001with you the purpose of the the Civic speed it's the first time we've had it here in New Mexico and we're hoping that it's going to grow and we hope next year we'll have even more students that will uh participate in it but the first is just a quote on what their purposes uh it says we believe that informed and active citizens make for a strong country a strong economy and a strong Workforce and that our continued Prosperity uh depends on the strength of all three of those 00 for second and 250 for third place and uh the age students who were competing in this Civics B are Middle School um age students so we were really it was wonderful we had uh there were students from all over the state and uh out of
002the two of the three um winners two of them came from the ri rancha Public School District and so we were really proud um of that I was at that event I was very thrilled to be there and had been asked to present trophies and so I got an opportunity to see it firsthand and it was um it was great we also had a lot of of our legislators who attended and we had Representatives the executive directors from both the LFC and LSC were there in fact one of the judges was from LFC and so there was a nice showing of support from our uh from some of our legislative um representatives and U it was as I said sponsored by the New Mexico Chamber of Commerce it's actually sponsored by the national Chamber of
003Commerce and the goal is to grow it significantly in the next few years so uh Jared rer was going to present some additional information however um he is uh he is not able to be with us this evening so I want um to share with you Auburn iers from the rear ranal cyber Academy took first place and uh Asha sh Shiva Shankar uh from Mountain View Middle School took third place and so we're absolutely thrilled uh for um representing not only your schools but the district and the community a few minutes we're going to have a formal more formal recognition and I'm going to ask Julie Arnold principal of the Cyber Academy to come and speak a little bit uh regarding uh Auburn and and the the recognition that that she got right uh before
004we go on to that I go back I'm sorry just one second um the the the thing that I thought was most interesting is what you had to do to participate and you had to write an essay and those who wrote an essay um then they selected the pool from that group and uh Jerry shalow was for our chamber was very involved in this process and then you uh in the competition itself they had them all up uh in the front of uh of of the people who were there and there was a big electronic board behind and you could see the how they did as as the questions were asked and they were asked about a lot of different things including the Constitution uh Court decisions uh legislation over the years um a very
005in depth and the audience was also asked to participate on their phones and we saw how the adults were doing and we saw how how the students were doing and I will have to tell you the students were doing better than many of the adults and so I thought that that was so good for the future of our of our country and and those I will tell you they were not easy questions and um they did a a really good job but you could watch the scores as they came in and and so kind of enjoyed the technology piece of it and then after they went through that part um they were given a a a situation that might be faced um that Community might face and they had to um just um address it
006they didn't have time to really prepare but they had to gather their thoughts and they had to present it and uh and and the students did uh some did really good job ours did really good job I thought in that area some kind of struggled with that having to do it just off the cuff but it it was a it was a wonderful opportunity and I hope we as a community will support these students and and really push to expand it next year for for others and so a minute we're going to to uh to recognize our students who are here this evening but uh it was a great experience I was so glad that I was asked to be there and to participate in it okay you have a couple of other items this
007evening um we have a a proposed RFP and uh it's for for for four facilities and you will be asked to consider approval uh for emergency mitigation services and the um this will be presented by Michael D director of purchasing and chief procurement officer and uh and if you have additional questions about the services and what they do our executive director for facilities Patrick Martinez could provide some additional information if the Board needs that and then we have some proposed uh policy changes and as you know all uh policy changes are presented as a first reading so no action can be taken by the board in a first reading policy changes are proved provided um so that the board has time a couple of weeks to review them and think about them and make any
008comments or suggestions and then we'll have a second reading at the next board meeting and uh only after you have a second reading can the board actually vote to approve or disapprove a policy change and so the U uh the the proposed changes will be presented by David vill because most of them relate to uh finances and um that relate to the inventory policies our payment procedures and Audits and U Financial monitoring so um we will have those presented but again no action can be taken by the board this evening on those and then if you have any questions or comments I'd be glad to try to answer those do we have any questions from the board no okay thank you thank you Dr clevand appreciate it okay we'll now go to approve the prioritized
