RRPS - School Board Meeting - September 12, 2022

001[Music] good evening this um meeting for the rio rancho public board of education for monday september 12 2022 is now called to order if all would please stand for the pledge of allegiance jeffrey morgan will start us pledging to the fight of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you kim can you take a roll call for us president galbraith president vice president morgan secretary scott president board member trip not here board member tyler president uh you have quorum 4-0 thank you i'd like to we'd like to excuse board member trip tonight he is traveling currently we'd like to welcome everyone to our meeting tonight we have a lot of visitors here including our mayor who's here

002with us we're happy to have you we also have a lot of students who are here and we're so excited to have you here with us as well um tonight our evening we'll um we'll start with some introductory comments by our superintendent of schools dr visu cleveland good evening and thank you all for for being here this evening okay we are are past the 20th day of the school year and things continue to move at a really fast pace and and a lot of issues are getting resolved and so uh we're moving right along it's hard to to fathom that we're already into the fifth week of the of the school year we do continue to monitor our enrollment uh overall the enrollment is down just slightly uh compared to approximately the same period last

003year so that one percent um is what it looks like um we are hoping to get that back up but it is far better than almost everyone else around us so uh we are uh we are pretty close to what we were last year our shining stars enrollment has increased elementary and high school enrollment is pretty flat where we've actually seen a loss of students this year is middle school and that's something that i think is is concerning and so i think something we're going to need to take a look at as to why we have seen a reduction in middle schools the governor michelle lujan grisham and uh education secretary curt steinhaus were in the district today they came to stapleton elementary at noon to make an announcement regarding their goal of reducing the

004administrative burden particularly paperwork uh but not only that uh improving our data sharing and accessibility of that data especially for teachers um and and that is uh that's something that we definitely find to be a very positive move measures are intended to help both teachers and administrators focus more on classroom teaching and learning more easily access data to drive those instructional decisions and cut down on the data entry and other administrative paperwork but again the overall goal is to have teachers have more time to teach and um certainly that teaching and learning piece we heard over and over during the presentation today and again this uh this is welcome news uh for school staff and districts we've been asking for some relief for quite some time burton has become very excessive in our opinion and

005we're hoping to see that move forward here's just a quick uh summary of staffing one of the things that i also shared today with the governor secretary and media who were in attendance we were appreciative of the improvement in compensation and it has brought us a lot more applicants but maybe more exciting than that is really high quality applicants and we are seeing a lot of our students and former students and teachers coming back to new mexico and so it's overall been a very positive thing and and we're very thankful for that compensation uh increase that obviously the governor and secretary took a key role on but also the new mexico legislature who um who made that a reality in the last session here's our breakdown we are still short 20 teachers however last year

006it was well over a hundred and across the state we had better than a thousand vacancies for the last couple of years so this is a tremendous improvement we are making a little bit of progress in educational assistance that's been pretty slow the board has a resolution encouraging the state to look at uh compensation for educational assistance but we desperately need them in our classrooms especially with our children with disabilities and so we're continuing to work on that and we're down six custodians and three bus drivers but again far better than what we've had so keep working on that and overall it's just such an improvement over the last couple of years this evening we have commendations the schumann foundation is is here again and we're always so pleased to have you come and be

007part of our board meeting um certainly their support for naviance for the naviance program and it will be presented by our executive director of student service sherry carver and we are pleased to have schuman foundation president tim sheehan and i have not seen commissioner heil yet but we do have our mayor greg hull so welcome and thank you for being here and we also have commendation we related to educators rising and cleveland high school student placed first uh and both rio rancho and cleveland high students had a semifinalist and this is from a program we call educator rising national conference and uh this will be presented by larry davis a principal of the career technical education center but just briefly the goal is to bring more of our students into public education and it's such

008an important thing to do we we certainly need to have more teachers in our classrooms and you can see the efforts and approved compensation has helped but the long-term solution is to get some of our stronger people to enter into into the colleges of education and to be teachers and so we're excited to see this organization appreciate the hard work that's been done at our high schools and we'll recognize those students who did very well at the national conference we will have some reports and departmental updates chief operations officer michael baker will provide an explanation of the capital outlay state match and legislative assets we have some board members ask if they can have more information about that so they can understand a little bit better especially when they talk with legislators about it and

009what it would mean to our district and so we're going to have an explanation of how that works the executive director of student services sherry carver will present a departmental update on all the things that are going on in her department uh these include information on safety and wellness uh our staffing uh in that area future opportunities and initiatives challenges and then she has some celebrations to share with you and then last but certainly not least our chief communications strategy and engagement officer beth pendergrass will provide you with an update on communications and the outreach activities in her department some of the new initiatives and some highlights and successes and challenges and future planning so we will have those three presentations this evening and in getting to our our business portion of the meeting you'll

010be asked to to consider approval of an agreement with the new mexico school for the deaf on this uh the board is asked to consider approval of a joint powers agreement to provide certain services for our students with hearing disabilities as indicated in the student's iep and what i want you to know is we provide services both for the district in within the district and some we provide uh with this this particular organization the state uh the state school and uh jerry reader will explain to you kind of the services that they provide uh when he presents this agenda item i do want you to to know that that within the deaf community there are some parents who want a very integrated education for their children and then there are some parents who want more

011immersion into uh than the hearing lo the hearing impaired community and so we try to to provide services regardless of which uh which view they hold and what they believe is best for their children we will share with you a rio rancho public schools preventative maintenance plan for this upcoming school year as you well know a preventative maintenance plan aids um in the shift from a reactive to proactive report approach to maintenance repairs and replacements and as we all know you know you can you can pay now or you can pay a whole lot more later if you don't maintain the equipment and the buildings that you have and so uh this uh she'll share with you um melanie archibald the executive director of facilities we'll share with you an overview of of the plan

012and discuss with you a little bit of information about the maintenance staff and the things they do and how their their department operates we have as you know several years ago when we began to close the old ernie stapleton site um there was a lot of question about what to do with enchanted mesa and we're worried about where um where we were going to take kids and believe the program provides a wonderful service for our staff and keeps our staff in our district and so this lease agreement is with the garcia group uh and it's for the northern northern boulevard facility that houses the enchanted mesa daycare program and a lot of work went into developing that cur that partnership uh carl lepelman spent an awful lot of time on trying to get that arranged

013and tonight the actual lease agreement will be presented by chief counsel lauren hatch and then we have an amendment uh to the contract uh seamless summer and dinner meal prices and this would amend the the sfe management agreement um who of course provides our food service to the district uh to establish pricing for meals during the summer program which provides meal assistance to families during those months when schools are closed and it also establishes a price for dinner you recall the board has already looked at breakfast and lunch but we do for uh for some provide dinner and it will establish a price for that and this item will be presented by our purchasing director michael madrid and also executive director of finance david v hill you have some resolutions that you worked on as

014a board and you will be asked to consider to adopt those resolutions uh which will be then sent to the new mexico school boards association resolutions and legislative committee as the as proposal for legislative priorities for in msba for the 2023 session topics for these resolutions were discussed and all of them were adopted by the board at the august 22nd meeting and drafts were sent to all of the board for you to review on september the 2nd the actual submission deadline is today monday september 12th however the school board's association knew that i actually talked with joe gian that we had a board meeting tonight and he serves perfectly fine to send the final adopted resolutions in the morning so um we will if there are any additional changes we'll make them in early in

015the morning and then send it on um to mr gown um here are all the resolutions i'm not going to go through them because the board discussed every single one of those on the 22nd of august but you can adopt them as a total group we have not heard any significant changes proposed by school board members but you can certainly take them one by one if if you would prefer to do that but we did i think we're good with everyone who who did make any suggestions and then we have some second readings which mean that the board will actually take action on seven policies that were presented also at the august 22nd board meeting and some of these changes reflect both regulatory requirements and recent state and federal court decisions so um these again

016these will be voted on this evening as this is the second reading and now those are all listed there uh we have um one on transportation one on student rights and responsibilities hazing harrison intimidation bullying menace menacing um restraint and seclusion meetings of the board agendas in order of business for board meetings and minutes of the school board and that's all i have thank you dr cleveland any questions for dr cleveland okay i just want to say thank you i know you've had a very busy day with having the governor out in our schools today so thank you it was very nice to have the governor a lot of media was in the in the school and the kids had a really good time and uh you know sometimes we get a little jaded as

017adults maybe i don't know but it was exciting to see how exciting the kids were to see the governor and you know just to be able to go home and say i i talked to her i shook her hand i you know and uh she asked all of them that wanted to be governor um why they wanted to be governor and we got some very interesting responses so uh but our kids were great and they did a great job so it was a it was a very busy day but it was nice uh it was nice to let the students have an opportunity to interact with the government yeah that's great thank you i think they will always remember that i'm sure all right for our next item we'll approve the prioritized agenda and propose

018time allocations any changes that need to take place in that uh no this is secretary noreen scott i move uh to approve the prioritized agenda and propose time allocations okay we have a motion by noreen scott in a second by jeff morgan all in favor aye aye any opposed okay motion carries four zero okay moving to our public comment let me get situated can we didn't have any in-person public comment correct okay so for our public comment we don't have any in-person public comment tonight but we do have some that came in um through our form that is online and so i will go ahead and summarize those that came in we had six that came in um and our first was from michelle birkdall she was asking when we will have more in-person meetings

