TCSD #1 Board of Education Regular Meeting - Oct 8 2025

001Thank you. Yes, man. I don't like bills here. >> Saturday morning. Wow. Well, that was >> that was that [Music] and African Portuguese coastal trail. Y >> it was. Yeah, it was a lot. But it was really fun. You know, it's not rolling, but it's very No, I think that's pretty I am calling this meeting of the Teton County School Board to order at 60:05 on October 8th. Um, let's see. Would like to do the pledge of >> the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice. >> All right. Next is um trusting me. Do you want to read something from our vision and mission? >> Our strategic plan goals are success for all, a safe, healthy and caring

002environment, effective and efficient operations, a positively engaged and informed community. Thank you. Now we'll move on to approval of the agenda. Do I have a motion? >> Madam Chair, I move to approve the agenda as presented. >> Second. >> Um any discussion? All in favor? >> I opposed. >> Motion passes. We'll move on to the superintendent report. >> Madam chair, trustees, we have uh several celebrations tonight. Um, we're going to lead the celebrations um with a significant celebration. They're all important. Um, but it is time to recognize one of our best teachers in the district once again who's been recognized as the official teacher of the year, Michelle Brown. I >> was expecting a speech. >> I know. >> Thank you. >> I'm going to have to >> He said it was a 20 minute

003speech. >> You had multiple points. >> Yeah. I I I've been having to prepare a lot of schools, but I will just say this, it is very humbling because I work with so many really great teachers and I really believe that this reflects the great teaching that we have going on in the district. I really do. So, it's super easy to to speak from this place because we have so many great teachers that I feel like I can just go forward and represent all the good things that are going on in the district. There you go. >> Well, thank you very much. It can't be um overstated that great teaching is what we're about in TCS. It makes the difference with kids is the core purpose of why we're all in this room today. Michelle,

004thank you for everything. Your work. Um your official term will start January of 2026. and we'll go to the end of December 2026. So, it's kind of a split year. Um, you're going to be out and about representing all teachers in Wyoming TCSU. So, we're very proud of you. Thank you. >> Um, um, our next celebration um is our SRO. If we could please have Andrew, T, and Melissa, please come up. Sorry, you're not getting the ovation. >> Yeah. >> Mine is just for tea though. >> Yeah. >> Um, you may know or maybe you don't, but Miss Rowdy is my beautiful wife, so I'm really proud of her and I'm glad I'm glad to be working in the school district with her. Um, she was one of my motivations to volunteer for this position.

005Um >> well um before you get started I just to keep it very brief but I thought it was very important to acknowledge our SRO in our district. we have not had an opportunity um to thank them for their work um not only from a law enforcement presence but if you ask any three of of our SRO's about relationships with kids it's seeing them as human beings in our school working with them and supporting them all everything from ebiking to disciplinary issues to just positive support u we are very fortunate to have SRO's in our district a lot of districts in the country and the state um we have a really solid partnership at the sheriff's office and Max car. Um I encourage everyone to thank you for everything that you do for students and

006you go above and beyond your sheriff's many things we're asking you to help with. So thank you very much. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um >> so I just want to take just a moment and introduce ourselves. Um I'm Sergeant Andrew. I've been with the sheriff's office for just over 17 years. This is Melissa Adams. She's been in law enforcement for 11 years. She is really dedicated to this work. She really loves kids. She is a particularly special gifted person when it comes to making relationships with middle school kids. So, we're really lucky to have her. Um, this is Tia Stanton. She's worked for the sheriff's office for six years. Um, she is a fantastic skilled forensic interviewer. We're really ler lucky not just to have her in the district, but um, locally.

007We get a lot of people from other agencies contacting her asking her to do forensic interviews with children. Um, I want to just tell you a little bit about our mindset and how we go about doing what we do. My motto as the sergeant of the SRO division is people are most important above everything else. People are most important. They hear me say that and that's that's our goal. But we wear three hats as school resource officers. First is law enforcement. That one's pretty self-explanatory, right? where we deal with crimes and people who are victimized um mostly related to schools, sometimes with children outside of school, in the home or in other places. Um our other hat is probably the one that we wear the most and that is an informal counselor and this stretches

008from things from kids who are having emotional distress, uh possibly suicidal. Um, it has to do with kids who are having trouble socially at school, kids with um maybe they're trying to figure out what what to do with their life as they're getting close to graduation, what the next steps will be. And so we try to to help them work through some of these problems. And then the third hat that we wear is a mentor. Um, and when we're doing this, essentially, we're trying to get every kid to be as successful and to grow as much as possible to lead them towards greatness, to help them feel successful in their accomplishments, and to feel feel like they're working towards something positive and building good character. Um, that's kind of what we try to do as

009school resource officers. I really want to thank our admin. We have some really great principles who give us a ton of support. The first principal I worked with was when Scott was a principal and I really appreciate how he invited us in, let us be a part of the district and part of the school. But I mean from Munger, Ela Kelly, Moran Wilson, um Jackson Coulter, the middle school summit, um we have a really good partnership and we really appreciate their support and helping us do what we do. >> Thank you. We're going to sneak out. >> Uh, Superintendent Chris Pres, thank you for the opportunity to recognize some of our athletes at these meetings. Um, and we have another state champion that we're going to bring up today. If we go ahead, I want

010to introduce Coach Dykeman, who was also honored as the conference coach of the year. So, I will now go ahead and turn it over to Coach Dykeman. Hi. Um, this young lady standing next to me had a unbelievable tennis season here for the Jackson High School. She was 17 and0 on the season. Um, she won 34 sets of tennis and only lost one. And I added up the games. She won 193 games and lost only 30. So, true dominance out on the court. Um, a great young lady. When I had a conversation with her at state in between some of the matches, she was asking me about my son and where he goes to school and about my family and what my son was studying. She's like, "Oh, I love philosophy and this and that."

011So, it was very interesting to have her take interest in um my life outside of coaching tennis. So, thank you for that, Caroline. Um so, I'd like to introduce Caroline Savalinka, I mean Caroline Brokoff. Yeah. Wyoming state champion and girls singles. >> Thank you so much. >> Congratulations. Thank you. >> Good job. >> All right. The next uh celebration we have is our monthly connection moment. Um I have two um examples to share with trustees and the public at large. Uh we had a Friday inservice uh recently as everyone knows and um on the document posted in the connection section of the agenda. You will see several pictures that we put together to um inform the trustees of what happened in all of our schools on our Friday in service. ly noting the services um

012were in a lengthy conversation last year related to the calendar. So I wanted to uh make sure I keep the trustees up to speed on what's happening on those days in regards to professional learning had a full day we've asked um our staff they appreciated the time and are very thankful for that day. Um the second example of connection I have to share with trustees is something that we've started this year in the K5 like to give thanks to Megan Piper and our K5 teachers. Um you have a student um in the K5 zone. You might be receiving a text message once a week or so that gives the parent a suggestion on how they can help their child in mathematics. Um, and if we can show the trustees an example of what these look

013like. Start teaching down at Conger Elementary. >> That's a lot of bill. That's a lot of >> See you, Bill. Bigger than I am. Hello kinder families. If you are looking for some ways to support your student at home in mathematics, the key to success at this age is ensuring that your student has a solid understanding of numbers as quantities. Practice counting often. Knowing the count sequence to 20 and beyond is a good start. Next, work on counting objects and movements. Do they understand that each object matches with one count word? Can they answer the question how many when they finish counting a set of objects? Can they show you how many on their fingers? If they are struggling with this, try to slow things down. Have them close their eyes and count sounds. Continue

014watching this video to see some of these ideas in action. So, what we're going to do first is you're going to count these Play-Doh balls for me. And when you count them, I want you to squish them with your thumb like that. Okay? Go ahead and count. And Tony, how many are there? >> One. 10. >> How many balls did you count? >> 10. >> Can you show me how many 10 fingers are? >> Nice job. Now, what I want you to do is to roll this dice for me. [Applause] What number did you get? >> Three. Can you show me three fingers? >> And can you squish three balls for me? [Music] >> Nice job. >> Hello kinder families. If you are looking for some >> So this is just an example of one.

015These go out weekly so we can engage and connect more and give them some practical suggestions on how to help their child at home in mathematics. And again, I want credit to Megan and her team, the K5 teachers for really making this connection with it. The last part of the superintendent celebration is to recognize our site leadership. Um it is national principles month across the country. Um, principles play a vital role in all of our schools and that includes our assistant principles. Um, National Principles Month really focuses on our school site leaders being instructional leaders as their primary role, not only modeling great teaching, but leading great teaching and supporting great teaching. So, I just want to thank all of our principles and vice principles for all of their work in the schools um and

016really supporting our teachers in TCSD. That wraps up the superintendent report. >> Well, first I'd like to say thank you to all the principles and assistant principles as well. Um I had had it in my head I was going to say something too. So I'm glad that um that Scott did, but I wanted to say thank you as well. Um you are a vital part of this work and um we appreciate especially after the workshop that we just went through and hearing of all the work that you all put into your improvement plans and um working with all the students individually across schools. It's it's really it's it's breathtaking. So thank you. Uh, the other thing I wanted to do is tonight is Andrea Don Brosky's last night working for Teton County School District. She

017has been the executive assistant to the superintendent and school board for the past eight years and she has been terrific and she's uh found a great platform for us to run our meetings off of. And so I think she felt that it was a time to take a breath and do something different. So thank you. We really appreciate it. And please, >> thank you, Andrea. Um so now we will move on to reports and items for discussion and we'll start with the student schoolboard member report. Oh, you know we did we >> district leaders. >> Yeah, sorry that was this. Sorry about that. >> It was celebrations and Scott. Yeah. Anyway, go ahead. >> Yeah, we have the district for hosting for trustees and are open for any questions. >> Any questions? >> Madam Chair,