009agenda and proposed time allocations Madam president this is board member Tyler I'd like to make a motion to approve the prioritized agenda and proposed time allocations board member Jeff Morgan I second okay we have a motion by Jessica Tyler and a second by Jeff Morgan all in favor I I any opposed okay motion carries for zero okay we'll now move into our public comment portion of our meeting um we receive public comments in two different ways so we have a public comment form on our um our RPS board page um we received 10 public comments ments through that and so I will go through and summarize those ones um once I'm finished summarizing those comments that we received we will have our inperson public comment that will be here in the boardroom tonight and so
010let me just start with that summary so we received like as I said we received 10 public comment through our board um page the first was from um Katherine Banker she was thankful for um rear Ranch of public schools removing political sence um nette jock um in regards to board policy 404 and is against how it's being interpreted um Emily wafer um does not understand why we are taking down lgbtq signs um Mary Maria Tatum um which is also in regards um to the lgbtq signage Elena Lee um concerns about the traffic flow patterns and safety at um Cleveland High School um the traffic flow she believes is calling causing our tardies um Corey messenger against the recent interpretation to board policy 404 Hannah Miller against the removal of lgbtq signs and Leo Le better
011um disagree with the removal of lgbtq signs um and Fallon Brown against the removal of lgbtq signs our last is from Richard Banker thankful for reenal public schools removing political science so those are that's just a summary of what we received on our um on our form page so now as we go into our in-person um comments we we have two four we have five in-person public comments tonight and so please refer in in the agenda for the board's meeting there are some different things of how to conduct our public comments um each individual will have three minutes to give their public comment um JC will time as as each individual starts their public comment which I always like to say when we have our in-person public comment is it sometimes can feel awkward because
012we just can we can't say anything back um so sometimes you'll see those things up on YouTube and the board looks ridiculous but truly we can't say anything back unless it's on our unless it's on our agenda so we will not be able to um address the things that are being spoken of tonight um but you will have those three minutes to speak and so um we'll start with um Andrew Ryan if you'd like to come to the to the podium I'd like to thank the board I'd like to thank the board for its time my name is Andrew Ryan and I'm an ELD coordinator at Eagle Ridge Middle School and this is my third year in the district and having come from Texas I am incredibly grateful for the open and affirming community that
013I found here however New Mexico did not gain its reputation as a refuge state in a safe haven amongst our neighbors by being apologetic or overly cautious regarding its support and knowing this neither should we as a district this is why I call for the board to strike board policy 404 that no materials shall be introduced into the classroom to promote a biased viewpoint on religious racial sexual or political issue we live in a time where we cannot control what or who is deemed political or biased causing us as Educators to have to walk on eggshells regarding sensitive topics even as they appear in the curriculum and state standards as stated by the New Mexico public uh education department diverging from a singular eurocentric cultural script ensuring Equitable inclusion of accurate historical stories reflecting indigenous
014Hispanic Latino Cho miso African-American and other cultural perspectives end quote is one of the stated goals of the New Mexico State Standards this policy makes this difficult if not completely impossible it also prevents us from adequately supporting some of our most vulnerable students by asking us to take away visible safe space signs we can understand that differentiation is not just integral but required for good education when it comes to different styles of learning our IEP students our elll students so we should easily understand how this is yet another form of differentiation of support for the students who need that visible support to be more successful which is why visible safe signs uh safe space signs stripped of all their identifying factors are not enough and traditional visible safe space signs are most effective I've been
015told by others homophobic others that they accept me as a queer person simply because I'm not flamboyant because I tone it down and that in effect is what this is asking me and every other teacher to do to tone it down to keep a couple opinionated bullies happy we as teachers are told repeatedly that you cannot approach a 100 different students from 100 different backgrounds in the same exact manner it's not Equitable nor effective instead you need to accept respect and celebrate our differences to truly meet them where they're at and this is no different this uh there is a difference between equal and Equitable support and this is moving in the right direction now realistically I understand that these policies are meant to help avoid controversy and I understand that um as someone who's