019for parents to be able to um to speak um rebecca costin and she had concerns with the cleveland high school traffic um going through the the neighborhood that is there along with concerns of students parking in the neighborhood to avoid um parking passes and paul gruber and he it was a letter it was a letter overall in regards to critical race theory transgenderism sex education and satanic clubs um stating hit being against those things in our schools charles gannon regarding eltp days um not being an effective learning tool and asking that the district keep to our regular routine our next comment after that was similar sarah nunn i'm also opposed to those days um stating it was a hardship on families and that our extra 10 days are not helping our learning um and our

020last public comment was from june ko nishida boat with concerns about student access to restrooms and this was particularly i believe in the middle school for this one but especially for our female students stating that three-minute passing periods are not enough time for multiple students to use the restroom and we will not comment on these as they're not on our agenda but we appreciate those public comments coming in to us if anyone wishes to give public comment you are welcome to come into our boardroom and give those we love to hear your voices otherwise you're also welcome to go to our public comment forum which is on our website under the board on the board page so thank you once again for giving those public comments and now moving into commendations so our first uh

021commendation and will be our schumann foundation and naviance presentation sherry carver our executive director of student student services we also have as dr cleveland said we have tim sheehan our president of the schumann's foundation and and mayor greg hull who will all be here for this accommodation thank you good evening president galbraith members of the board and dr cleveland i'm pleased tonight to present to you the members of the schuman foundation we have with us tim sheehan who is the president of the foundation and also board member mayor greg hull the the foundation has been instrumental in supporting our naviance program for the past several years and this naviance program is what our 8 through 12 grade students use for their required next step planning they also use it for college and career planning act

022prep and course planning i'm happy to tell you that we've added an updated curriculum to that program this year through naviance and it provides self-discovery lessons for planning for high school and beyond including career exploration career and college planning financial planning success skills and includes a support network so thank you again for supporting this valuable program for our students and at this time i'll turn it over to the president thank you thank you sherry it's pleasure to be back with you all again this year and i just want to uh say that we are very proud to be here and support you all for the naviance program on an annual basis um just to give you a little update we'll have to direct the mayor okay but just to give you an update of this

023human foundation as a lot of you know it was founded by rear admiral schuman back in 2013 so we've been going almost 10 years so far and we're averaging about 200 000 a year that we give out in scholarships to about 70 people and it's young in all ages in this in sandoval county so it's making a difference and we have a lot of a lot of people coming straight out of your schools and then we're even um i think we're even financing somebody right now it's getting their phd so we go from one end to the other end so we're really trying to make an impact in this community and our board's proud to be part of this community and for that i have a ten thousand dollar check for you to to give

024you our annual support mayor would you like to make a couple comments yeah sure uh number one um yeah can you get the check in here yeah anyway we're gonna hand it to dr cleveland yes yeah there we go she gets the money okay yeah we want to make sure that goes that way yes thank you doctor uh yeah i i can tell you it's been an honor to be a member of the schuman foundation all these years and see the number of uh individuals that we've helped in the higher education realm once again not just graduates from high school but uh individuals that live in cenovall county that have decided hey we want to go back to school we want to get that degree we want to get that certificate we want to get

025that next step that helps us get into uh that career field that uh you know with the absolutely critical jobs all across the uh all across sandoval county that currently remain unfilled just like here at the school district businesses across sandoval county are struggling it's where we're very else we're also very excited about the cte program coming forward because i think that's really going to meet a demand for uh kids that want to get right to the workforce i was one of those kids that i came out of high school and went right into the workforce i i was more interested in putting hand a lever than i was uh sitting in you know sitting in a seat for another four to six years uh but and there are those uh those individuals out there

026so the schumann foundation is here to support those individuals across the board whether they're coming right out of high school or just making that decision to improve that educational level uh later in life so very excited about that and i think currently the schumann foundation is still sitting on i think around 2.7 million dollars in in uh available money that you know we want to continue to issue out to individuals so we continue to uh encourage uh the any these individuals to go ahead and go to the schumann foundation apply so that we can get on there there's no there's no deadline we meet on a pretty regular basis to review applications as they come in so it's a kind of ongoing process of evaluating uh the applications as they come in so you can

027make that decision anytime just go online to the schumann foundation we have a facebook page and a website where you can download a form and access some of those funds and i think our grants have gone anywhere from one thousand up to five thousand five thousand plus supporting the naviance program and uh also supporting uh the rotary uh nursing program here in rio rancho as well um as the rotary gives out those uh those uh uh scholarships as well we're able to throw a little extra money on top of that and help those scholarship recipients actually receive more money uh to get them through that nursing or or that uh doctors program that they're trying to go through um what are some of the we've got some other areas that we try to reach out

028to as well to make sure that we're making sure we're available to everybody but it's a great program and uh i know i was gonna say yeah schuman foundation and it's not just a one-time award we encourage the kids or the individuals that if they got an award this semester come back the next semester come back the next semester so it's not just a one-time award we want to continue to fund and support those that are that are looking for that next step in their education so thank you all for uh having us today and it's our honor to uh present this check uh to the rio rancho public schools for the naviance program we enjoy supporting that it's a it's a great it's a it's a great program uh and the results are fantastic

029so thank you all thank you [Applause] thank you all so much for being here dr cleveland did you want to say anything before this yeah thank you and we'll try to continue to help to get the the word out and uh it really does make a difference for some students whether they can make it or not make it so i thank you for that for that effort thank you thanks for coming in again thank you okay our next commendation is for educators rising 2022 national award winners so larry davis our director of career technical education i will be presenting this and i'll go ahead and have you invite everyone up as you as you go through okay thank you madam president madam president members of the board and superintendent dr cleveland thank you so much

030for your support of career technical education of which educators rising is one of those programs to start off i'd like to introduce to you mr benton spradlin he's a program manager for cte and really just out in the field all the time in supporting of these programs he's the biggest champion of students that i've i've ever met so uh tonight we're here celebrating the accomplishments of our students at cleveland and rio rancho high schools uh when i became an educator 25 years ago my dad told me that an educator cultivates a thirst for learning and these students have demonstrated that they've represented themselves their families and our district extremely well and i would argue that it's one of our more important jobs of keeping these students and giving them that cultivation and desire to want

031to stay in their communities of which they're a part of that fabric so we'd like to call them up one at a time and recognize them for their accomplishment madam president members of the board dr cleveland i'd like to just say a couple things here before we call the kids up um just that we couldn't be more proud and impressed of these kids and their uh their advisors for their accomplishments at the national ed rising conference this past summer um just a couple things these these teachers miss ashley noel from cleveland and uh miss amanda gutierrez from rio rancho high school are just i mean they're they're rock stars they're gems of the of the teaching profession and we're just so honored and proud to have them um unfortunately ashley nolan her students won't be

032able to join us tonight they were prepared to join us virtually and i take responsibility for that communication but uh um so this was i just wanted to point out in these events these students are competing against hundreds of kids both nationally and internationally in these events so they really rose to the top in these ed rising events so the first student that i want to recognize is isabelle grace reeves she was the first place national winner in lesson planning and delivery from cleveland high school national winner second student i want to recognize is amarina likur from rio rancho high school she was fifth place she was a fifth place national winner in lesson planning and delivery stem [Applause] and next is dan lee we have we're going to recognize dan lee ruiz from rio

033rancho high school fifth place national winner for ed rising moment then we next we have uh marcella chella eagletail from v suite cleveland high school seventh place national winner in impromptu speaking [Applause] next is uh samantha baltz we want to recognize 10th place national winner children's literature pre-k [Applause] and then of course we want we have a certificate here for miss amanda gutierrez from rio rancho high school for her incredible commitment and service to the rio rancho public schools and your ed rising students [Applause] and we also have the last certificate here is for miss ashley noll for her incredible commitment and service to rio rancho public schools and her ed rising students thank you girls would you mind coming up for just a second if i'm putting on a spot you can say pass

034that's what i was telling my students okay but if you guys want to come up to come up to the microphone right over here and i just i want to hear what tell us a little bit about your experience that you had as you went through this what was it like i don't know anything about it so what was it like as as you guys went through this through this okay so uh we competed in a room with a group of judges and for me i presented for children's literature so i made and illustrated a book as if i was reading to little kids and then they asked me questions about the book and its meaning and why it's important and also like my career path what i want to do in the future and

035then not only like in the competition but outside of that they had rooms and speakers education and why it's important and just a little bit more about it and it was a really fun experience and it was cool we had a really great group there too so we had a class that was awesome and marina you want to share too i did uh lesson planning and delivery for stem so i actually wrote it was a three-day lesson it was the day that we had a snow day like for three days so i taught two days of it and then a week later and then made a ten minute highlight reel to present to judges and then they gave me questions and i just answered questions about my lesson the experience of writing a lesson and

