by Jeff Morgan and J C if you'll take a roll call vote for us vice president yes secretary Tyler yeser yes yes awesome thank you thank you thank you for all you do thank you good luck thank you okay our last item is to consider the approval of the 2425 school year instructional calendar update Peggy Johnson or Johnson our Human Resources
069Director um will present good evening Madame President Dr Cleveland members of the board uh back again uh looking at the calendar uh so as Dr Cleveland mentioned earlier the calendar this year has been a bit of a challenge uh and so we are looking at it yet again so I'm here tonight to request that the board consider uh approving an edit to the previously approved instructional calendar the reason for this edit is the um state has come back and let us know that we needed to have one more day of instruction with our secondary students so to be clear this will not be impacting our elementary students it's only the secondary schools that would be impacted and what we would what our suggestion is after working with um the cabinet and Renee sedo is to
070take that April 21 professional development day that we already have on the calendar again it will remain for elementary but for our secondary students we would actually make that a virtual learning day so they would not be coming to the school so it will not impact Transportation as well uh Transportation had already assumed they wouldn't be doing anything I don't mean it that way they had already assumed they wouldn't be transporting students on that day uh so that was our our best effort in trying to satisfy that requirement from the state if we can satisfy that requirement it will actually allow us to have a a bigger impact on our budget uh it will allow us to have more money more funding from the state which of course is something that we are always always
071in desperate need for so that was our suggestion so I'm here to ask you to consider that uh and I'll stand for questions okay thank you thank you so have we talked this over yet with the state just like as a and it seems like this is good to G be good yes so uh David vill who is here tonight and if you wanted to come up he's uh he can certainly do that he's actually the one who has been in communication with the state about that okay okay that makes me that makes me happy I'm like are we G to approve so they they had requested that we have a board approved edit to the calendar and that Dr Cleveland write a letter uh so that's what they have asked of us okay Dr
072Clen you want to add anything it's a $3.2 billion issue yeah yeah I think we can write that letter I yeah we can we can do that any questions from the board uh je that was my only question as well is that previously ped had told us that virtual days would not count towards some of the extra days so and so just wanting to make sure that they'd be okay with yeah that this in for this case as well okay so we're good we're good we are good okay so with that I'll make a motion to approve the 2024 d225 school year instructional calendar update am Jeff Morgan a second okay we have a motion and a second and then JC you'll take a roll call vote first yes secretary yeser yes yes awesome thank
073you thank you thank you very much appreciate it thank you thank you um just so just a couple dates um for advance planning um so there's a professional development day on the 9th also on the 9th is the region meeting um so if you haven't signed up for that and you want to go please let JC know I think she's got everyone who is planning to go to that it's out in morard and then we have fall break on the 10th through the 11th 14th we'll have our next regular board meeting um and then on the 28th we'll have a board meeting along with an audit committee meeting so any questions on Advanced planning any anything that we've missed I think we're okay all right our meeting's adjourned for tonight thank you [Music] everyone e