016very existence is indeed controversial but I hope I ease the board's mind in this by saying that at a recent Rio Rancho Library board meeting when these same questions were raised the entire Community came out in support of protecting visible diversity so I ask that you please move forward with this knowing that the community is behind this kind of change thank you thank you thank you Mr ran our next public comment will be kiomi wils good evening uh my name is keomi and I'm currently a youth services librarian and prior to that I taught English at the high school level for five years I'm here tonight to appeal to the members of the board to strike policy 404 thank you for taking the time to listen to what I have to say it is a
017teacher's job to empower students to think for themselves and to form their own opinions and viewpoints based on a rich variety of information and on well-honed critical thinking skills students do not gain these skills in an environment that treats their identities as political statements they do not gain these skills when knowledge and information are treated as dangerous they do not gain these skills when their very identities are treated as incendiaries that could ignite outrage we enrich and Empower our children by exposing them to diverse viewpoints not by raising them in an environment where acceptance and information are scarce according to a 2020 study quote lgbtq youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers end quot however the Trevor Project reports thate having at least one accepting adults can reduce
018the risk of a suicide attempt among lgbtq young people by 40% and that quote lgbtq youth who found their school and home to be lgbtq affirming reported lower rates of attempting suicide when schools remove signs previously containing LGBT plus and people of color affirming imagery they are inadvertently sending their students a dire message they are saying you are not a person you are a problem members of the LGBT community and people of color will face these messages all of their lives but they should never have to face it in their schools our schools should never send students the message that who they are is fundamentally dangerous and unsafe when teachers Place safe space signs that affirm the importance of LGBT plus students and students of color they offer students a unique gift one some of
019them may never have experienced before they offer students the gift of entering a classroom knowing that they are valued as full people not as near statistics behaviors cultures or sexualities I am a gender queer pansexual Japanese Jew I've always been open about who I am as a teacher and as a librarian I've always had a safe space sign on my classroom door that sign has never stopped any of my students be they queer or straight PC or white Christian Hindu Muslim agnostic Jewish a atheist or otherwise from telling me about themselves and about their struggles and about what they believe even if it contradicts things that they may think I believe they do so because they know that they are loved the thing about being a teacher is that we understand that love is not
020a limited resource we know that we do not deplete our store of Love by giving it away we do not make some students unsafe or unloved when we are open about our acceptance of those who are traditionally marginalized and so I ask the board to carefully consider what they are teaching our students by upholding board policy 44 thank you our next is Corey messenger good to see you um name is Cory messenger teacher Eagle Bridge Middle School is my 13th year in this awesome District um came to kind of talk to the board about the recent interpretation of policy 404 and uh I know you already read what I wrote and I'm kind of wordy when I write so hopefully I can par that down in speaking but um recent interpretation of the lgbtq plus
021signs deems them as political uh or biased using the PO the policies language and we are in a time as as Andrew said that anything can be called political and it's it's a message of love and acceptance and personally I don't find those political I don't know anybody that does find a message of love and acceptance political the words of MLK Jr were love and acceptance uh the story B Frank Love and acceptance we don't ban those in our school and if somebody suggested that we did because they are political we would hopefully laugh in their faces and draw that line there right we've got to draw that line somewhere as a district and I really don't feel like this is where we need to draw the line this is not the right place to
022draw that line um the second point that I wanted to make is um our safe schools trainings that teachers are required to watch every year one of those is specifically about lgbtq and supporting them and the training itself recommends hanging these signs so they're we're definitely getting mixed messages here as as well um and then third and finally um we have never at least in my experience in this District limited what teachers can hang in their classrooms as far as supporting students and that's really what this is all about is supporting the kids all right um I've got friends that have posters of the rear Ranch Ram soccer team hanging in their classroom nobody says well you're supporting the soccer team but you're not supporting all the kids you need to have something up in