036teaching in the classroom and just what i learned about being a teacher and how i want to apply that in my future that is awesome thank you thank you so much for sharing that um miss cuties do you want to say anything i just would like to say that this program is amazing and the students are absolutely amazing this is just a small representation of what a great group of kids like in my class today we were talking about differentiated instruction and equity equity and we were talking about all kinds of things that you know you wouldn't expect a 10th or 11th or 12th grader to be talking about but they know these topics and they're they're discussing them and they're passionate and so it's just great to see these kids say i want to

037be a teacher i want to make a difference and they know how important relationship building is within the classroom and that we don't just teach one you know just the academics but we teach the whole child and we have to care um for each of our students so i'm just really proud of these students and um and especially these two girls and i would like to say also amarina won last year because of covedon some other things it was a virtual and she won second place last year at nationals as well in lesson planning so um she is a lesson plan rock star right there that's wonderful thank you so much thank you for being here thank you did you want to say anything i think dr cleveland would like to say a couple words

038and i'll speak after you thank you dr cleveland um i just really uh it's a passion of mine to recognize parents and their collaboration because we we got here as a team and so if the parent of either of these child is in the room could you please stand up and be recognized thank you very much thank you you know today the governor spoke to this issue and the importance of having our young people go into education i want to share with you what i thought was just a shocking situation the last couple of years across our state there were thousands of classrooms that never had a teacher all year long they had a substitute off and on for most of the year and so we definitely need to rebuild our teaching force and it

039is really important that we do that you know one of the things that i shared today was a comment that um you know there's just nothing that we can give students nothing that we can give them that is better than a highly qualified teacher in their classroom there are a lot of other good things we do for students and we support them but there's nothing we can do that is any better than getting a highly qualified teacher so we're excited that you're interested in education we hope you will come back when you are through and work for us we have so many teachers in our district right now who went through our school system and we're students that have come back to teach and it's just wonderful to see our graduates who come back and

040want to be part of this district as part of their adult life and their careers so uh the need is great uh we are excited about the changes that we're seeing that i think it's going to make education a more attractive profession again and we're just delighted that you have an interest so again congratulations on on your recognition and when you're all done you come back and see us and i bet we'll have a job for you thanks thank you thanks again all right i have to say you know uh miss amarina i've actually known since she was in elementary school and that i think is a sweet thing is to see the students who you know you know you see as elementary schools and just as they work through and she's gonna be graduating

041this year and and just it's it's a really sweet thing to be in this community and see all the support that we give to our students and and helping them to be successful so i like like dr cleveland said i really really hope that you guys come back and you work and you work here in our district we would love to love to have you so thank you so much [Applause] all right we now move into our reports and so our first report tonight will be an explanation of public school capital outlay grants and state match and legislative offset um michael baker our chief operations officer and lauren hatch our chief counsel will be presenting good evening uh madam president uh dr cleve members of the school this evening probably talk more about the offset

042because of the complexity regard to the offset but a couple of terms that uh i want to make sure that uh and you probably already are but when we talk about capital outlay um there is an agency that that we communicate and and basically do business with and that is the pscoc and what that stands for is public school capital outlay committee and so we we throw these terms around a lot and these acronyms and and we really sometimes we get confused i get confused a lot you know where these agencies come from and then that is is is a committee and then they have under them what's called psfa which means the public schools facility uh authority and those are the folks typically that we really deal with when it comes to capital outlay

043and so when we're talking about capital outlay specifically we're talking about the funds that it takes to either build a new school or maintain a new maintain our schools and typically it's the high dollar amounts and what happened in our state a number of years ago in 1998 zuni public schools filed a lawsuit against the state basically claiming that the current system was unfair and that zuni public schools they did not have the appropriate amount of money from the state in order to upkeep their schools and they basically stated that according to the state constitution the state constitution guaranteed the establishment and maintenance of a uniform system of free public schools sufficient for the education of all children of school age and so they argued successfully um that they were not receiving enough funds in

044order to maintain uh their facilities their their chief argument essentially was that in in their district the property valuations were much lower than for example other type of school districts let's just take for example the albuquerque metropolitan area or even santa fe so when you're looking at a tax space for example the the zuni tax base compared to rio rancho albuquerque santa fe that of course i shouldn't say of course but our tax base is much greater but not only is our tax base much greater it's also much greater per pupil and so um as a result of that lawsuit the legislature created the pscoc and then later the psfa was created another acronym nmci which is the new mexico condition index so what what happened as a result of the lawsuit is is the

045state came up with a mechanism to try to provide for equity in capital outlay for school buildings throughout the entire state and so what they did is they came up with this condition index and that condition index is a process that all school districts go through we went through it very recently with our five year facility master plan that the school board fairly recently adopted and that plan is a requirement of the state and what the state does is they rate every single school in the state of new mexico and this every school gets rated as far as from one to i'm not even sure what the last you know number is but it's in the thousands and so one being the worst condition so if you're in the worst condition you have an availability

046of funds through pscoc that if you were ranked for example 500 that you would not have the availability and so there's essentially two lists the first list on the new mexico condition index is those schools that are ranked um from 1 to 150. those are the schools that are in the worst condition right now we none of our schools are on that top list and so if you are on that list you have the availability to ask for funding through to through uh pscoc the next list are are the next 200 schools and and again those schools are ranked and we do have um a few of those we have a few of our schools that are on that list but that second list you can apply for money but the but the requirements are

047a little bit more specific so for example if we need a roof replacement and uh one of our schools is actually on that list we can apply for funds uh for for roof um replacement so that was the system that was essentially set up but the other thing that occurred was this thing called the offset and so the offset is once again they said well it's not fair that certain districts have more legislators than other districts therefore those districts have the have the availability to get more direct appropriations versus another district that may only have one representative and so in our district we have a number of um of representatives that that represent the rio rancho area that we can ask and we do we ask for direct appropriations so because of the the the

048equity the state came up with the offset and so and i and i will get into this much more in much more detail and so the offset was put into place in order to create equity for those districts that didn't have um as many representatives as another or that there was more direct appropriations going to one school district versus another school district okay next slide please okay so kind of going working back a little bit uh for rio rancho um we we have the offset affects us directly now getting back to what this um uh the match is uh the match typically for this particular pscoc um grant as you will our match i believe used to be 60 but it is 65 so if we're going to ask for funds we have to come

049up with 65 of the funds for a particular project however if a school is within the top 150 then 50 there's a 50 reduction in the offset like i said earlier we don't have any schools in the top 150 so this really does not affect us our current offset is just under 3 million and what that offset is it's an accumulation of direct appropriations from our legislators so for example this year we received an award of a number of projects um that's actually going to increase um our offset for example we we asked for a tower um in order to provide for more connectivity for our students that tower um is estimated to cost approximately 450 000 so that direct appropriation will be used to to add to our offset okay so how does it

050all work next slide so here's kind of a diagram that i believe kind of hopefully makes things a little bit clearer because it is it is rather complex so let's just say for example our legislative offset is a thousand dollars i said earlier it's really just under three million dollars at this point next year it's likely to go up significantly and let's say that we have a project um and we ask for funding and the pscoc basically says or and and not just the the the committee but also the facility authority they say yes you are authorized to to get four thousand dollars for you for your project in my example i'm saying well the district's match is 60 the state match is 40 so the district match in dollars then would be 2400. well

051how do i come up with that well i take the 4 000 i multiply it by this 60 which gives us the actual dollar that we have to put in for that particular project now our offset is a thousand dollars so then you add the district match to the offset now you come up with thirty four hundred dollars and so the actual award even though we were awarded four thousand dollars for the project the actual award is only six hundred dollars so you can see the impact of the offset greatly diminishes the value of these pscoc grants um and and this is you know pretty much a typical you know situation so a lot of times they they may not assist us now over the years what we do if we do have a project

052for example if the school is on that second list and there are certain projects such as roofing uh hvac um life safety certain things that typically are high dollar amounts but not like 40 million dollars so so if we're going to do the project and we think we can get on the list what melanie will do is she'll submit an application psfa will come out they'll do an evaluation and they'll say yes that that project is within uh our funding mechanism so what happens then is even though we know we're not going to get any money we still apply because what we do is over time we get a reduction of our offset so in this particular case if we were to do this project as this is an example our offset would actually be

053reduced so what happens every year is we get an increase in our offset because of a direct appropriation but when we do projects um and we use our bond money or sb9 money to actually fund those projects it actually reduces our offset so what happens over the years kind of like this it's kind of like a seesaw thing is we get the offset increases but as we do projects it it may decrease um to some extent um i think maybe one other thing too is that um when the state came up with capital outlay is that they did provide for for a reoccurring uh budget essentially so it's not like typically you'll have a grant typically a grant may just be for one year but in this but what the state did is they have

054supplemental uh severance tax bonds and it's those bonds that are sold every year that replenish that fund and so over the years that particular fund has actually grown and and dr cleveland can speak on this she she is actually on a task force to actually evaluate um the offset and to take a look at either reducing um our impact to the offset and maybe even changing the match getting back to the match depending on what grant you are going for it is up to the agency to determine what the match may be so typically if we're going for pc pscoc funds right now the match is 65.35 but if we go for it to another grant with another agency the match could be much different sometimes it's 70 30 sometimes 60 40 sometimes 50 50.