018no question. But I'd like to say I'm really glad about the trend toward healthier food >> in the um food report. >> I I think I'd like to acknowledge it's a very tricky balance between what kids will eat, what they should eat. >> What 100%. >> And so it sounds to me as though they're trending in that direction. Right. Good. Thank you. Oh, trust. >> Uh, madam chair, I just want to make sure that the board that we as the board send a thank you letter to the Lions Club um for I guess donating an $8,000 eye thing scanner. I don't know if you know if anybody's voted that board should send something to them. Uh I really at least personally appreciate your vision screening. It's great that they did that. So wanted to acknowledge

019that. Excellent. Great idea to >> thank you um Madam Chair. Um, I wanted to say thank you to Bennett and Pere and Mary Titi for uh that workbased learning presentation where there were some state and national folks here and any way that we can all get the word out to other businesses, as many businesses we can in the community, what our school district is doing for our students, but how that can also help impact those businesses as well. it um it is impressive to see the excitement with those students and the hard work that um everybody involved is doing on that. Uh congratulations to all the um successes that the different schools have had um and seeing that um and um see that Harley Toolson traveled to state for golf which was phenomenal. Um, and

020then there was one other piece. I don't know if we're talking about the in the school facilities if we're talking about it now or later, but I was just curious. Did the governor approve the CD funding request on the 30th? >> Big question. Um >> um madam chair um trusty Abram the so uh state construction and and school facilities um have presented their u budget to the governor's office um requesting basically the allocation of um the previously um approved funding. They also requested um some additional funding to um account for inflation and um soft costs, planning, design, etc. and permitting. Um so um that they the last conversation I had with Jeremy Slater and he's actually online. Um they were going back to the governor's office uh for a follow-up conversation about their budget request.

021Um but then the next step is that it goes to the legislature for approval um or consideration and hopeful approval um during the upcoming session. So um as a reminder to everyone the the funding was the basic funding about 21 a.5 million was approved um in a previous session but it required that we complete the most cost-effective remedy study before the funds could be um allocated. So, that's the process we've been going through, but it has to come back for the um through the legislative process. >> Thank you for the update. >> Um and and I would note that the request is that the funds be released um upon approval rather than having to wait to July 1st for the new fiscal year because if we have to wait until July 1, we essentially lose

022an entire year um in the on the project. So, the request has been made that the funds become available immediately. >> And Madam Chair, um, Director Reynolds, just to help me understand, when is the legis legislature when would they be meeting to hopefully approve the allocation of the funds that they've already approved? >> Madam Chair, it'll be during the um 20 2026 legislative session. >> So, it be in the spring. It will be in the Yes, it would be in the spring. In terms of when that would, you know, calendar out. I that I don't I don't know that yet. >> Madam Chair, before she leaves, could maybe Mr. Slater answer for us, when does the governor's budget have to be submitted? Does he know? >> It looks like Jeremy has turned his um camera

023on. >> Yeah, >> I I believe that was in November. you won't get the answer about the governor and tell me about it. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. Any other comments, thoughts? I love the uh building the skateboards. I thought that was so cool. >> Oh, I did have one more question maybe for Charlotte. Um the high school roof. Could you tell us give us an update on that? Or maybe Mike might do that. And and also there was pictures of something at Arapaho. Where is that? um a rapo was a superintendent's house. >> So loop deck and I was like where is this? >> Yeah, the roof is substantial completion supposed to be the end of October but they're very far ahead of schedule. We expect it to be done

024in the next few days. Um so >> and that's just a you put a new deck on or something. It's >> correct. It just we replaced the old deck. Okay. Anything else? >> Awesome. >> Question. >> Now we're done with the superintendence report and the student. Sorry because I love the super. >> Well, hi. So, for starters, we last time we had three topics and we've narrowed down to the topic that we're hoping to pursue this year, which is going to be environmental and education initiatives across the district. Um, in K through 5, we're really looking for fun and interactive ways that the kids can learn that their actions have a negative and really a positive impact as well. Um, one of the ways we were hoping of doing this, and the picture didn't show

025up for some reason, but I'm not sure it was, by having them play Climate Candyland. Um, because Candyland was one of my favorite games as a child, and it's um, it is a really fun and educational way to teach them about how their actions affect the environment without making it seem Yeah, there it is. without making it seem scary or some sort of impending doom. Um, and Diego will go into more detail about the things we've already done at the middle school and the high school, but we're really looking to increase personal awareness and responsibility across the district while also really trying to incentivize bus riding and finding alternative ways to get to school beyond taking a single-use car. Um, and one of the ways that we were just brainstorming and haven't really fleshed out

026that we were thinking about doing this was if you ride the bus, you can enter into a lottery and for every swipe on the bus, your name enters into this lottery that goes off once a month to help provide people with reason beyond just education and personal awareness to try to really help the environment in Jackson. Um, and the other way we were kind of thinking about is for the people who really say riding the bus is not an option for me. If they can provide proof that 15 days out of the month they were car pooling with people who weren't from their household, they could also enter the lottery as well. Um, yeah. So, we're really just trying to figure out ways to make people personally aware and want to do it because they

027think it's the right thing to do while also trying to find ways to make sure it happens regardless of um personal opinion. >> Um so before I go into what we have done for the topic, I like to next slide please. Um I'd like to talk about and point out that we are now going to be involved in the student senate. Uh it's a group of 55 student grades from 5 to 12 and the meetings are going to be um every other month. Um next slide please. So what we have done or started doing for the topic is we have made a Google form and asked several questions about whether transportation if you take the bus you bike drive walk um if you carpool and whether you think like recycling bins are easy to find

028uh what they think about environment what they'd like to know more about we have started and made the Google form and sent out emails to the right people to get that sent to the students so that the students can fill that out. And so our next plan is going to be to look at the responses from the Google forms and then use those responses, put them into the student board slide and check the feedback and find ways to support students in whatever they need or want to know more about. Um yeah, I think that it >> Yeah. And we don't have any responses yet, but we're hoping next meeting we will have the responses. We'll show them. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Anybody have any questions for them? >> Thank you very

029much. >> Thank you. Thank you. fiscal management. >> Good evening, Madame Chair. Um, our treasurer is missing, but >> Oh, there he is, Mr. Treasurer. >> Yes. Um, we met, we had a short meeting. Um, I'm going to just turn it over to Kristen. It's a little hard to um fill in from Zoom, I think. So, >> okay, the we had two agenda topics. The first one was to review the evaluation of the state plan uh requested by trusty meat at the last meeting. I believe you all have a copy of that, the state health insurance plan in comparison to um our current health insurance. And I think the big the big takeaways from that are uh that the structure is a little bit different. It's the same cost for every single employee, every single

030and family, every single and spouse. Um and we have to pay that no matter what the employee elects. So even if they just elect dental insurance, we have to pay the entire premium. Um and we're in it for a five-year commitment. I don't know if any of those criteria will change based on um the legislature taking any type of action, but we still don't have any additional information on that. That will come at the end of October. Uh they should be drafting the legislation or they're supposed to in the October recalibration meeting. So, we should have some more information at least on what the recalibration committee is proposing for uh the session. Um, is there any questions on health insurance? We did have our first health insurance steering committee as well. >> Thank you, Madam

031Chair. Um, Director Mayor, just to clarify, if I heard you correct, um, we would pay the full premium >> for an employee or staff member, even if that staff member is only selecting to be a part of dental. Mhm. >> So the state >> So it it it's an interesting model that they have set up. I'll I'll give an example of just a single person enrolling. They have the selection of four plans. There's two traditional plans and two high deductible plans. And the cost for the district to pay for a single person to enroll in that, I think it was about $970 a month, let's say. And even if that single only elects dental insurance, let's say they're covered by health insurance somewhere else, we have to pay the full amount for that one person.

032Um, if we if they only elect if if the single elects, we pay that same amount, but then if they want to elect vision and dental, they actually have to pay out of pocket for those extra services. So the district, no matter what they elect or who elects, we are on the hook for the entire amount versus and then if the employee wants any supplemental plans, life insurance, right now the district pays for vision, dental, life insurance, um basic life insurance. So all of those would be extra services that employees would have to pay. So, when you look at the comparison of what we're paying now versus what we'd pay on the state plan, it does look like it's cheaper, but the what they're actually getting is much less. And for that same dollar amount

033and for every single plan except for the one high deductible plan for singles, the employees have a a portion that they have to pay. Um, so it's it's definitely reduction in benefits. If we go to the state plan, it does save the district money, but it's a pretty big difference for staff to make that change. >> Trustee, go ahead. >> Madam Chair, um I'd like to know our insurance fees are set by the company, right? >> Our insurance fees are premiums. >> Premiums. >> Mhm. And it's fixed for did you say five years? A fixed amount. >> That's the Wyoming state plan. So the Wyoming state plan, it's not fixed for five years, but you're committed for five years. So once you transition to the state plan, they have a minimum term of five years.