023your classroom that's more generic and says you support them all just because we support a subset of students does not mean that we don't support them all I purposely wore this shirt tonight um my son was on the Rams bowling team for four years so I proudly supported them not once did I ever have somebody come to me and say that's too political Mr messenger you're supporting the bowling kids but not the others so um I I would really um ask that the board look at this recent interpretation of this policy and reexamine it and consider where we are drawing that line as far as what is political thank you all for your time appreciate you thank you um Landon redhair all right good evening uh RoR entro board it's good to be with you
024uh Happy indigenous people's day too I want to recognize that as well and wish you a happy day for that and I just want to say I'm at Eagle Ridge as well same as Mr cor it's only my second year in the district I came from APS and I'm very happy to be here I'll say that with Mr messenger I've really enjoyed working for this district and that's why I was as confused as everyone when we saw the recent interpretation of the policy um I teach social studies at the middle school level so I know the importance of remaining neutral and teaching objective uh facts and truth I don't teach my opinion I had a teacher in high school who taught their political opinion and it really soured on me because I think there's a
025there's a Power Balance there so we shouldn't be telling the kids what to think or how to think but we should let them decide for themselves and so as I read the policy I don't see anywhere that it says it should ban Pride Flags you know it says Banning uh biased or political flags of that nature which I don't think personally the pride flag falls under however I can see where that interpretation would come from there's a very loud minority uh that's been going around you know spreading messages of hate and fear and I would hate for us to fall victim to that here in Rio Rancho because I know the community that I've you know just bought a house here I've really like Rancho and I don't see us as that way and I
026don't see us giving into bullies here and I think we all should respect and love one another and so that's why I just ask that you clarify that language um maybe strike it down or just the part about teaching about controversial or sensitive issues maybe just clarify or fix the language there to where um Pride Flags would not be banned and even if you were concerned about the size of the flag I can understand that if you wanted to spe uh specify what flag sizes would be okay what flags would not be okay I would be happy with that and so I just asked that you put that on the agenda and that we can work towards the resolution on this thank you and our last public comment will be Christian D and good evening
027thank you again for allowing us to address you my name is Christian D I have worked in the district for six years now and uh I was actually a k through 12 I went through rearrange of public schools all the way from K through 12 um and basically what I would like to say in regards to board policy 404 is love and acceptance is not political and I would really highly recommend that the board take a look at board policy 404 and reexamine it for the language that is used thank you very much for your time I appreciate it thank you thank you okay that's all the public comment that we have for tonight and I just want to say again you know we're always grateful to receive these and so it is really important
028that the public does come in and and feel that they can address the board and so thank you again for coming in and thanks to all those who who did put in public comment through our form as well we always welcome those so thank you so much for being here tonight okay we'll now go into our commendations and so I'm gonna kind of turn this over I think to Dr Cleveland and um we this will be our presentation of the winners for the national Civic B competition and so we have Auburn iers and also Isa shiv Shankar we [Laughter] kind of she's GNA have to do we want to invite can we invite our students to to just come on up is that okay if we invite come on to our students we want to
029uh we want to recognize you you you're good right there for right the moment that's perfect and now jul I'm gonna ask you to say something about your student and then would like if if either of you would like to say a few words one of the things I would love for you to share if you remember um I'm sure you would you do the topic you were asked to address um at uh at the uh at the competition if you didn't that's fine or if you want to share anything about your experience there you thought it was a good experience and why maybe other students might want to to uh to to go through that process but I just want to say how incredibly proud we were both of you to take two of