055it depends on the particular agency and it depends on the grant so our actual match whether it be to the federal government or whether it be to the state government would change depending on what we are applying for and and being that we're talking about capital outlay and and the pscoc right now our contribution um is at that 65 percent so i a lot and i'm just gonna hand it over to lauren i think he said it all what questions do you have i'd like to thank you for that uh diligent explanation because uh it makes my eyes cross just to hear it all so thank you i understand that very well thank you jessica do you have any questions no thank you i i think it is valuable information for the public to hear

056as well because it can be misleading sometimes when they hear a dollar amount on an award and when you see that actual um dollars to the district is so so greatly reduced i think it's important for the public to have a better understanding of that so thank you i agree and jeff mike i got one question uh how bad uh does these schools need to be for them to decide that they need the help they need i mean you talked about a rank from one all the way to a thousand i'm just wondering man how bad off do they be in is there a standard that they use to determine go ahead that's a good question so um as as you all approved our five-year plan so when the architects did an evaluation of our

057schools there are standards that um that need to be met and so the psfa they have what's called adequacy adequacy standards and so for example they have certain square footage for student population and also a lot of ada type of standards and just general engineering or building safety standards a lot of them come from the international building building code for example so when the architects are out looking our facilities they're doing that evaluation based on psfa standards and i can tell you this just being throughout the state there are some schools that are really in bad shape and and rio rancho if you look at the state really has fared very nicely compared compared to the state and and one of the reasons is that is we had those growth years and and during those

058growth years what what helped rio rancho is because of growth and if you don't have the uh the square footage per per pupil you have to grow and you need facilities and so during those growth years rio rancho was warded essentially over the years 98 million dollars from uh pscoc a a pretty good amount when you look at the entire state so you know overall we've done very well in in that regard but now those growth years are behind us so now we're looking ahead because we do have good facilities we want to maintain those facilities and we want to keep them in good condition and our challenges is this again going back to the five-year plan we have we have just under 380 million dollars in facility needs that doesn't include new buildings that's

059our current those are our current buildings that's what we need over the next five years and we really only have a couple of mechanisms in order to pay for that the first one is our geo bonds and typically we use our general obligation bonds to fund the maintenance of our buildings and the second which is much much lower are is sb9 which stands for senate bill 9 which was passed a number of years ago and sb9 authorizes the district to go to the voters and ask the voters for a 2 mil tax increase and so the district passed this a number of years ago and every six years we have to go back to the voters to get sb 9 reauthorized um and and it's it typically comes out to a little bit more than

060four million dollars a year and then every four years we go back to the voters and ask them to reauthorize our geo bonds which for the number of years has has been 60 million dollars over four years we will likely go up to 70 million dollars the next election will be november of 23 for the first drawdown to be um around october of 2024. i know dr cleveland wants to add some things it does it really points out the the role that growth has done areas like ours this is a convoluted system and it was honorable thank you um as i was saying the uh it's a it's a reason that you you don't want to be a declining district for one reason um you know because it makes it very difficult especially if your

061district in in with the situation that we're in um and growth was basically our saving grace for several years to get the help that we needed so we hope that maybe at some point we will grow again but uh it is convoluted very complex really if you get to the very bottom what what it was trying to do was like zuni is uh federal land and they could not tax that land and so they had no no real means of being able to tax for school improvements and that was true of places that have federal installations native american reservations and the ideas how are they going to get money to be able to repair their schools and mike is right some of the schools in the state are in deplorable condition and need to be

062replaced so they came up with this system uh but like all systems there are problems with it and so what you have today is um take for example we need another another early childhood center we had it built we could we could i mean we could double our enrollment if we had it it's um with all of the things with offset and match we we can't we can't access any of the money that's there and yet we have a lot of children that are not being served almost 500 children that are not being served and we are not the only districts that's facing this challenge right now where people have needs but they they can't they can't work within this system here and so that's what the the conversation is about is should we have

063a moratorium or a reduction in match and offset just for a period of time and the real frustration talking with the lady who who approached me about serving on the committee was we have all this money and we would love to give it away and we can't even get it out to school districts because of this system that we have put in place so the system was good we had good intentions uh it was an attempt to equalize it's one other factor that was maybe not mentioned but it was also to try to minimize the impact of those districts with really powerful legislators and maybe that was the number one driver is you had a powerful legislator with great a lot of seniority you were in a better position to receive some of these uh

064allocations and so again it's it's not a bad system it's just it was overly complex but there were unintended outcomes that no one really foresaw at that time and so we are hopeful the state will set it aside or lower um lower those expectations for at least a while so that we might be able to access it and we we did a lfc here and they too expressed their concern and frustration seeing the needs that they see and and districts can't access the money and they don't want to sit on the money they want that money to go out to schools where it's desperately needed so we'll see where this goes but it is it is an important issue to rio rancho school district and it does keep us from being able to do some

065things that we would very much like to to do on top of that when you get funded funded to capacity you can't raise any more money and that's that's the other issue and the the cost for everything has gone up so much now that building a building now you know is just so much more expensive um and and so your bonding capacity for many districts not just rio rancho or many districts is you can't raise enough money to build the buildings you used to be able to build and so what is the state going to do with that and then my last comment is you know it's it's a frustration in our state but it's been alluded to through the presentation if you don't take care of what you have you're going to spend so

066much more later so what we see some of the buildings in our state that are in such terrible disrepair if they had been taken care of earlier would not have been in such desperate shape now and yet when schools they just didn't meet the requirements to be able to get that new roof so the damage could you know it rained and it continued to get worse and worse and worse so it's really good i think that the state is looking at let's just review this whole process maybe not throw it all out maybe we just as i said do a moratorium on it or maybe there might be a couple of areas that are high priorities such as early childhood maybe cte where those priorities might be exempted rather than all buildings being exempted and

067there seems to be some legislators who really favor targeted relief rather than across the board relief but we we don't know where that's going to go so but but this has been really helpful i it gives you an a feeling of why it is so so difficult to work through the process but the intent was was really simple to begin with how do you help districts that can't tax who don't have a tax base because they are on federal land or native american land in particular so uh anything else you want to add to that lauren uh madam president dr cleveland that it in order for the system to change it actually requires a statutory change because all this is set out in a statute if you want to be mesmerized by a statute 22

06824 5 is your number so right it's got it's got the formulas in there and then it has all the exceptions and it changes every year so um this is something that's going to be a hot topic the next legislative session and i believe later tonight we have a resolution from the board on that on that topic so okay anything else else mike on your end any any other questions before okay thank you so much i really appreciate it thank you okay um our next report will be a student services update i'm sherry carver executive director of student services will be presenting good evening again president galbraith members of the board and dr cleveland i bring to you tonight a report from the student services department let me start with what's the purpose of the

069student services department why are we here i've listed on the slide some supports and programs and [Music] services that we oversee in the student services department but the main reason we're here is to support students just as our title says to identify address issues that interfere with the student's education we're also here to support our schools and to support our parents tonight i'm going to give my overview and my comments focusing on these areas in our strategic plan and how our department is implementing and engaging in these four areas and i'll be talking about some of those services and programs that were listed on that first slide staff excellence first of all we want to hire and retain good people in our in our departments how do we do that we we support our people

070that we've hired through mentoring all of our nurses that are new to our district provide we provide good mentoring through our school resource nurse and our director of counseling they spend a lot of time in our schools mentoring our new nurses our our experienced counselors are paid to get out and mentor our new counselors that we've hired in our schools and um we also provide professional development and training for our folks we i have three directors who have worked hard all summer to come up with great professional development development for our nurses and our counselors and our safe employees and in fact just last week we had dr carolyn stone i don't know if you've heard of her she's a school counseling expert in ethics and law and she prov she presented to our counseling

071department and they really enjoyed her presentation the last thing i want to stress on staff excellent is customer service i feel like that's an important aspect of our department because we handle a lot of parent calls and parent concerns that come in and so we we talk a lot about uh how we can support our parents and how we can find solutions and how we can all work together to find a solution we listen a lot we seek to understand where they're coming from we listen a lot more and then we try to find solutions that help our students and our parents engagement and innovation one of our most important goals in supporting students returning to school after after the pandemic was to focus on a consistent way to support students social and emotional needs

072to this end we purchased two curriculums character strong curriculum and that's for grades pre-k through eight and signs of suicide for grades six through twelve we not only purchase the curriculums but we also purchase the professional development that went along with the curriculums from the providers themselves and we felt like this was a way that our staff could be highly trained and implement the programs in a successful way and in a successful rollout it allowed our staff members an in-depth look at the curriculums best practices for implementation and it allowed us to clarify any questions we had about the two curriculums we've we've continued to prioritize our social emotional learning because we're seeing in our students still even after a year of being back after the pandemic increased anxiety still seeing signs of a lot

073of depression lack of social skills inappropriate social behaviors self-harm incidents and harm to other others concerns so we're continuing to focus a lot on social emotional learning for our students safety and wellness along with our curriculums that i just mentioned we also continue to support in our department zones of regulation if you've been in our elementary you see zones of regulation all through those schools and it's four zones that they teach their students about for instance if you're in the red zone you're out of control you're feeling out of control if you're in the yellow zone you're feeling frustrated if you're in the blue zone you're feeling tired so the goal of that program is to teach these young kids how to get into the green zone where they're ready to learn so they can