034Over those five years, the district does not have any input into what those rates will be. So we don't know what they'll be in the second year, the third year, the fourth year, the fifth year. So they're subject to this national debate over insurance costs. >> It they will be the rates for the Wyoming state plan will be subject to the board that oversees the Wyoming state plan. And I don't know if we'd have an opportunity to participate in that board if we joined the Wyoming state plan. Uh I don't have those details yet. I did ask when I talked to some of their administrative team, are we able as a district to say if you don't elect in medical insurance, you can't elect the other options through them? And they said no, they don't

035think that we can do that. So there there's definitely some drawbacks. Heather and I are doing a little bit more research and and we'll continue to bring more information as we get it. Trust. >> Madam Chair, um I'm not sure where to start. So, let's start with the state plan. Um the numbers you had, there were some numbers in the back of what you had provided to us that were broken down. It seems like the state plan does provide a number of different options as far as deductibles, correct? >> Yes. >> Okay. So, how does those how do those rates, if you can pick the one that is because we only have one option right now, how does that compare to what we're paying right now? >> There there aren't appletoapple comparisons. As you said,

036the one that's closest to what we're paying now is approximately the same cost, >> but we cover more with our plan. We're right now we're able to customize our plan. For example, this last year when we renewed July 1, we added uh a skin cancer screening for cancer um as a a covered service. So, it used to be that you'd have to go to a primary care physic physician. They'd have to refer you to a specialist to be able to have a skin cancer screening because most primary care doctors don't do that. In order to be able to go directly to the dermatologist to have that screening done, we had to add that as a service in our plan. We have the flexibility to do that right now with the plan that we have and

037we would continue to be able to make those small adjustments based on the feedback from our staff. Um that was one of the things that came back quite often is that many staff are getting those skin cancer screenings on a regular basis. They wanted them covered. uh we wouldn't be able to make those changes if we went to the state plan and that wouldn't be a covered service. There's a couple of other things um that are also different from our plan. So the coverage is not the same. It's the same provider. Sigma um is the provider for the state plan and that's the one that we use, but the customization is gone. >> So right now with Sigma, we are going to have increases because our claims have outpaced what our premiums. There's going to

038be some increase. Do we have any idea yet on what that number is going to be? >> No. In um we outpaced in one month, but the prior month, so July July's claims were less than our premiums we've paid. August was more. We don't have September claims yet. Uh we're looking at those on a monthly basis. We've looked at them on the steering committee. Um so August was a was a hard month. We had a call on Tuesday morning, yesterday morning, um with our insurance providers and um right currently we're below for uh September's claims, below our paid premiums. So >> I maybe I was wrong. I I I didn't mean monthto month. I meant over the last period that they look at it, we are still outpacing >> we >> our claims are outpacing

039our premiums over that time period. I forget what that time period is right now. Fiscal year 25 ended June 30th and yes, we were over by $5 million. >> So my question is with regards to the state fund versus where we're at now, the state fund has more participants in what their plan is. So it's going to be spread out over a larger pool of people with Sigma versus what we're doing. And so my only question is is doesn't that mean that the risk or possibility of rates going up and down dramatically is going to be less if we're on the state fund if we're by ourselves with suit. >> That's a great question and that's actually one that the legislative committee asked the state plan administrators in the last recalibration meeting and the state

040plan administrators were not willing to commit to that statement. Yes, they service a larger population and if the state right now there's only one school district that participates in the state plan. So if the legislature took action and put all 48 districts on the state plan, that would create a pretty large group. Uh I think the reaction of the administrators for the state plan right now was uh they seemed hesitant to be able to commit to administer >> the capacity of a plan that takes on 47 school districts. >> But the state fund doesn't just cover school districts. It covers all different types of employees. It's a larger pool than what we have right now. >> That is true. >> Okay. Um, the other question I had was on the um um, sorry, I just

041written down there. You said there was a five-year commitment. I didn't see that in there. Is that something that they've just told us that we we have to commit for five years no matter what? >> Nope. It's in the plan document that I sent out to the steering committee. >> Just Okay. Um, that's all I have for right now. Thanks, >> Trusty. >> Um, Madame Chair, uh, Kristen, um, I recall at the recalibration meeting that the plan administrator for the state said that they had not seen an increase in premiums in the last, was it five years or three years? >> Uh, I'd have to go back and listen back. I don't remember that part. And also um they indicated the plan administrator indicated that school districts get 17,590 dollars per FTE in health insurance

042that the state pays. Right. >> That's correct. >> As I recall, we paid last year something like 12 uh 12,000 per FTE, right, for our insurance. >> Yeah, I'd have to go back and look. And the big difference there, the gap there is that the it's they pay that insurance funding for total FTEEs funded. So when you look at and that's only in the block grant, right? So when we're talking about um grant funded employees, anybody who sits outside of fund that's paid out outside of fund 10 is outside of that funding. Now there are other categories like reimburseable sped, reimburseable transportation, but we have in our district more employees than what the state funds us for. So when you it so it's not accurate to say we get 17,000 per district employee. We get

04317,000 per model funded FTE >> different subject matter. Somebody can, and this goes for the whole board, but um I saw that you have a request for qualifications, right? I'm sorry, I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing at my stupidity. What is that versus request for bid, request for proposal? >> Sure. >> And is this gone out yet? Where are we at with this? >> It has not gone out. Okay. >> Uh I am waiting on the board to agree that that's the direction that we're headed. Uh a request for qualifications is basically um this is for the flat rate insurance consultant that has been talked about at a couple of different meetings. Um it would just be okay this is what we're looking for. Can you submit to us what you can do for

044us rather than give us a bid for services or give us a proposal for services that it really can be the same thing. We can call it a qualifications proposal whatever we want. That helps me a piece. >> Do you need action from us on that? >> I'm looking for direction. I believe in finance committee we've talked about this. We talked about the right timing to put something like this out would be um so given the current timeline we have our we know that our insurance renewal will come in in in March or April next year. We know that the state may take action in February with maybe a result in March. Um either putting all of the the districts on the state plan or not. Um, so one of the conversations that we've had

045is that going out for this this proposal now, even if we get those answers back, we could do it now, we could do it in se in December, but be ready depending on what the state does to have that have those responses back so that we can be ready to make a decision. So that's the timeline I'm going on right now. Um, unless I get different direction from you guys. >> Other thoughts, comments, questions? Madam >> Sure. So, if I understand, you're saying right now we should go ahead and do we'd be to get this out there and see what we get in return and then in a couple months if we need them, great. If we don't, then we don't. But at least we have somebody or at least we can look at what

046is available at that time to advise us if we need to. I think we should do it in November or December. I guess it's October. >> Year's going pretty fast. I can put it on the November board agenda to be approved if if that's what you'd like me to do. >> I think that's a good idea. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Uh we did have our first insurance steering committee. Um the participation was a little bit lower. We scheduled the meeting more in advance. Our next uh meeting is Tuesday, October 14th at 4:15. Uh Stefan did um listen in. I think Trusty Scarlet was also on that call. Um a lot of the same feedback that we've heard before of, you know, they want options. That's the one thing about the state plan I will

047say is a positive is that they have four options. It can be customized. But we've also had a lot of really positive feedback from staff with the HSA contribution um and the current plan that we have now. I think people are starting to settle in. We had a lot less participation than we have had in the past. I think we only had 12 uh members on that steering committee. Uh Dr. Crisp has sent out uh if they want to be on it, they can join. Um, so I would I would say the participation is pretty low compared to what we've seen before. Okay. Um, we are in the middle of our audit. We did a a little education. We have a new Gazsby rule that we are following. Um, I'm sure the auditors will get

048in detail on that during their audit presentation, which we're hoping to have in November. But we had a great start to the audit this year. feeling like he's waning a little bit. So, it might be December again. We're working on it. Uh, but basically, Gazsby 101 just wants us to look at our crude compensated um payouts of our PTO a little bit differently, a little bit more accurately overall. It reduces the long-term liability for the district. Um, at least what's booked into the audit. chair trusty >> director mayo. Are we using the same auditing company or we able to find a different company? >> Well, we have a we had this is the last year of our three-year engagement with this auditor. I have a request for proposal for um to go out either in

049November or December uh to look for not a new auditor, but at least to refresh the process. Um, I've let our auditor that's auditing us this year knows that we have a long-standing relationship with them. Uh, they are giving us a very rigorous audit this year. Uh, lots of questions about the CO funds. We'll probably have some findings as a result. Um, but nothing nothing to get too worried about at this point. Um, and then we'll see we'll see what what's out there. I know the state just did a questionnaire about what people are paying for auditors across the state and we have a very reasonable rate at the moment but uh we'll publish that after the audit is finalized this year and uh and then we'll evaluate those probably in finance committee. >> Thank

050you. >> Anybody else? Madam >> Chair Chris don't need to stand up there this morning as finance to talk to finance audit committee people. Um so we had the um the workshop today at 4 where we went through all the uh improvement plans of each school. One of the questions I was asking many of the principles was uh what do you need? Um because when we look at those school improvement plans, there's not a lot of input we can give. You know, we're going to do two extra MTSS meetings. I'm not sure any of us have a little input on No, it should be three um MTSS. Um, so I um I was asking what do you need? Um, and I just wanted to make sure the finance audit committee knew um that I sort

051of had uh highlighted at least three FTEES that that they may want to discuss and uh I thought it'd be good to tell you now in September before we get to the budget. So there's a lot of uh lead time. Uh, one of the ones I really wanted to talk about and I know this is uh important to to many of you uh on this board is on the gifted and talented. We currently have 113 kids and gifted and talented over six different schools. We got two employees um doing it. Uh we don't have any there is not one sped teacher in our district that has that type of case load just to make that type of comparison. Uh we need at least a half. Um, a half would be good. A full would be

052even better. Um, here's the the issue is uh we used to have um probably remember some remember this Nancy Bumstead um used to do the outline schools for us um and we have don't really have anyone to do that now. So like take like Celeste, she's going from Culture out to Wilson um and then she's driving all the way over to Alta. Um that's just less and less time with each kid. You're you're not pulling out as many kids as you could. Um, and you're definitely not doing any training of teachers, what's called different differentiation, where you're uh helping a teacher know how to uh differentiate their lesson plan for a gifted student. Um, and so I think at least we should be looking at one FTE or at least one more person. Uh, we

053have two right now, um, Celeste and Barbara, but we need one more um on that. Uh, so I just throw that out to you. Uh that was one thing that came out of that 4:00 workshop for me. The other thing I would throw out to you is uh culture. Um on the ELLL side, um you need one more. You only have one there. Uh you need two. Um it's just it's got to be two. Um so that's one FTE right there at Culture. And then lastly, and I I was so excited to see Scott McDall here tonight. uh uh you know uh he he accomplished so much last year taking the school and uh getting it to um exceeding um that is such an accomplishment and I'm so excited about it. One of the things

054I used to talk to Scott a lot about and and and I was just spending a bunch of time today during that workshop talking to James about was okay so right now um they have a full-time reading um parah and I most of you heard this when when James gave this report because his big urgent fact he was wanting to express to us is the retention of parah educators u he has one um full-time reading interventions uh he only has a part-time math so what that means is again he's sharing that with culture Sure. Um I think you need a full-time math interventionist at Wilson. So that that's a it's a half an FTE right there. Um and so um and I think we need to have a conversation a little bit more about Wilson.