030the three spots uh in the in the competition and and you all did a wonderful job and I was so glad to be able to be there and see it so I'll turn it over to uh principal Julia Arnold good evening Madame President members of the board Dr Cleveland thank you for inviting me up to speak for a minute about Miss Auburn she has been a very exciting accident to have at R Ranch of cyber Academy she has not been my student the whole time she came to us on August third her first day of school and she entered 8th grade at Cyber Academy she came to us from Lincoln so all of her wondrous things with the Civic B were done prior to her coming to cyber Academy however I have to say that
031I have really enjoyed her I see her at lunch she interacts with all the kids not just one group of kids she spends her time focusing on herself and one of my favorite things about Auburn is the fact that she told Gary Heron that one one of her favorite pastimes is reading the Constitution for fun and she reads the Constitution for fun and her friends just can't understand what she's doing but I have to say she's an amazing student and she's brought with her um a lot of secrecy she didn't tell anybody at the school that she won this I learned from Windom and um so it was a very exciting treasure that we have found that has come to s Academy to join us there and her knowledge of civics has just outshone everybody
032in the building and Dr Cleveland I would have been one of those adults not getting it right as Auburn was at the front getting all of the answers correct so congratulations Auburn I'm very proud of you and I'm very excited to have you a student at Cyber thank you all right would you like to start and then we'll ask is she would like to just say a few words if you don't want to you don't have to but it would be nice for other students to know did you find it worthwhile and and would you recommend they they go through it and if you remember the question you asked I thought it would you were asked I thought it was a a very interesting question on how you would handle how would you how you
033would use your knowledge of civics to try to address that that that problem in a community so I anything you want to share uh feel free to do that and you can do it at the podium so everybody can hear you or you can stand right where you areic was really awesome I G students a chance to speak their minds it also giv students almost it feels like therapy to be 100% honest if you've been through something it's almost like a therapeutic thing where if you talk about what you need to talk about something that's happened to you or something like that you get to talk about it and express how you feel about it with the political aspect of it too and so that was really awesome just for me personally and I think
034kids who have a very strong what thinking about what they're deal with that would be a really good thing to go to thank you so you have anything you want to add it was more like an interaction because a lot of people weren't that wasn't you sorry about like the she did um it really expressed like her feelings her emotions about went through and to it awesome great thank you thank you for sharing that and you have to tell me how to say your name oh okay that's great thank you guys so much for coming into the room today we really appreciate [Applause] you thank you and they were very brave to to share in front of a whole room of people they do not know so we are very grateful it's like the best
035part of the night is when we are able to do commendations for our students and so we're grateful we're very grateful that they were able to come in um okay we'll now go to approve our consent agenda this is norin Scott I uh move approval of the consent agenda board member Jeff Morgan I second okay we have a motion by nin Scott a second by Jeff Morgan all in favor I any opposed okay motion carries for zero thank you okay we'll now move into the business portion of our meeting we will first consider the approval of revised meeting minutes for September 5th 2023 Lauren hatch our chief legal counsel present good evening good evening mat can you hear me try it again good evening Madame President members of the board Dr Cleveland is that good
036okay there oh that's good that's good okay uh I am Lauren hatch the chief counsel for reanal public schools um here to address uh the first item of business um you may recall on September 5th the board approved a land transaction exchanging some properties with the city of Rio Rancho uh after that we have to submit it to the State Board of Finance for their approval in order to move forward with the transaction well they get their staff together and review our submission and then they always come back and have a couple things that they some more boxes they want us to check in looking at our minutes it didn't explicitly say in the minutes although it was discussed in the meeting that the State Board of Finance has to approve it and so they
037asked us if we could update our minutes to include that you you'll see in the draft that we provided in red it basically says the State Board of Finance has to approve it that's the change that we're asking you to approve today I move that we we uh make the change to read this transaction is subject to the State Board of Finance approval board member Jeff Morgan a second okay we have a motion by N Scott a second by Jeff Morgan and JC will take a roll call vote for us on this vice president Morgan yes secretary SC yes board member Tyler yes board president galri yes motion carries 4- Z okay thank you thank you so much appreciate it okay next is to consider the approval of RFP number 2024-the board superintendent Dr Cleveland