074recognize their emotions and turn that negative into a positive we also support safe zones for students we created posters for all of our schools that's an example i believe from i forget who's gold and black one of our schools so we created safe zone posters with the school colors and sent those out to the schools where they can post this is a safe classroom this is a safe school this is a safe zone that you can come into and feel comfortable being in this zone with us we have revised and communicated out the individual support plan and document for our transgender students we support the mckinney-vento homeless students through funding homeless students are considered homeless if they're in transitional housing if they're doubled up if they're living in a car if they're living on the

075streets or if they're living in rv parks or just in the park and so last year we supported about 132 students who were classified as mckinney-vento homeless students we provided school supplies coats hygiene and laundry items school wear caps and gowns for graduation free after school programs through safe and transportation and temporary housing we also help them access medical dental and mental health services and the last thing you see on there we also support our students who are having self-harm ideations by referring them to outside mental health agencies that we have mou's established with along with safety and wellness a big big part of our department is the uh health offices and lynn wheeler is doing a wonderful job supporting our nurses she supplied these numbers for me and i was kind of taken aback

076when i saw those visits to the health offices that you see on your screen our nurses are busy very busy during the day and you can see the numbers of students that come in for prescription meds for general health conditions for medically complex procedures like traits and g2 feedings and medications and then you can see the number of vision and health screenings that they performed and the just the general number of visits that students go to the health office these numbers are all from last year under operational excellence and innovation i've listed two things there for you the student support center opened in august 2021 i think you've all visited that center the purpose of this program was to provide an alternative learning placement for students who have been suspended from our middle schools and

077our high schools and to determine their needs provide counseling and other support and to meet their academic goals until they could return to their regular school so last year we had 419 referrals for short-term suspensions and that is three days to 10 days it was heavy on the high school side but we did have a high number of middle school as well we also last year we saw 71 students brought to due process hearing and they were long-term suspended i believe 68 of those students completed their long-term suspension at the student support center so we believe it was very successful last year and we we gauged that success on if students attended if they had no behavior infractions while they attended the student support center if they completed assignments with passing grades and if they

078had a plan or made a plan to return to their school to be successful how are they going to return back and not do the same infraction again so we have them write a plan on how i'm going to be successful when i go back to cleveland high school or rio rancho high school this year we've already had 73 referrals in august so i feel like the numbers are going to continue to increase paul lockhart is the director of the program at that student support center we are able to support we're able to support special education students this year because we added a special education teacher so we're going to see even more i believe like i said before students coming to that program and getting back on track going back to their schools and

079being successful that's the goal we also have our alcohol drug and substance abuse counselor located at that site and she is very busy and we have one general education social worker the other item that i have listed there is um the school nurse assistance program that we call snap and this is a new electronic health record solution that manages all student health records lynn again did a great job of getting out there and researching and looking at the options and we chose snap because of its extensive support and full range of health management supports that the program offers this program gives our nurses a better tool to manage organize and streamline medical documentation and to facilitate comprehensive health care including diabetes action plans asthma documentation and all their other health care needs so we're getting

080great feedback from our nurses about this new program that we've implemented and i'm really excited that we've we put this in to support our nurses and again all the credit goes to lynn wheeler for implementing this researching it and she's provided all the professional development for nurses during the month of or during the summer and during august challenges two big ones there that i list student attendance student behaviors our student attendance from the stars chronic absenteeism report from last year showed that our overall rates for our schools varied from about five percent to 55 percent of chronic absenteeism and the district average was 25 percent that number unsurprisingly is higher than pre-pandemic numbers so what is chronic absenteeism [Music] a student is considered chronically absent if they miss 10 or more of the school days

081that's about 18 instructional days and that includes that includes both excused and unexcused absences so it's all in there various reasons why students aren't coming to school some of them are they don't want to come for various reasons including bullying they don't understand the importance of attending they kind of got used to that idea of staying at home and being able to do their work at home uh illnesses including covid and things that come from poverty so we're looking for we're putting in we're trying to find solutions to get kids back in school obviously if they're not in school they're not going to be learning and the research shows that students who attend school show higher achievement levels than those students who don't the all the schools are currently working on their attendance improvement plans

082and we're supporting them in our department to write those plans and come up with ideas and solutions and interventions and modifications the other challenge that we're seeing is student behaviors as i reported on the student support center those kids are there because of their behaviors and their infractions many of the behaviors we believe are due simply to the fact that students have forgotten to appropriately how to communicate and live in a social environment and engage with their peers and authority figures so our administrators are working on that they're following the discipline process and the matrix and um they're doing everything they can to improve student behaviors um planning for the future and opportunities we're going to continue to keep at the forefront the question in our department are we meeting the needs of our students

083are we meeting the needs of our parents we'll continue to review our processes and procedures one process that we continually look at is the transfer process we processed over 2600 transfer requests last year that includes in district and out of district is that process working for our parents but we'll continue to look at that that's just one example student policies we're continually looking at student policies one that's come to light just recently is the dress code so we're going to be looking at the dress code cleveland high school the student government has brought their recommendations to us and the next thing we're going to do is look at community surveys and parent surveys on what their thoughts are on the dress code and we'll continue to seek out professional development and training opportunities for our

084nurses and counselors and staff celebrations i like this slide i had up there fully staffed on counselors but were almost fully staffed mariah reminded me that we have a half time position at shining stars preschool that's not filled so we currently have 45 general education counselors hired we have one alcohol drug substance abuse a counselor and we have three ge social workers in our department that we oversee that's a good ratio it's about 377 to 1. the national average is 415 to 1 and the national recommendation is 250 students to one counselor so we're we're doing pretty well i'm excited about the number of counselors that we have and the experienced number of counselors that we have the nurses i had up there before today that we were fully staffed but lynn reminded me that

085we still have a vacancy at enchanted hills elementary and she is um looking for a nurse at enchanted hills elementary we have all of our health assistants in place and a celebration is they all survive covid and they're seen on the downhill slide of covid reporting and they're enjoying that [Music] we have additional funding coming in for mckinney-vento and our homeless students i want to give kudos to our safe after-school program noel was able to expand that program to include operating during the early release times and the extended learning time for staff she has done a great job of taking over that program and leading the program she currently has 854 students enrolled in the before and after school program she's hired 24 mentors from rio rancho high school cleveland high school and cyber academy

086and noel caceres i keep talking about she's the direct the director who also oversees the enchanted mesa daycare program which is a service for our rrps employees she was able to keep the prices very affordable and low and she currently has 45 students enrolled in the enchanted mesa daycare fully staffed there we're receiving positive feedback from our curriculums that we have implemented i want to point out that our transfers are still coming in from out of district and i like reading through those transfers for the reason why they want to come here many times i see well rrps has a more rigorous varied curriculum i want a better education for my child or i hear great things about rrps that's why i want my child to come here so that's kudos to our our district

087and the way that we're perceived and last i would just say that a celebration that i personally have is a cohesive team and the people i'm able to work with and serve with as i mentioned i have wonderful directors that are passionate about the work noel caceres oversees the before and after school program in china mesa day care and elementary parent concerns mariah aventranger she's overseeing counselors and ge social workers and colbit reporting still lynn wheeler is overseeing the health offices and nurses and then paul lockhart oversees the student support center that is the end of my presentation i talked rather fast but now i'll give you an opportunity to ask any questions or call make any comments thank you sherry so much um before we go into questions dr cleveland do you want to

088to add anything yes we go we'll go first to questions okay um okay sounds good jessica no questions noreen scott anything i don't have any questions thank you for a very nice report okay no questions thank you i do have some questions really fast you know so i it looks like we are doing so good i think like there's well there's so many good things that we're doing in the district and i just want to thank you for for doing all those things and i've just heard really good things too coming out of your department um something that i i was thinking about earlier today is i think it was like a year ago i think it was right as you were kind of transitioning onto into this role we had a presentation um to

089the board about that shape assessment tool i don't know if have you heard it did i don't know if that ever made it over to you um but from what i remember that shape assessment tool it's just a way to look at our district's mental health and to make sure that everything's looking good um and i've had and i've had a couple people in the community people who are involved in that presentation who have asked me about it and so i don't know if if maybe we've had any time to really look at that shape assessment tool that comes from the new mexico department of health and i think it's really just an assessment tool to look at what we're currently doing to see if we're missing anything in in that way if we are

090still working with um unm and um looking at the results of that shape assessment but it's it's kind of fizzled out a little bit and the people that were overseeing that assessment are no longer at the department of health oh okay so it's been a lapse in employment there so but i can definitely continue to reach out and yeah i just i had recently someone asked me about it and i was like i don't know so i thought i would ask since you were giving the presentation tonight so thank you so much yeah if there's any updates on it i would be grateful to know um but dr cliven do you have anything for me yeah i would just but did you get a chance to say anything just yeah i asked yeah okay i

091want to be sure um there are a lot of good things about it we really do have some challenges right now and i think you know we want to be honest we we do we look at our hearings for example they're about double what they were before the pandemic and so we we do have some real need needs in our community and our families some of our kids really take place right now and we're seeing that exhibited through our schools and so having these programs in place are really to try to help as we try to move back to a more normal uh situation but certainly it has been um and we have seen the needs of students greatly increase over the last glad we've had the student support center because it's enabled our students