055Wilson to me is somewhat unique. We treat it sometimes like it's an outline school and it's not. But it's not a town school either. So, it's in this strange little hybrid situation where we try to treat it like a like like it's an Alta or or more like a Kelly or a Moran where we're sending people from Culture Jackson to it and and it's it has enough students to justify having having their own. So, I throw that out there that I I really think there needs to be a full-time math interventionist Wilson. Um I think you need the extra one uh gifted and talented and you definitely need the one more ELLL at the culture. Um, two issues I would just throw out there that are are not finance related, but two things that came

056up during I don't know what came during all your guys discussions during the workshops um was um I think we need to have a longer discussion at some point about Moran um you know there there was definitely some issues that was the one school that really jumped out at me at this time when we went through this uh with the with their particular issues that that were brought up. I think we need to have a longer discussion on that. And then um I really think we need to have a discussion. The one thing that really jumped out at me and I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you're not you don't know but each time every principal talked the first thing they kept telling us they showed us their demographics and the first time you

057see those demographics you you start to realize a lot of times um demographics are what are driving the the numbers and we need to have a discussion about the boundary line between Jackson and culture. Um does that boundary line need to be changed? Do we need to do something different? We clearly are seeing a um a distinction between culture and Jackson and and we need to, you know, when we uh when I first got on this board with Kate, um one of the first decisions I made, which was a difficult decision, I remember Jannine Tesy telling me I was going to regret my decision. I'm starting to. um the uh when we got rid of K through two and 3 through 5 and we went to two separate schools and and what was the beauty

058of the K through2 and 3 through 5 was I didn't have to worry about the demographics that did not play into it. Now that we've separated them, that is starting to really accentuate more and more as culture is serving um you know, essentially High School Road South and and that that boundary line used to be the Virginia and and essentially Jackson has taken an entire town. Um is there something different that we should be doing there to alleviate the issues going on at Jackson Elementary? and and is there um you know the principles do a great job you know we're going to increase the number of these types of meetings or that types of meetings but what are the things that we can do and and is something that we can do is we can

059change the populations around a little bit um potentially as to what is at each school um to make even some things out and so I throw that out there um it was non- finance related but I think that was it was on my mind so my main points were the uh the three FTEES I was talking about the one at Culture for the ELLL, the Wilson math interventionist and the extra person for gifted and talented. And then I think we need to have a discussion at some point about Culture Jackson. Um uh it may not even be boundary line discussion, just a discussion about those two schools and and maybe that's a discussion to bring Carrie and Tracy in and just get their ideas. I'm sure they I I chatted with both of them and

060they both have very good ideas. And then uh just as a on the back burner um I think we need to have discussion about Morand. I'm not prepared to actually go into much detail on that but that was the one tonight that sort of got my attention. Thank you. >> Okay. >> Um madam chair um I am delighted that you brought up gifted and talented. Um I think it's very important that um on that end of things of the kids who are high achievers that we should uh really work to help them to stay focused to uh not get bored and have uh have some some teaching for them. Lynn Wagner came to the farmers market to say a hello not long ago and uh I was reminded of how she she did the gifted

061and talented program almost single-handedly for years but it was a smaller district um than very much smaller. Um so I'm glad that you brought that up. Uh and you know it's very interesting the demographics. Um I was surprised to learn from James that they have no they have one eel kid. >> Yeah. >> At Wilson. We got to look at that too. >> Yeah. >> I mean if nothing more than from a cultural uh cultural standpoint uh and to relieve some of the pressure on culture and JPS and monger. Um I I think it's important that we do look at that again. Um and you know way back when when we went to K2 and 35 it was to um provide sort of even numbers of the the kids. You know we really did have

062an influx of uh Latino folks at that time to make sure that um there was Latino kids in each school um and many were living in town. Um, so that's how we ended up and that was Gary Elliot. He came up with that and he said, you know, that would be fair. Um, that would help us to figure out how to do this. Um, and certainly it did, but I do think it's time to to take another look at that. U especially with uh what we consider our our three four town schools that we have in our district. So, thanks for that, Keith. Anything else for the finance committee? We can take up some of this conversation again. >> Sorry, Beth. I didn't mean to. >> No, that No, that's all right. I just realized

063that we have this as a topic in a little bit. So, we've just gotten a head start, which is good. >> Um, anything else? Finance. Seeing none educational service committee. >> Good evening, Chairwoman Carl. Carlin. I almost said Carlton. Um, board of trustees, we'd like to bring up the middle school science team and principal healthure to discuss um some celebrations from the science team last year. And I just want to link our last uh presentation that we did at Ed Services um last month about the progress of this team and the leading uh work that they've done with evidence-based grading. And so principal Helshire will kick us off. >> Uh thanks Megan. >> Um board. I'm happy to be here. Matt Her, principal of Jacksonville Middle School, uh with Amy Manhart and Bill Wy um

064from our middle school science team. Uh we also have Andy Tankersley on the team, Addie Dupri, uh this year, Lena Rosello, Hunter Jones, Trevor Dayton. Um and we've had a very consistent group of veteran teachers um on this team, which has been fantastic. Um, and I mentioned this as a celebration during the workshop, but um, last year um, we were number one for the large districts in Wyoming in our science achievement. Uh, and we are 17 points above the statewide average uh, which was just, uh, fantastic. Um, and you know, this team is really, uh, cohesive. They have a great PLC, um, a lot of bonding, and I would say that, um, also, uh, they are leading the charge in our evidence-based grading efforts. And so, uh, it's just a pleasure to work with, uh,

065the science team. And I'm gonna turn it over to Amy to take you through a couple slides. >> Or Bill, I guess >> you you kind of did my, >> you know, it is it's a pretty cohesive team, man. You know, Katherine, Matro, and everybody that comes in to run, they're like, man, you guys are the easiest group. I don't know if it's if we're that easy. We're just very collegial and kind of all have the same vision in mind. Uh it's just all I mean you can look at any science document that the middle school science team throws out. It's not going to look totally different. The vocabulary is going to be similar. So it really is that stairst step model, but it really is an excuse to help this work. >> Um we

066did bring the oldest two from our team just in case. So many times when we talk about schools and our everyone means the best and everyone has the best but it does feel like sometimes the arrows are all going in different directions. So when we can really spend our time collaborating it just aligns all the arrows. So even though each classroom might look a little different and have a little bit different flare to it all the arrows are going in the same direction. Um the fact that we have had time to collaborate, the fact that we have had teacher retention, the fact that um we have now been through some great professional development including our evidence-based grading and we have common expectations for all of our students. It's high rigor for everyone. It's not well

067you don't have to work at heart. We want everyone to work and have the opportunity to do well. We talked a lot about on how much you've been hearing about evidence-based grading um language, but we've really been using um scrimmages a lot and performances assessments a lot. So our wags happen, we always equate to our Super Bowl. So we want the Super Bowl. Everyone gets a Super Bowl victory ring. >> And we bought these for the ninth graders and told them to come back to get their victory rings. So we were very excited for them and very very proud of them. And we also know that sometimes hopefully it's not a one and done but it's really hard to read people. Go to the next slide please. >> Um really the foundation of everything is

068building those relationships for kids because that test is really brutal. It takes a lot of time and as a whole science department and I would really say as a whole middle school it really is we believe in building those relationships with kids because that's what's going to last with them whether or not they remember Newton's third law or um how well they'll always remember how the rockets work but really is looking at did your teacher believe in you did it improve your science skills again that new evidence based grading um language building the skills rather than specific science content. >> Thank you. And then um what was your level of effort? I mean this is middle school. This is pretty dang good for eighth graders to say I really tried my best in this. That's

069awesome. Thank you. And then just some of the things that we had done to get them ready from making sure that we are doing a lot of hands-on because we have the time to play in the labs. The kids all love the labs and then making sure that we were using some of those authoring tools in Wise as our scrimmages which then our tests. So we just up the rigor throughout the whole year so that our scores reflected that. And as I said, I am never gonna win a state football championship, but this feels like my Super Bowl championship. So, we're really excited. >> Thank you very The thing you're showing right now, you have up there. When When did you This is a survey of the students in science classes >> from the last

070year after we took Yak. So after you took Y >> this was answered by our current ninth graders. >> Current ninth graders. >> Yeah. >> I um uh I'm uh blown away. I can tell by your enthusiasm for that. >> You know, when I look at this, you know, I I don't know if it was in the board packet or not or I missed it or something, but uh the preparing and expecting success from everybody um is just amazing. Um how they responded. And then I guess the other one that just blew me away was building student relationships to build success. Everybody in this group should be applauded. I mean, not only applauded, but we'll put you on a poster, whatever we can do. >> Fantastic. >> My teacher, you should be because it says,

071"My teacher believed me." Not one person that I can tell said strongly, disagreed or disagreed, and there was only a few that were neutral. They were all in the agree or strongly. >> And I do think that that speaks to the the unity of the whole team and the quality of our our teachers. Um, can it, let's sell it, do whatever we can. I I really applaud that. I think it should It's amazing. >> Thank you. >> It is amazing. >> Great. Thanks so much. >> Hello again. Um, I will just ask Sandra Sanderson to come up um to discuss some of the topics from our last ES um ed services committee where we met with trustee Doran and trustee um me and we reviewed our multilingual program and we discussed some demographics, some data.