038the request this afternoon is to solicit a multiple award uh to be issued based on the procurement that was solicited the award recommendation is for car construction doing business as serve pro and Belfor of Albuquerque the solicitation uh was issued on behalf of the facilities department and approval of the recommended vendors will give us the opportunity to establish price agreements that can be used for the next four years uh for emergency mitigation Services response to the procurement was a total of five uh proposals all responses were out of Albuquerque uh we very ver ified the responsiveness factor from all the proposals all of them met the requirements all the proposals were evaluated by the evaluation committee they were ranked and scored our recommendation once again is for a multiple award to the two highest ranked
039offers car construction doing business as serve pro in bfor Albuquerque uh I also want to stress that we do have a comfort level with the two companies because both companies have done business with the district in the past um and with that I'll stand for questions or any other additional information is required from Mr Martinez he's available as well okay there any questions from the board Jeff any no questions thank you any questions um Madame President this is board member Tyler I would like to make a motion that we um approve the evaluation committee's recommendation to issue a multiple award to car construction debas serf Pro and bfor Albuquerque for RFP number 20 24-5 dfac emergency mitigation services on demand board member Jeff Morgan a second okay we've got a motion by Jessica Tyler and
040a second by Jeff Morgan Dr Cleveland did you have anything on this before we go to vote no it's just these are really valuable services in emergencies and so glad we had good response and we thought a very good um um proposals on them so um that was all I would say okay thank you um JC can you take a roll call vote for us on this vice president Morgan yes secretary Scott yes board member Tyler yes president galberth yes motion carries four Z okay thank you thank you board thank you I appreciate it thank you okay next is going to be and we can just go through all of these so it'll be our first reading for changes to policy 610 inventories policy 611 payment procedures and policy 612 Audits and financial monitoring uh
041David vill our Executive Director of Finance will present good evening uh board president grith members of the school board Dr Cleveland uh we yeah these are very minor changes to policies uh 610 611 612 um basically on policy 610 it just kind of uh defines uh further what uh uh our district owned assets and dispositions are um policy 611 um just makes some minor changes to the language regarding payment procedures um and uh it just authorizes the uh the board authorizes U my department to go ahead and pay our bills and um on policy 612 this just says that we will will we will um the board authorizes the district to to engage with an audit firm um and uh uh to conduct an audit annually and to report that out uh to the public
042when it is um deemed um uh ready for publishing so um that's basically it so with that I stand for any questions okay thank you Dr clev want to add anything I don't have anything to add thank you okay thank you um any questions from the board on the changes you okay all right that's it as a first reading we will not vote thank you so we'll see these on our next meeting come up for to vote um so it's a very short meeting tonight um but they told me I'm not ever allowed to say that because something happens um I know um but for advanced planning so coming up we have on the 11th we have a region meeting that will be um at in the APS and thank you JC for writing the
043where that's going to be we were just talking about that so that'll be at 5:30 on Wednesday if you're going to that then fall break will be on October 12th um the 16th is a professional development day so there'll be no classes and then on the 23rd will be audit committee meeting at 4 a regular meeting at 5:30 um and then please look at your agenda for any other um dates that are upcoming are there any questions or anything that needs to be added for anyone for advanced planning or anything questions on Advanced planning okay I would just add one thing we didn't have the information prior T night so we'll be bringing it either the next board meeting the one after that but um our Comprehensive High Schools we heard from Dr Schmid U
044did really well at uh the drama competition and took um both first and second place in Los crues and so we're really proud we'll be recognizing them at the at the next meeting so congratulations to both drama departments um it it's hard when our both high schools are one and two and they they swap out every you know in terms of many of these competitions but it's good to see both of them do so well and so congratulations to them but we'll do a formal that presentation at the next meeting many of those kids and it's just wonderful to he that doesn't that just show that we have a really good District that it's our two high schools that that make it up there so okay well then our meeting tonight is adjourned thank you
045everyone for coming out tonight oh I [Music] just