092to stay in school and it's almost about four took advantage of finishing it and really did not have to be put out we know they don't stay at home um they're finding other things to do so uh it we believe that the center was a really wise investment on the part of the board and we think it has been able to enable students to continue their education i mean said we've still got as a community school district we've still got a lot of work to do before we we get back and and it's just um it's just somewhat discouraging to just see uh some of our our folks are are really hurting and they they really have a lot of stress in their personal lives and their families lives but i i want to come

093in all of our support staff who work so hard to despite all those challenges to to make it work every day and uh all of these things enable our teachers to be able to do their job they're saying the same thing they're just seeing more challenges um psychologists and historians are saying the pandemic will go down in history as one of those marker events that change people's lives significantly and whether it was the beginning of world war ii whether it was the great depression whether it's it impacted people in significant ways and covetous is going to be another one of those historical markers that really impacted the lives of everyone who went through it so i thank you for your report and really gives us a good picture of all of the things that um

094that we have in place to support our students i'm really glad we have it because i think if we did not uh our situation would be grand and it's not graham but it is challenging and we've got we've got to move again and get our students as you said back used to going to school um i don't know if you saw the political cartoon in the albuquerque journal but it had the quote about you know half of success or something i thought it was just showing up and well no one had said no no wonder we've got some problems because when you don't come to school you can't learn you don't come to school you can't get these services so we're really uh hopeful that that our attendance will pick up again and we think

095it will and uh we'll begin to to work toward a better future for for our kids but it has been um it has been a real a real challenge these last couple of years and we're seeing a lot of time and effort having to go into pulling out of that and making it work so thank you so much thank you thank you sherry appreciate it okay our next report and we'll be on communication strategy engagement update uh beth pendergrass our chief communications strategy and engagement officer will present i always love to say that whole thing right there i don't love saying it all the time good evening president galbraith members of the board and dr cleveland thank you so much for this opportunity to present to you this evening on communication strategy and engagement in

096rio rancho public schools um first slide please i always like to start my presentation with thanking my team i work with an incredible group of individuals who are very talented and hardworking and so nothing in this presentation happens without them and without us working together to accomplish those things so first i would like to say thank you you can see a little department overview our main areas of focus i'm not going to read each of them to you that kind of gives you an overarching kind of look at what it is that we're doing in our department next slide so in addition to overseeing the implementation and the development of the strategic plan we also indirectly and directly support the plan in a number of ways and so i'm just going to take you through

097a few of those this evening next slide so under staff excellence i added a couple of the critical initiatives there's four under staff excellence but the two that we directly impact in the communications department is our recruitment efforts and also our employee retention and we talked a little bit when mike chavez presented on the recruitment piece is the work that we're doing in the advertisement trying to get the word out to recruit for those positions so we're really trying to support that effort um in addition to looking at other creative ways where we can help staff recognition which is a huge part of uh retaining our employees you know an employee who feels like they are appreciated and that they're doing something that is recognized always plays a part i think making someone feel special

098so we oversee a lot of the staff recognition programs in the district and then recently dr cleveland and i just joined the national teacher morale collaborative through eab and so the point of that is to work with other districts and the group provide insights and tools to help improve teacher morale so we haven't started that yet it starts next week and we're hoping to really gain some insight from that to see what we can leverage in our school district slide under engagement and innovation i kind of really focused on the goal that really supports our cte efforts and that's a big part right now on what we're supporting in communications particularly around the areas of our partnership opportunities legislative needs and communicating the district's work in cte um it's really interesting how many people will

099call my office and they say hey we want to get involved in cte so i'm constantly sending people to larry or todd or carl and trying to make those connections so that's really exciting next slide safety and wellness in those areas you know sherry did a great job of presenting a lot of that safety and wellness information we really try and support that area with our parent university or sessions where we're engaging our community our parents our staff members on those safety issues and really trying to help them understand what those are and what they can do to help us i mean then also leveraging our partnerships you know with the university of utah i mean university of new mexico the health sciences campus and the rio rancho police department those are just a couple

100examples sorry i went way back to idaho there next slide um operational excellence i really think that this is an area that we all support this is the work that we're doing but particularly stakeholder engagement i mean that's what we're here to do we're here to engage our stakeholders and that's a big piece of the transparency and how we can better be partners to our community so next slide new this year uh so during mike chavez's presentation i talked a little bit about the digital id recruiting we're really seeing some great um progress in that area so we're continuing to work on that a little bit to see if we can get some leverage with our eas and make some progress there facebook ads we really want to continue to see how we can use

101our social media to recruit and engage outside of just our basic indeed or on our website or that sort of thing our videography we've done a lot of work with our videos it's um we have a really great videographer danny we're going to continue to build on this i think this is a area of communication that we need to leverage this is kind of what you see a lot of businesses and corporations using our videos um so last year we focused on some shorter videos this year we really want to focus on even shorter those instagram reels that are quick snippets and you can put those shorts on youtube as well and so we want to continue to build on that our strategic plan implementation so really keeping that front and center to the work

102that we're doing working with our executive directors and our schools to make sure that they know what's in the plan and the part that they play to help us ensure that we are successful and then continuing to reach out to our media once again we're doing our media tips where we're collecting information from the schools and we're proactively sending those to the media giving them something maybe on a slow day they can look at it and say hey you know let's call rio rancho public schools at this list of things that they're doing and then really trying to reach out to our spanish speaking networks a little more and engage our spanish-speaking families um i don't want to forget that you know because we do have a number of families i'll actually go back for

103a second i did want to mention i talked we're doing linkedin again this year so we have our site set up so now we just need to build on that and see what tools we can leverage in linkedin for possibly recruiting efforts and then this year we've started our communications campus crawls so we're actively going out to every single campus we're taking dr cleveland with us and other members of cabinet and we're giving the school to take giving the school a chance to take us around and highlight what they want to show us give them an opportunity to introduce us to staff members who are doing cool things to show us different projects they're working on and that's all information we can take back then and find ways to share that with our community so

104next slide these are some highlights and numbers youtube we have 2 200 subscribers our app we have nearly 3 000 downloads peach jar we have 21 000 subscribers and since we started peach jar we sent 1 300 flyers which is the equivalent of 1.5 million sheets of paper saved and 181 trees so we are happy that we have that electronic version for flyers we established our electronic newsletter so last time i presented to the board i talked about wanting to move away from our antiquated system and do our e-newsletters so we have moved that direction we have over 700 000 cens with 54 open rate and 22 is the industry average so that's pretty exciting uh you can see there where our facebook page reaches instagram and then you can also see where our follower

105numbers are and how they've increased over the last year next slide also parent university we have nearly 950 views from last year that number we always want to increase it that's a great resource for parents our united way campaign raised a hundred and seventeen thousand dollars and a lot of that is thanks to claudia and the work she does she managed that campaign for the district um our continued partnership opportunities and leveraging those i just put a couple of examples on the screen the dangers of social media this is a parent university we have coming up that we're doing in partnership with the rio rancho police department this one is really important this one i can't stress enough for parents the police department is going to be talking about different apps that predators are using

106how students are using emojis to communicate different things and then of course cyber bullying so it's an important one another example we have naop and sca doing an upcoming presentation and highlighting the work we're doing with our cte so those are two just great partnership things that we're working on and i always like to highlight the website you know i know we rolled it out last year but it's so much better than what we have had it's professional it's clean and so i just like to highlight that challenges and opportunities for improvement so i the greatest thing about communication is there is always room for improvement because things are changing almost as rapidly as technology changes there's always a new and better way to communicate which is really exciting because then we can always look

107and continue to want to improve but one of the challenging things right now is finding creative ways to engage our community beyond our staff and parents less and less people watch the local news less and less people read the newspaper nobody checks their mail anymore you know if i do get my mail of cygos in the trash unless you have a student in the school or you're an employee you most likely are on our social media so it's really trying to find those ways to engage our community we go to service clubs we attend community events and generally you find it's the same people who are attending all those events um and so we're really trying to look for different creative ways where we can engage our community again and then also for our families

108finding creative ways to stand out from the clutter just consider how many e-newsletters you get in a day how many emails you get uh how many people you're following on social media we really have to find those ways that we stand out that people want to read what we have to say and then getting our staff members to share good news educators are terrible about bragging about themselves so that's part of our visits to the schools and really trying to see those things that they don't necessarily see as something wonderful and then another thing is policy 913 this is our um it has a lot of things in it but part of it is the social media process and this is something that's really outdated that we need to look at and review and really

109really need to develop a system of tracking and capturing all the social media in the district because a lot of that should be archived it needs to be managed and so we just need a better process for that next slide so planning for the future as you know in the next year we're going to have bond and sb9 campaigns so that's going to be huge over the next year and beyond we're working on a video for the safety and security department on active shooting situations staff recruitment we're working on a video that goes beyond just the district but also looks at the community why rio rancho is a great place for people to live and work and then engaging students and staff on our social media i call them student takeovers or staff takeovers where