072We also talked about professional development focused areas. So Sandra, if you'd like to come up and talk about >> Thank you. >> summarize some of our >> um how much time do I have? >> Uh good night trustees. Um happy to be here in front of some of you again. And um just a brief uh description of the conversation we had last week about the multilingual learner department. Um I just showed him showed the the team the our population. I am counting all Hispanic students that we have in our schools. And I was um making reference to that because when we see the achievement, the achievement is not just the English learners. It is really every Hispanic who speaks a different language from home. Even when they are considered proficient English speakers, they are not

073meeting the targets for our achievement. So when we talk about multilingual learners, we uh divide it in basically four different uh groups. Our active English English learners are the students who first language is um other than English. They the parents take a survey. They um are qualified for English services because they don't pass the initial English proficiency. So inside of that group, you're going to find the newcomers that we heard about the newcomers a couple of years ago when we had a big affluence of newcomers in our group and uh but the majority of those students are generally born here or moved here earlier in their life and now are in our system and they are part of our community and u learning English. um after uh they uh go through the active e group

074and they take the test and they pass the test they become monitored students. We are required to monitor them for two years. So we send a survey to the teachers two times a year and they let us know how those students are doing in general and if we see that they are struggling uh with English development then we have to provide support uh for them again our district monitors them for four years. So eating when it's required to we do four years to continue tracking how they are doing school. After they uh graduate from the monitor stage they are considered full fully exited and then we have a group of students who speak a different language at home but they were always qualified as English proficient because they never needed English language support. Okay. Um

075next please. uh I included to you the description on each one of those groups and it's important because each one of the groups needs different support in the classroom. So we don't want to cluster all of them under the same umbrella because they are at different stages and they need different support. So you can read through that later and let me just move to the next one. This is the achievement gap that I was showing talking about earlier. The blue line here is the active English learners. So in some degree they are expected to be below grade level because they are not fluent in English enough to reach proficiency. However, the line in the middle is all multilingual learners independently of the English language that they show. Um so what we're trying to do right

076now with all the different initiatives collaboration the teacher um professional development the English langu language department is to work together so we can improve all those sports closer to the main group. And you're going to see the the graph below if you can just scroll down a little bit. This is the math uh results from last year from the last like seven years and um what you see there is that math is not is not language heavy. It requires some language but it doesn't explain the fact that students are still scoring really low even when it's a math it's a number. Uh then we can just move to maybe let me see the number five. Oh that number six I would like to talk a little bit briefly um about the four priorities that we're

077um working as multilingual education. Ella's explaining that we have the priority one has a lot to do with the professional development that happened last September 19th. Um we were targeting conversations, engagement and support in the classroom for students to speak more because the foundation for literacy. So all students independently of the language when they speak more they will read more and all the strategies that we were um teaching and uh working with teachers are great for every student but they are essential for multilingual learners. So we want to make sure that they really happen in the classroom. So our English learners develop their OSC and then therefore they do better academically. And then the brand number two, we have a team of English language development teachers who work directly with the students who need direct

078support. So they usually pull them out of the classroom and teach them English grammar vocabulary for 30 minutes or in the secondary levels they have a class a classroom period where they learn English. Uh so we're working with that team in different areas. I work with Piper and family communication and engagement and then uh we do a lot of system grade level practices with Megan and Julie and Stephen. we work together to make sure that a lot of the systems and um compliance with the state's requirements are in place. So this is the overall uh summary of the multilingual learner education and you guys um if you have any questions uh or comments I will be happy to answer them. >> Questions comments? >> No. Thank you. >> Thank you. I think that phases to

079other reports. [Music] Um, Madame Chair, um, trustees, uh, we have, um, Charlotte Fry from the, uh, town and county here to, um, present some of their, um, updated information about from their traffic studies. As the board recalls, um, this has has come up as part of your conversations about, um, traffic, high school road, how to, um, improve um, during some of those peak times. So, um, and, um, Charlotte had actually reached out and asked to, um, share this information with you. So, um, with that, I'll just hand it over to Charlotte and she can take it from there. >> Thank you, Charlotte. Other Charlotte. Uh, Madame Chair, trustees, happy to be here tonight. I'm Charlotte Fry. I'm the transportation manager for Teton County in the town of Jackson. I'm also the parent of a first

080grader at JEES. So, hey, Dr. Piska. Yeah. Uh, and with me tonight also is Tyler Sinclair town manager. So if there are any questions I can't answer or really any discussion points, Tyler's here as well. Um, so we are in receipt of the letter. I I think it was dated from your August meeting about improving safety and traffic flow on High School Road. And so staff had been looking at some existing work and doing some traffic modeling to understand how different options could impu improve flow and safety. So tonight, I'd like to share some of those uh options with you, some very preliminary results. We're still doing some modeling work to understand what might be effective. Um and then also hear your ideas and get a better idea of what some of your concerns are.

081Um so you can go to the next slide. So that's the the agenda that I just named. And we've got plenty of pictures in here because we did some field work. So, we looked into and Miles Contreres is our travel demand management coordinator and he could not be here tonight, but he's dug into a lot of the existing work that's been done at on middle school road and high school road. There have been past speed studies, some work by the police department, uh, looking at speeds and and how to improve safety and flow around the school. So, there's a lot of history here. And we also did a study in 2024 to understand how growth in Northern South Park might impact the conditions around the school. We can go to the next slide. So when

082we do uh our traffic analysis, we're looking not just at High School Road, but all the intersections numbered here. Um Blair Drive, South Park Loop Road, US 89 intersections with middle school and high school road. And then between intersections three and four is this east entrance to the high school. And so we've also been looking at that intersection in this work. Next slide. So, we met with the school district staff in January of this year to brainstorm some improvements because from our 2024 work, we were directed by the town and county not to pursue capacity improvements such as widening roads or making major changes to intersections because those are costly, but rather to improve de travel demand measures first. So, that could be things like encouraging students to take the bus. So, I was also

083very excited to hear from the the student representatives tonight on the work they're doing uh to understand how to get more students to take the bus or carpool. So, the three-way stop at High School East, that east entrance of the high school was identified by TCSD staff at that time. And we're also think that there's a lot of opportunity for improvement at that one. And we've also done some field work, come out and observed traffic and to how many pedestrians there are, how many kids are getting off the start bus versus the the school buses and that sort of thing to understand and get a sense of what's happening. And next slide. Well, we can continue to do that into the fall and winter because certainly winter patterns are going to be very different than

084summer when the weather is good. But just some examples where we've been out taking pictures to understand how are the buses moving, how are parents dropping off their students and students actually to their credit are behaving I think really safely. The students themselves at the middle school I was very impressed with my observations. So just some pictures here of spillover of the cues. Next slide. So from our work in 2024, we we collected traffic counts in October of 2023 and found that during what we call the peak hour, that's the peak demand of it's a 60-minute period out of a 24-h hour period that we would call the peak. Um, so the peak hour on high school road is from 8 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. But it performs pretty well if you average traffic over

085the entire hour. If you just look at the peak 20 minutes before the middle school and high school bell times though, it's performing at what we call a level of service F. And so just like in school, we can grade our traffic from A to F. Uh one difference is that we do have an E for some reason. We skip that. Uh but it's very similar that a D is considered passing. A lot of communities just try to manage their roadway in infrastructure to a D. Um and then if it gets to F, that's that's bad. Um so and this was confirmed with field observations. It really is just that 20 minutes before the middle school and high school bell times that um is particularly challenging in operating at that level of service at next

086slide. I won't go into this. This is more for your record since it's in your board packet. When we did some work in 2024, we identified potential improvements, crosswalk improvements, potentially converting these uh intersections to roundabouts in the long run. So, those are things we can continue to look at. Next slide. In the meantime, we we realized there's a problem today and what can we do today to improve safety and congestion around the schools. And so we had engaged our travel demand modeling team to update what we have something called a travel demand model where you look at land use, households, where people are going, what time of day they're going to analyze how is the network performing, how can we improve the network. And so we worked with them to look at some short-term

087improvements we could make around the schools. And we had also talked with school district staff because some of these things have been tried in the past. For example, around middle the middle school. We understand that oneway traffic has been proposed in the past or requiring all parents to turn right out of the middle school. They can't go south on middle school road. And and that presents some challenges. So we tried to come up with new alternatives that could improve flow around both schools. Next slide. And again, this is probably best for your record so you can understand what's happening today. These are the existing conditions. Intersection LOS, which stands for level of service. Um, and again, as you can see, from 7:30 to 8 and then from 8 to 8:30, generally everything is passing. It's

088performing better than D, but it's that 8:30 to 9:00 a.m. time that a few intersections are performing particularly poorly. Um, and that's Blair and Middle School and South Park Loop and Blair. And then high school and middle school is at a C. So, next slide. One option we looked at for modeling would be uh northbound traffic only on high school road. So, all trips that would visit both schools should go to the high school first and then go north on the middle school. And then by restricting the left turn out of the middle school, you could remove some of the conflicts um at middle school road and Blair Drive. and then middle school road really and where the driveway is that parents come in and out to drop off on the north side. That's where