110you work with them and for a day a student gets to run for example instagram and show what the day in the life of a student is or something like we have reestablished the district digest this is to help improve communication between the district and the school sites for administrators and so we're working on that again and then i really want to work on our push notifications these are the notifications you get because you have the app downloaded so it's another great way to try and get something right in front of parents quickly so those are some things that we're planning on for the future so that was really fast i talked faster than sherry i know i did um but i stand for questions thank you beth so good i'm always so impressed by

111all of our communications in the district i appreciate it i do just right at the end when you're talking about push notifications is there a way since i so i have like four students right in the district so when anything happens in the district i receive four text messages four emails and four phone calls sometimes well i mean the phone calls don't all come through but everything else comes through is there any way to lessen that for generally it the system takes it down to just one so it's just it's just me so i have to look at yeah i'll just keep getting all these i'm like okay okay okay and and part of it is just different schools i think too so thank you thank you though for the uh presentation jessica tyler you

112have anything thank you for your presentation appreciate it thank you and jeff thank you i like the uh takeover program i thought oh i think that's so neat too yeah i think so creative and dr cleveland just uh you know to to build on what you said our communications are stronger than they've ever been and it's really important that they are given some of the challenges that we've been through and uh yeah i would rather have folks say to us i'm not getting too much i know it's totally fine i'm not ever getting enough i don't agree so i i just want to uh thank god and her team and we do get the information out better at a higher level than we have ever done in the past so um just uh just thanks

113for that i think i remember tyler would like yeah i just wanted to say i mean i as a parent having students in the district i do really appreciate the quick and expedient um communication and sometimes it's funny there's been a few glitches so like the other day you know there's been twice now where i've almost taken care of business with my kids so you know it's like a running joke because you know the other day a notice went out of course i knew my kids hadn't missed seven days of school in a row even though i was out of town for work for like four but i was like yeah i was i was certain that they hadn't missed all seven days so you can usually tell but there are so i just wanted

114to tell the public you know with the use of technology there can be glitches and so there is a a little bit of that that comes with the mechanisms that we use but it's great to be able to get good efficient information out at the drop of a hat i mean even tonight while we're sitting here i've gotten a few messages from cleveland about you know a homecoming event tonight that they're doing at the school and it's a great way just to be able to keep parents in the loop on things and for us to be able to communicate with our kids then as well so so it's appreciated yeah thank you thank you so much anything else director cleveland oh it just again thanks the old-fashioned things still happened too yes this weekend i

115got a call from a student so my boyfriend forgot to buy tickets for the homecoming dance is there anything you can do really so we're so small enough as a community that we still get some of those but anyway thank you very much thank you thank you okay okay so we'll go to approve the consent after we approve the consent we're just going to take a five-minute break in between our business um is there any changes on our consent that are any questions on the consent agenda no madam president this is board member jessica tyler i'd like to move to approve the consent agenda board member jeff morgan a sec okay we have a motion by jessica tyler in a second by jeffrey morgan all in favor aye aye any opposed okay motion carries five

116four zero okay we'll go to a quick five minute recess i can't help but wonder how that kid oh [Music] um up to 40. huh are we live yet we are not live we're not live we're now in the business portion of our meeting we'll start with item a which is to consider the approval of joint powers agreement with the new mexico school for the deaf and jerry reader executive director of special services will present president galbraith members of the board dr cleveland i want to present to you the joint powers agreement for rancho public schools and new mexico school for the deaf preschool and kindergarten new mexico has two schools of state schools of choice that the parents can decide what they want to go to it's the new mexico school for the blind

117and visually impaired and in mexico school for the deaf so the new mexico school for the deaf has a satellite in albuquerque that early childhood and kindergarten and that's who we are doing our joint powers with today we will have two students attending this year and first time in 20 years they have increased their prices from 7 500 per student to 10 000 per student again that that's the first increase in over 20 years we basically count the students in our child count and then we are supposed to transport we've gotten lucky we worked with mexico school for the deaf because we are having our transportation problems they've actually agreed to transport at no additional cost to us for this year so that was very nice of them um students that attend first grade through

11812th grade um at mexico school for the deaf we have five students from rio rancho that attend um they they get to choose whether they can attend their home school or there when they attend first to 12th grade we do not count them when they attend there to serve our students with hearing impairments within the district we have two part-time audiologists five sign language interpreters we serve nine students with hearing impairments in our district and um we have our audiologists see 107 students on their caseload that means they have a hearing aid or some kind of hearing impairment but then they also screen many many districts across the um i'm sorry many students across the district um that's all i have for you i wouldn't stand for any questions okay jessica tyler any questions marine

119scott and jeffrey thank you and dr cleveland did you want to add anything okay all right thank you so much we um we'll go for a motion support member jeff morgan i make the most to approve of the joint powers agreement with the new mexico stew school for the death and this is uh secretary noring scott on second okay we have a motion by jeffrey morgan in a second by norian scott and kim can you take a roll call vote for us vice president morgan yes secretary scott yes board member tyler yes and president galbraith yes motion carries 4-0 thank you okay thank you so much um item b i'm to consider the approval of the rps preventive maintenance plan for 2022-23 and melanie archibeque our executive director of facilities will present good evening madam

120president galbraith members of the board and dr cleveland i'm not sure if it's on i can't tell is it is her microphone on do we know can you i think it's on i don't i don't see it maybe it's off now i know okay thank you thank you um so what i have before you today is the preventative maintenance plan much like the five-year master plan it is a requirement if we are to receive any award from pscoc or psfa i think you guys heard a lot about that earlier today but this is one of the requirements if we were to actually go after an award and receive it the main purpose is it aids in a shift from reactive to prio excuse me from a reactive to a proactive approach with maintenance repairs and

121replacements this approach will not only aid in operations running efficiently and lowering costs but also will extend the life of the building systems and equipment so outlined in the entire document kind of talks about how we treat emergencies and different priorities and then it gives an example of what all of the different repair and maintenance my staff does so it's the maintenance team the grounds as well as the custodials all of that's identified in there but the main objective of the district is to extend the life of the systems effective use of available manpower and resources a reduction of maintenance and replace replacement costs through effective preventative maintenance measures compile and maintain an inventory list of all equipment with applicable service activities and be proactive in assessing building needs to inform future funding requests were

122there any questions do you have any questions from the board no any questions in there dr cleveland did you want to yeah just as i said earlier it is really important that this helps us maintain what we have and you know makes our uh the life of our facilities uh last longer so it's it's it's extremely important thing for us to do yeah i'm really grateful we had that presentation earlier that helps me to remember what all of those you know how all that interacts together so thank you anything else for me before we go no it worked out perfectly that the presentation was earlier yeah it did okay so um do we have a motion on this item is board member jeff morgan to make a motion for the approval of the rrps preventive

123maintenance plan for 2022-2023 for remember tyler we have a motion motion by jeffrey morgan in a second by jessica tyler and then kim you want to take a roll call vote for us scott yes board member tyler yes president galbraith yes motion carries 4-0 thank you thank you all right our next item is to consider the approval of lease agreement between rio rancho public schools and the garza group llc for property at 3180 northern boulevard northeast in rio rancho new mexico and and lauren hatchell presents madam president members of the board dr cleveland i stand before you i had to beat michael he's excited to go excited to present his his item next but um i i stand here with noel oh well who um if you remember from the presentation from sherry carver earlier

124about the student services she has three directors noelle is one of them and one of the programs that noel oversees is the enchanted mesa daycare the enchanted mesa daycare is a daycare service for district employees um can i give some facts yeah norell's going to give some facts about it so sherry said 45 children today we're now 46. we have a capacity of 53. so we're definitely getting there um we have four different classrooms we have an infant's classroom we have 11 kids in there toddlers 11 kids preschool 15 kids and pre-k nine kids so we have a nice variety and if you ever get a chance to go inside it is so nice and so enjoyable when i leave the staff are excited the parents that i see in the in the um area

125are excited to have them there i've heard nothing but amazing things over there so they they're doing a great job that's awesome i actually drove by their town my way here and saw everyone's going in to pick up their their kids as i as i drove by so it was kind of like these shade structures are huge outside they're totally trees around the building so it's nice they can have snack outside um and it kind of really blocks the heat of the sun around here in august so that's great so the enchanted mesa day care was originally housed in the old shining stars um area and when the new building was created enchanted mesa daycare was moved to a facility on northern boulevard which you guys have seen by the bus barn it's really good

126really good facility um that was in 2019 and um there was a lease created and approved by the board at that time for three years this is a new lease for an additional three years with an option to extend for two more years um essentially it's the same terms as the original lease the the one let's say major difference but there is one difference in that the rent is a little bit higher it's for 3695 dollars a month previously was 3 000 a month and this is to account for some improvements that were made by the landlord for um fire suppression so um other than that um unless you have any questions we'd recommend approval okay lauren what does that come to a square foot i don't know actually do you know what the square

127footage is i don't know okay we can get that for you we can get that number for you it is six hundred thirty six hundred thirty six hundred i didn't see that oh so and it's how much so 30 and then 36 yeah dollar square dollar twenty a dollar twenty okay okay any other questions do you more from marine no i move approval for the uh lease agreement between rio rancho public schools and the garza group for property at 3180 northern boulevard northeast [Music] board member jeff morgan a second okay so we have a motion binary scott in a second by jeff morgan and then can we take a roll call vote for us vice president morgan yes secretary scott yes board member tyler yes and president galbraith yes motion carries 4-0 thank you dr