089there's a lot of conflicts because you have people trying to go in all directions. Um so there's lots of crossing and that's what creates both delay and safety concerns for if kids are also trying to cross there. So we realize this is would be a challenging one to implement. It's not convenient and also we don't get a great improvement here because as you can see um the level of service is still F at South Park and Blair Drive. So, uh, next slide. Your letter also mentioned a hawk signal or some sort of signal to improve safety at the two intersections on high school road. Those being middle school and the east entrance of the high school. So, hawk stands for highintensity activated crosswalk and it's a signal where a pedestrian pushes a button to activate

090it. So, it might not be on a timer. It could be on a timer. uh but a pedestrian can push the button and then it would stop all oncoming traffic um so that the pedestrian can cross safely. Next slide. Using this idea and getting more specifically to the concerns you raised in your letter about congestion and safety at these two intersections, our modeling team looked at dozens of alternatives. They looked at all sorts of one-way movements to try to understand how can we improve both. And unfortunately or fortunately, this is one of the few that actually work. Like most of the alternatives, it will either make it worse or it won't make it just doesn't make much of a difference. But this is one that through all this modeling work they found could work to

091improve both safety and flow. So I'll take a moment to explain it. On the left side is the high school and a proposal to make traffic work better around the high school would be to run that loop road around the school one way um counterclockwise. So that means when if students are arriving at school or parents, they can't turn left at the east entrance. They must proceed all the way to middle school road, take a left turn and then proceed to a parking lot or to the front door. And then at the end of the day, people cannot exit on the middle school road. That leg would be off limits anyone exiting. They would have to go around clockwise and exit where that orange arrow is. And it's also labeled hawk. And we would prevent

092a left turn out of that side of the high school and use the hawk to provide both the pedestrian crossing movement and the right turn movement. And so what this does, if you think about a traffic signal, it's really just a way to process a queue. Um, so think about being at the DMV. You pull a number, you wait turn to get through the queue. That's all the traffic signal is ultimately doing. It's processing traffic from each leg. So, by eliminating some conflicts, preventing some turn movements, we can essentially shorten the queue because now you only have the east and westbound vehicles and then you would have pedestrians crossing from south to north or north to south and then the vehicles trying to exit the school can turn at the same time. Before I go

093to the middle school uh configuration, I'll also mention that this option on the left can be implemented with relatively little infrastructure. You could put up jersey barriers and signage to create this one-way movement and then you would just need to install a hawk signal. So that's for the high school. The middle school is very complicated because of all these conflicts where uh the current cues enter and exit the middle school for parent drop off. So, the thing that we found could work there would be creating um a new connection to South Park Loop Road. That could be either that kind of black line that looks like a a little road or depending on your timeline for construction of the school district housing. You could build a road that connects with that school district housing. All

094parents who are doing drop off would need to enter via that connection wherever it is. And then everyone, most people could exit onto Middle School Road, but there would be an option to turn around and go back out to South Park Loop, but it would be a right exit only. So, a lot here. Um, realize I'm hitting you with a lot of information, but next slide. This is draft because we can still we are still doing some kind of tweaking with the model results. But looking at intersection delay, the this is really the only configuration that's going to solve the issues at both the the middle school and the high school. As I mentioned, you could probably do the high school one independently and see a lot of improvement there, but at the middle school,

095this was about the only configuration we could come up with that's going to improve that situation. Um and so what this table is showing is for each of those six intersections there's a no build scenario forecast to the year 2030. Um and then the shortterm fix is this configuration and we can see that every intersection improves from you know E and F grades if they were there to actually C or better. So doing pretty well as as again I mentioned that a lot of communities try to design for um level of service D or better. So lot of information. I've got one more slide. We would love to you now that you know all of this and see what some of these options could be. Oh maybe one more. Oh, I think I lost a

096slide in my deck. We so some ideas we have about managing demand would be things that the students mentioned earlier encouraging car pools. There might be ways to incentivize bus ridership making that easier. I know for example uh my son takes the bus every morning but he never comes home on the bus because he's always doing something else after school. And so is there an opportunity to use that extra capacity in the fleet? Uh understanding where students are going and potentially creating a PM bus schedule that's different from the AM that's something we could certainly support with. Um, and then maybe, you know, early bus ride or dismissal are some of these great ideas that the students came up with for incentives for students to take the bus. Next slide. So, that is some of

097our ideas and what we think could work to improve congestion and safety around the schools. I again our direction uh as staff is to really try to manage demand and manage the existing roadway network better before we would do anything like rebuild an intersection or build a new road connection. Um so I'd love to hear from you all um any reflections or feedback on what I've presented but also any other ideas you might have that we could look into to uh resolve these issues. And maybe Tyler would also like to come up and answer questions about that. But thank you for your time. >> Very much for that thorough report. Uh questions. Trusty Bosch. >> Uh thank you, Madam Chair. Um M wondering all of these seem to be looking at morning hours, did you

098guys also study the afternoon time frame uh as well? And then my second question would be with all of this, could you attempt to differentiate the cause of a lot of this congestion, is it solely traffic or is it at least during the morning hours the students walking back and forth across these, you know, you mentioned from the start bus and then also the other intersection where you have a lot of kids walking that direction. Do you have some sense of Um what would be the most successful from that standpoint if we understand where the conflict is really? Is it just that we have that many cars or is it that the pedestrians and the cars are is there a way to identify which one is maybe more of a problem? >> Madam Chair, Trusty

099Bosch, great questions. Typically morning peak or afternoon peak could be worse depending on the conditions, but they're very similar because there's a bell time on both one end and the other. And so in this case, we think the the AM peak is slightly worse, but it is really similar in the PM. And then of course the traffic patterns are a bit different because the buses are going from the middle school to the high school at both times of day. And so the traffic the buses are experiencing is a bit different. Um, but we mostly looked at the AM think and showed that the solutions could be the same in both the morning and the afternoon. And then as far as the cause, I do think it's it's the volume of cars. As I mentioned, it's

100when you have a three-way stop like on the east side of the high school, the stop sign is essentially just trying to process cars coming from all directions. So, if we can minimize the number of movements by restricting certain movements, then we're limiting um kind of, you know, when you you're at a stop sign and you're looking for the guy on the right or everyone's looking for the person who got there before them. All that behavior just adds up in terms of seconds and we're all imposing a couple more seconds on each other. So if we can eliminate that through the that configuration I showed with the hawk signal um essentially you would have free flow from east to west and then that hawk signal is letting um those cars exiting the high school and

101the pedestrians cross at the same time. So everybody still will be waiting for each other but you're hopefully they're waiting in groups and then crossing as groups. >> Just Dr. Fry. Um I have a few questions on the um the high school line, the short-term option you showed us. Since it might take a little while for us to find money to put in the hawk and to get permission from the town of Jackson because that's their jurisdiction and um whether or not they would let us put up the hawk um which was sort of our what our request was and um I'm not sure if the town was agreeable to allowing us u and luckily managers and players here so you could tell us that. Is there any ability for us to go ahead and

102implement this now with these jersey barriers and not have the hawk there? Does it still work or do we need to wait till we get permission from the town and find the money and install it? Could we just go ahead and just start directing all the traffic around the building in the manner that you were suggesting? >> Yes. Uh Madame Chair, Trusty Gingry, I love this question because that we would love to do that as well because you could get immediate data on how well it works. So absolutely, yes, you could do that. You could get the jersey barriers, the signage, communicate with parents, students, faculty, um, and you could use a crossing guard as that hawk. And so then people would start to understand if you're trying to cross as a pedestrian or you're

103coming from that south leg to you you can only turn right on the high school road and you could just have a stopwatch and every I don't know 90 seconds the crossing guard stops the cross traffic and they let the pedestrians and then they let the cars go out. I don't know exactly what the timing we you might have to do some tweaking to figure out what the timing, you know, give the cross traffic 90 seconds and then give the these other movements 30 seconds, but we we could figure that out and and you could implement that with a low tech solution. >> I'm pretty sure we put in the job description for principal Lieberman that crossing guard. >> He has some follow. He just wants the uh fancy vest that comes with it. >>

104Well, that's it should be a high viz vest. >> Yeah, high viz vest. >> Amazon's delivering those in a couple days. >> Oh, great. >> Um so, uh Madame Chair, Trusty Gingry, we've we're acting on the recommendation from the board to deploy some crossing guards. In fact, SRO SRO Roundy spent some time with myself and a couple of the teachers at the high school this afternoon and as soon as we receive our orange vests and handheld stop signs from Amazon, we're going to deploy in three different locations at the high school. We're going to deploy one guard where the parent pickup merges with the the bus exit. We're going to deploy um one person here at the east intersection and one person at the west intersection. Um and on Monday of this week, we cut

105off all student parking on the uh east side of the building. So, the east side of the building is moving far more efficiently at the moment. Um obviously that means the west side of the building now has 60 additional cars that it didn't have before. And we're hoping that the crossing guards um act >> why all that yellow tape is up. >> That is why all the yellow tape >> um uh just working with Colby, we determined it was unsafe and sooner or later there was going to be an accident between either a parent or a student and a bus. It was nobody's fault. Um it just wasn't working the way we wanted it to. So, um, in the meanwhile, while we're talking about a h a hawk or changing traffic configurations, we're hoping having

106three people out directing um will facilitate um at least in the afternoons a more efficient um dismissal. >> But, Madam Chair, beyond the the directing, how about implementing what Dr. Fry is saying the uh the flow of traffic that you have to come in there, it's only one way all the way around. Um could we implement that immediately? >> Uh immediately. Um I mean we'd I'd have to have discussions. We'd have to talk about it. I'm open. I'm open to any good ideas. >> Absolutely. >> It sounds like all we'd need is some jersey barriers that I think we could find and some signage. Um I don't know how the change in the in the patterns behind the building will impact the way the buses operate um in the morning and the afternoon. We'd obviously

107have to to you know have a conversation about that. >> One more thing if we could talk about the middle school just for a second. I just to point this out to you Dr. Fry. I I don't know that you know this. We actually have plans on somewhere nice plans somebody's drawn up for us that someday we may actually there's space there for two more apartment complexes. So it's actually a three it's a three building design. Um so I don't know if that road fits there because I know it probably does because the third unit goes about where the um the house is currently situated. Uh that was my only concern with that. And then my only my last question because I I like your idea that that's an excellent idea on the middle school.

108It's more expensive, but it's an excellent idea. Um the uh the other question and maybe this is more for Mr. Sinclair. Um the county has the town has does not have jurisdiction over middle school road for whatever reason. That's operated and managed by the school district. Would it help any if that became a town road so that a you could start controlling it for speed uh but b controlling it for flow a little better? I'm just curious that has been a thought that that um and I don't even know if we're allowed to turn it over because it's not even hardly it's the state land. It's on the state land parcel is why it never got transferred over to the town. So I just curious what your guys thoughts were on those two ideas. Sure,

109Madame Chair, Trustee Gingri, I think the town is open to it. I think it's it's pretty unique situation in the town where the town doesn't control it for all the reasons you stated. High school road as well is pretty unique and that some's owned by the county, some owned by the town. We have some jurisdictional issues that we could probably clean up. So, I think cooperation with the school district along with the town. We'd be looking at it. Often when we take over roads, we have them built to a certain level of standard and then we we take them over. But I think it's important to us. Safety is key for all of us, both as trustees and the town. So if if that's a conversation you'd like to have, we're we're open to it.

110Related to the hot specifically, if if you're interested in that, I'm sure we can work that out. We were interested to see whether it actually improved things. If you stop obviously traffic too long, you'd have a longer delay potentially. But I think in general, you know, thinking it's such a pulse, the problem is 20 minutes or less, you know, when we looked at it or when council looked at it, the commissioners looked at it, was it really worth investing potentially millions of dollars to fix some of these intersections when some lower cost ideas like being discussed tonight or some traffic might actually be able to help because it's such a small period of time when we look at the overall traffic that we appreciate you guys looking out >> and the other thing I'll mention

111with this configuration, the one vehicle that should still be allowed to use High School Road and enter um on that east driveway should be the buses because when the buses leave the middle school, they get caught in the queue along High School Road and that is a cause for a lot of delay. So, if the buses with a crossing guard are at least able to enter that east drive, they can move much more quickly and pick up the students. So, back to that. Um just I guess for principal Lieberman maybe more for all of you because you're um um studying this, but it would seem to me that the two intersections at the high school, whatever mechanism you're using to stop traffic for the pedestrian crossing, shouldn't those be u done at the exact same

112time? They should be so that you're stopping traffic as far as moving. So, if there's two crossing bars, you should be making sure you're doing that at the same time because otherwise you're going to get congestion at one or the other, right? Does that make sense or no? >> Um, this is this is what I would say. I would say that making students stop here and collect so that they're not darting in front of parents on their ebikes and and crossing ad hoc. Making them gather weight is going to make this more efficient. It'll be the same here as it is here. I don't think there's a line of sight. I think they're too far away from each other for the two people to be communicating. Um would be my my immediate response to that.

113Um, but the issue is is that the the more efficient that we get at exiting students out of the parking lot, the quicker high school road backs up. Um, and and and then high school road backs up and then everything comes to a standstill. Um, if we were able to create some efficiency with the light at the highway and high school road at certain times to give the green a little bit longer between 355 and 410 so that we can assure that this can clear itself, then all of this might be worthwhile. Um, we may just be causing the pile up to happen in a different way, but until we do it, we don't know. Madam Chair, Dr. Fry, is that something we could do is call Bob Hammond and say, "Hey, can you go

114down and switch the light there at the Smith that it is different in the afternoon or in the morning?" >> Yes. I I'm not sure exactly how um defined we can get with the parameters, but if we had a specific time window, 3:40 to 4:10, then they could potentially change the programming for that 30 minute block if you know the window you'd be looking for. Yeah. Madam Chair, um I'm curious to know if the increase in uh ebike traffic is adding to the these problems because I've heard about a lot of clog around the middle school because of ebikes and I don't know if that it becomes a factor in all this or not. Madame Chair, Trusty Dornan, I as I observed at least in September and again there won't be as many ebikers in

115November and January, but I thought they were all the students were behaving really safely. I know that Friends of Pathways is doing a lot of education. Um I saw really good things. You know, students were using the crosswalks, some walking their bike across the street and I didn't actually count that many crossings in the morning peak or really the afternoon across High School Road. I was out there with a counter, you know, maybe in the 30 minutes before the bell time at the high school, I counted about 40 students on foot. The rest were arriving via other modes, uh, like the bus pars. So, I think the behavior with the ebikes right now is really good. I think maybe some things that could be done at the middle school would be educating parents to where

116they should be dropping off. If they're coming on middle school road from the south, they should give like 50 feet of distance from the driveway that buses are coming out of the middle school to make sure the buses can see traffic in all directions because if the parents are right up against the driveway, uh they're blocking the bus driver's line of sight. And so think things like that, simple things we can ask parents who are in a comfortable car to do to make it a little bit safer for the kids on ebikes, I think would be really helpful. Are there sign in uh signs available that you could do that to say okay stop here if you're going into the middle trustee me absent we my signs we might need some permission on middle school

117road but we can certain I don't have any more questions But if we could just have a short little discussion, I'd like to try some of these things. Um, and you know, and sort of leave it at the discretion of of Colby and Principal Lieberman and Principal Pelure. If something's not working, they can stop, do whatever makes it work. But it'd be nice to see some of this experimentation and then maybe invite Dr. fry out to observe to see if it's actually working. Especially the oneway uh directional trying that with some signage, jersey barrier, see if that actually means anything or if it doesn't mean anything because I'd almost like to try that before we invest any money in this hawk thing. U just to see if the concept even works. Um, and then I,

118you know, and then if Principal Heler could work with, um, with us to with Colby maybe to find some, uh, >> signage for the, uh, uh, signage at the, uh, middle school as to where parents should stop. Something we can certainly like here, little signs. You know, a lot of times you see them, they say, "Stop here." And there's like an arrow pointing down like this is and then maybe put them. >> So anyway, I I I I'd love to see the two principles and and and totally work with Dr. Fry and see what they can do with some experiments um over the next few months and then based on that then they can report back to us and say, "Hey, this one actually didn't work or this one did work." And and and make

119them more permanent. Then >> uh Trusty Scarlet. Madam, um just for everybody, a year ago, Colby um and the staff attempted to do that no left turn onto High School Road and it it really put a bog in the system in my opinion because there's a lot of us, including me, that live um west on High School Road. And so if you're not able to do it, then you're out onto the highway all the way down by Melody Ranch and then you're coming back up. And that also precludes um our friends at Cottonwood and um and soon to be Northern South Park. I don't think that no left turn necessarily was effective. Um and it it's there'll be a lot there'll be a lot of discussion about that one. >> Thank you. Well, so I

120guess um just to sum up what Trusty Gingry was saying is that maybe having the principles and Colby and work with the town and and and try out some of these simple low lowcost options and see how that works and maybe report back if we're making progress. >> Does that sound good? >> Excellent. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> I can't wait to see you in your vest. >> Well, the other day he put one of our bulls in, so he really does know how to handle that. >> Uh, all right. More other reports. [Music] >> Thank you, Madam Chair. uh Charlotte Reynolds for capital projects. Um just a couple of quick updates. Um unfortunately um neither the architect for our housing project or uh Jason Burning from the uh uh transportation facility um were

121able to be there. They had some schedule conflicts. So I'm going to just run through um these updates pretty quickly. Um housing is moving along um really well. Really pleased with how um that project continues to move forward. Um the parking lot is being striped. The uh first floor we're moving into punch list items. Appliances are arriving this week. Um level two, they're starting to do their um trim out of doors and windows and and all of that. Level three, um they're starting um their priming and painting. Cabinetry is um going to be installed. Um um so hopefully it started today. Um, so all of that is moving along really well. They're working on the storage lockers in the um in the parking um lower parking area. And then um I think one of the

122things that's really going to have an impact in terms of just the look of the building is the um exterior panels where it's currently black. Um now the um those exterior panels are also black, but those um arrived the um around on or around the 23rd. So, um I think that's really going to make um it look even even better from the exterior than it currently does in my opinion. But, um that is moving moving along. The um housing um update was included in the district leader report. So, if um you have any other questions on um housing? Madam Chair, just real quick, uh unrelated to the construction, but where are we at on the uh I think you had formed a committee to look at how we were going to implement rental rates, things

123like that, and who gets in and that kind of stuff. >> Yep. Um, Madam Chair, Trusty Gingri, um, we have our committee, uh, meeting tomorrow, tomorrow, uh, to, uh, start those conversations and start to really, um, dig into and create a, um, housing program to, um, bring back to the board for your consideration with the idea being that um, we would be looking at all of our housing um, not just the new 24 units. So, looking at it as a cohesive um, program. So, the committee meets um starting tomorrow. >> Madam Chair, um who's on that committee and and what's the how's that >> who's doing that? So, >> um uh Trustee uh um Chair Garland um Trusty Bosch, it was an invitation has gone out to all employees. We had had a small committee