128cleveland do you want to say a few words i just want to say this is a huge teacher staff retention tool for this school district it keeps a lot of folks who are able to continue to teach and work and have their children with quality daycare and so i believe it's one of the factors that's enabled us through even really challenging times to be able to keep some of our best staff and so what we're really appreciative of the board's support of being in china makes that daycare and i know those families are very appreciative as well they do of course pay but they do pay for their children to attend and i think that's important to be known that's great thank you okay i would love to visit there sometime if there's not i

129don't know what all the red tape is in front of that but i would love to see it it would be great would like to go and sometime we could make an arrangement for the board to see it we were really lucky because after we saw the other one that had to be torn down um this would have been a daycare and so we were able to transition in and while it was really questionable whether we were going to be able to even offer it so it was really good that this worked out for us yeah that's great thank you all right our next item is to consider the approval of sfe contract amendment number three adjustment to meal equivalent equivalency and dinner rates michael madrid our purchasing director and also david b hill our

130executive director finance president thank you board president galbraith members of the board superintendent dr cleveland i kind of hope i get extra credit for being enthusiastic yes uh as as discussed this is the third amendment to the southwest food excellence contract uh with rio rancho public schools uh we previously identified two other amendments to the board on june the 30th 2023 we presented amendment number one which extended the contract term from july 122 through june 30 of 23. amendment 2 we discussed unit cost adjustments for students and the billable rates that the district would be charged by southwest food excellence and what you have this afternoon is amendment number three which takes into consideration meal adjustments for meal equivalencies uh dinner rates and seamless summer what i'd like to do is identify some significant dates

131as it relates to the contract with southwest food excellence on april 26 2021 uh we presented to the board a recommendation to award uh the procurement to southwest food excellence and we grant we're granted that approval um the terms of the initial rfp identified a one-year term but it also allowed for four one-year extensions not to exceed a total of five years in total excuse me um on may the 10th received approval by the public education department for the fixed price contract between southwest food excellence in rio rancho public schools and as stated we previously presented amendments one in amendment two uh the benchmark for amendment number three is the consumer price index we took into consideration what those percentages were in 2022 that percentage was 10 percent in 2021 it was three percent and

132in 2020 it was four percent for an aggregate compounded of 17 percent we negotiated a meal adjustment rates of 6.9 percent and if you look at the back of the memo there's amendment number three and there's a table within that amendment that identifies the different costs for the mill equivalency the dinner and the seamless summer program that will stand for questions okay any questions from the board any questions any questions number three yes secretary scott tyler uh motion carries 4-0 great thank you thank you so much thank you okay um our next item is e um to consider approval of the of resolutions for the 2022 legislative session for submission to the new mexico school board's associates association and so all of these resolutions we've already discussed are there any questions or any comments um

133to be made on these i i would like to say thank you uh for pulling this all together and getting our thoughts down in in a very nice order so thank you kim i assume that was you so thank you yeah and i definitely want to echo that thank you so much for for doing that and putting that together dr cleveland do you have anything on these before we just just a quick correction it's the legislative session [Laughter] so on that note does that change the numbers of our can we just leave it as as in this 2022 so we're okay okay 23. okay so our resolution numbers are good okay i just want to make sure the numbers didn't have to change too okay 22-23 school year and and we uh number them based

134on the first uh of the year okay perfect and i think jessica has a motion for us yes uh this is board member tyler i'd like to make a motion to approve the resolutions for the 2023 legislative session for submission to the new mexico school boards association for resolution number 22-002 resolution number 22-003 resolution number 22-004 resolution number 22-005 resolution number 22-006 resolution number 22-007 resolution number 22.008 resolution number 22-009 and resolution number 22 resolution number 22-010 easy for you to say i second we have a motion by jessica tyler in a second by noreen scott and kim will you take a roll call vote for us i don't have to repeat the motion do i no vice president morgan yes secretary scott yes uh remember tyler yes and president gelp yes motion carries 4-0

135thank you so much all right we're excited to get those in thank you for everyone's hard work okay um now we'll have our second reading of changes to policy 906 on transportation um it looks like michael baker will be presenting this for us yes that is correct uh madam president dr cleveland members of the school board i'm filling in for executive director lynn carl uh for this evening she is working late and the the second reading um essentially is those changes uh match with the statute talks about there's essentially no changes to the way uh that the bus service is doing it as compared to the policy um [Music] the language is is right out of the statute so i will stand for questions any questions you have a motion tyler uh i'd like to

136make a motion to approve changes to policy 906 transportation norien scott is second we have a motion by jessica tyler second by maureen scott and then kim if you'll do a roll call vote for us morgan yes secretary scott yeah board member tyler yes president galbraith yes motion carries 4-0 thank you so much yes um so um now we'll go and i think we'll do both of these if you want to just present both of them so it's our second reading for changes to policy 108 student and school rights and responsibilities and also item h the second reading of changes to policy 10 hazing harassment intimidation bullis bullying and menacing and sherry carver our executive director of student services president galbraith members of the board and dr cleveland uh the board had no uh additional

137changes to those two policies so i'm bringing tonight to you the second policy 1008 second reading for policy 1010 and i will stand for questions okay thank you so much any questions okay we have a motion board member tyler i'd like to make a motion to approve the changes to policy 1008 student and school rights and responsibility and policy one zero one zero hazing harassment intimidation bullying and menacing board member jeff morgan second okay we have a motion by jessica tyler and a second by jeff morgan and can we take a roll call vote for us vice president morgan yes secretary scott yes board member tyler yes and president galbraith yes ocean carries 4-0 thank you thank you sherry i feel like you've been up here a lot with us today [Laughter] all right our

138second reading of changes to policy 1023 restraint and seclusion uh sal our executive director of safety and security will present thank you madam president i believe the members of the board the safety security department has no additional changes to the initial uh presentation that we gave the other night stand for any questions okay any questions from the board dr cleveland do you have anything you want to add please okay we've discussed this at some length last time yes yes yes we did okay we have a motion sport member jeff morgan i make a motion for the second reading of changes to policy one zero two three restraint and seclusion [Music] remember tyler well second okay motion by jeff morgan and a second by jessica tyler um kim can you take a roll call vote for

139us vice president morgan yes secretary scott yes a board member tyler yes and president galbraith yes uh motion carries 4-0 thank you thank you okay and then we'll take the remainder of our policies well david mann will be presenting these um it be our second reading of changes to policy 208 meetings of the board second reading to policy 209 agendas in order of business of the board meetings and second reading to changes policy to 11 minutes of board meetings and once again david mann our general counsel will present these president thank you dr cleveland members of the board um there were no changes proposed to any of these three policies and so i recommend do pass okay any questions okay we have a motion board member tyler would like to make a motion to approve

140the changes to policy 208 meetings of the board changes to policy 209 agendas and orders of business for board meetings and changes to policy to eleven minutes of board meetings secretary norine scott i'll second okay i have a motion by jessica tyler in a second binary scott and um kim if you'll take a roll call vote for us uh vice president morgan yes secretaries and president galbraith yes motion carries 4-0 okay thank you so much appreciate it yeah go ahead i'm not sure someone that came to the mic and gave a presentation but they were going to tell us what some of the recommendations to the students gave for dress code i don't want to miss that uh they won't they was excited about presenting it i'm not sure who that was okay all right

141okay i thought you was gonna present it tonight that's why i wanted to see what they were saying us because that's pretty interesting yeah yeah so as that comes and i don't know if maybe it's even appropriate to have some of those just to look at some of those initial things that are coming back it could be put into our into our folder but yeah and i think that um sherry had also mentioned we would do some parent surveys and things like that in addition to it before we looked at policy change correct okay sounds good so we'll go into our advanced planning which that helps us with our advanced pony um we'll have september 12th um which is today is our deadline for these uh for the legislative resolutions um september 26th there'll be

142an audit committee meeting in the training center at 4 30. also on the 26th will be a board meeting at 5 30 here in this board room october 5th will be a half day of classes for students afternoon professional development and planning for our staff um sixth or the seventh will be fall break which is wonderful um october 10th we'll have a board meeting here at 5 30 on the 12th we have the nmsba region meeting and that will be in moriarty at their public schools and we should be receiving more information about that in our emails um on the 24th we'll have both an audit committee meeting at 4 30 and then a regular board meeting at 5 30 and then on the 28th there'll be a rio rancho high school and a cleveland

143high school football game that will be at seven o'clock and that will be at cleveland high school so is there anything yeah go ahead sorry i i would like to get some idea early on uh if you're planning to attend the region four meeting because we will have to put a purchase order through for your attendance okay so uh if you'd let me know i'd appreciate it okay i'll have to look at our calendars and if we can let kim know here pretty soon it's a wednesday out of town so i will not be attending okay okay i do not believe i will be attending either but i'll let me look at my calendar and i'll let you know for sure okay okay all right anything else on our advanced plan everyone we'll try not

144to move testing [Music]