124that met previously. They have all been invited to come back. Some have ch are choosing because they've had changes in positions or what have you. Not everyone is continuing to participate, but it will be representatives from um you know the different schools um and the departments as well. So um I don't have a list um of the members right in in front of me, but we do have a a variety of folks who have expressed interest in providing input. >> Just follow Madam Chair, can you just provide that notice and if it's electronically to the board as well, please? Of course. Of course. Happy to. >> Um, any questions on housing. Um, moving on to um the um new single bathroom at Summit Innovations. Um, as you recall, we received funding from the state to

125move forward with that project. Um, we received um a one bid um basically contacted some contractors. One um one bid was submitted. Unfortunately, the bid was significantly significantly higher than what um had originally been um um indicated. Basically, the scope of the project was I think more than what the um original cost estimate estimator thought. So, um I met with a um P Trudeau um and I and our architect met with an a new contractor at the school today and he is going to have a bid for us next week so we can really evaluate um where where that project really is um if we need to make some changes in scope um or how we're going to approach that. But um that I anticipate having a um having a bid next week. I had

126hoped to be able to include um that contract on tonight's agenda um knowing that we want to move this forward, but um we'll we'll hopefully bring that back to you in November. Um so Summit Bathroom um the Jacksonville High School vestibule is on the agenda um later this evening with the um um with consideration for the um initial design concept which outlines where uh where it will be located, the square footage um and uh so hopefully um that can move forward and our goal is to start construction in early spring uh for a new vest vestibule at the high school using state funds for that project as well. Um and then so any questions on the vestibule and then lastly the um transportation facility um I'm sure you've seen the piles of dirt um concrete

127is um is um being uh poured now. So, um, basically September was really about getting the site ready, getting, um, things planned out and the concrete foundations are scheduled to be complete next next week. So, um, while we were delayed in getting started, things are moving along um, moving along well. Um, and then we have uh Jeremy Slater from uh school facilities on um if you have any questions about our state funded projects. But just really quickly um we're um we have we're having weekly meetings with um um OAC meetings. So owner, architect and contractor for our transportation facility. And those are are going well. We anticipate um I think I think starting tomorrow. So there we meet every Thursday. I anticipate that um we'll be meeting on site um hopefully starting tomorrow if not

128next Thursday. So um they're things are moving along um really well there too. >> Thank you. Any questions? >> Thank you. >> All right. I think that is all for other reports. Correct. Um, so why don't since we're at five of eight, we've been at this for almost two hours. Why don't we take a 5 minute break, 7 minute break, and come back for public comment. Not up tonight. Enjoy your break. All right, we'll bring this meeting back to order with uh public comment not on tonight's agenda. Uh if you have something to that you want to present, please come to the podium and you'll have three minutes to present um your on your topic. Any public comment online? >> All right, we're going to move on since there's only school district people in the

129room anyway. Um, so now we are consideration of rejoining the Wyoming School Boards Association. Superintendent, >> Madam Chair, trustees, um, clearly the trustees asked me to research the potential of rejoining the Wyoming School Board Association. Um, at that point I reached out to the executive director, Brian Farmer, the Wyoming School Association, exchanged some emails, had some conversations, and requested he join us tonight to give us just a brief summary for the trustees to hear um the benefits of the SBA. Uh there's a few trustees that I believe have joined the board after um you were a member as you know historically and haven't had a member. So um just so all trustes the same information I just give us a quick presentation. So thank you for coming to GCS. >> Madam chair I I some

130electronic documents but sometimes paper's a little uh easier. So, I'll provide those and if you prefer me to recycle. >> Oh, okay. >> Um, >> thank you. >> If you'd like me to collect them and recycle them if you don't want them, I'll do that, too. Madame Chair, uh, members of the board, my name is Brian Farmer and I'm the executive director of Wyoming School Boards Association. Uh, I've been the executive director of WSBA, uh, for the past 12 years. Uh, prior to that time, I worked for the state of Wyoming, uh, and was a member of the school board in Laramie County School District number one, uh, serving as its chairman. Uh, and so I've sat in your seat, um, been a local school board member, uh, and sometimes I miss local board meetings.

131Uh, so I I just want to begin by commending you on the excellent district that you have. Certainly many great celebrations that you've had tonight. But one of the things I think is most impressive is the way that your board engages uh with dialogue and discussion and and really digging into materials. And I think that's so key to doing good work uh as a school board. Uh I think I I want to kind of just generally address what does Wyoming School Boards Association do? And there's three big areas uh that we have uh as services and and focus. um and and they're really kind of highlighted uh as the goals to our strategic plan uh which I believe was in one of the email communications to you. But the first of those uh is really

132about providing information and resources. Uh and I think that's one of our biggest uh endeavors is to make sure uh that our members are aware of things that are happening uh across the state uh from uh a national perspective providing information and resources to you. Sometimes we do that through things like uh conferences uh or or trainings. Um so examples of that uh this summer in Laramie we hosted a summer law conference uh and at our summer law conference uh attorneys were able to get CLA's uh we had presentations keynote speakers were uh Sonia Trainer the executive director of the National School Attorney Association uh and former dean uh Clint Alexander uh who if you're into education law uh the book is Alexander and Alexander uh which is not Dean Clint Alexander, but his uh

133brother and uncle um but he's also uh expert and shared some of his insights with us. And then we have school attorneys from across Wyoming because one of the things that we really like to do is build that opportunity for collaboration. So, um we've been working really hard to build the school bar across Wyoming. Uh and so we had attorneys from Sheridan, uh from Evston, uh from uh Casper, uh from uh Cheyenne, uh really just across the state came and did our breakout sessions and presentations for that conference. Uh and so that conference was very much focused on uh informing participants about school law. This November, we have our annual conference in uh Casper um where there's opportunity for districts to share their best practices. Uh so opportunities to network with other districts and hear

134from them uh in their innovations. Uh many of the districts that have been engaged in uh the ride initiative have been uh sharing their work and talking about uh what they're doing differently and how uh that has impacted student achievement in their districts. Uh I would say some other examples of information and resources. We provided you just a copy of a handout, a recent publication that we've done uh that tries to make some of the court cases in school law digestible to the average person. Uh so we just had this court case, this WA versus uh state, which is the latest in about 40 years of school finance litigation. Uh, and the judge came out with an opinion that was very favorable to school districts. Uh, and so one could ask, is this novel? Uh,

135was this judge's opinion something brand new? Um, or what is it really rooted in? Uh and so this exercise in drafting this document was to go back to the same exercise uh that justice Michael Golden did when he drafted the first Campbell opinion which is to go back to the founding of Wyoming and look at the manner in which education is ingrained in our state. Uh, one of the fun things we learned in that process, uh, Wyoming's third territorial governor, uh, also the first president of the University of Wyoming, uh, a guy by the name of John Hoy, uh, was very, very instrumental in writing the Wyoming State Constitution. John Hoy was a national expert uh, in education. Imagine this, we're talking 1860s, 1850s. John Hoy went to about 40 different countries. uh across the

136world to look at excellent education systems. Uh and as he did that, he really compiled ideas of what do great education systems look like. John Hoy came back to Wyoming and was the author of article 7 of our Wyoming Constitution, which is the article that talks about what the promise of education in Wyoming looks like. And so talking about those foundations helps us to understand that history of litigation. Uh we've also got a publication that we're soon to release that talks about the difference between a policy and a rule. Uh recently the legislature told us that we had to adopt a rule related to uh firearms uh for for uh staff um or we have the opportunity to do that I guess. And so what's the difference between a rule and a policy? Um and

137and so we've tried to create a publication that explains that that helps a board understand what is the process that you go through uh in order to uh meet the requirements of the Wyoming Administrative Procedures Act and how does that make a a rule different from a policy. Uh we have another publication that we've had for many years talking about uh making difficult personnel decisions. Uh and so we're in the process of updating uh that document. So publications can be uh an important part of providing information and resources. Sometimes uh it's the uh practice of uh sharing information, relevant information. Uh we sent out information to our members uh just recently about the federal shutdown and what the uh short-term and potential long-term impacts uh of the shutdown were uh for local school districts. So

138just sharing that kind of information uh as timely as we receive it to make sure uh that you're aware of how that might impact you at at the local level. Uh so sharing information and resources is really uh that number one goal. But sometimes that uh is also about the opportunity for our members to engage with one another. Uh since uh you were members of our association, we've updated our association management system. That's a software system that allows us to communicate with our members. So now all of our members receive direct communication from WSBA. There's no more send it to the board chair and hope that it gets filtered out uh to uh the the rest of the board. Uh and so we do regular communications. We do updates on every interim legislative committee meeting.

139We do daily updates during the legislative session on what's happening uh in the legislature in uh Cheyenne. Uh we do periodic uh information and updates. Uh uh we maintain a a recent uh rules list. So on our website uh all of the state agencies that are considering uh or or taking public comment for for rules that school districts might have interest in. Uh so for example, recently the state board of education uh passed rules about graduation standards. Uh and these rules to graduation standards could be a really big change for districts uh because we would be moving to the uh the competencies of the profile of a graduate um away from uh practices that have been long ingrained in our school districts. And so we wanted to make sure that members had that opportunity to

140comment uh on those things which of course they have without us. uh but helping uh to remind them uh that these things are coming at them is a is a part of our endeavor. Uh the second of our goals is advocacy. Uh and so advocacy comes in a lot of different forms. Most people are familiar with legislative advocacy. Uh testifying in front of the Wyoming legislature. Uh and certainly that's an important part of our advocacy effort. Um, our advocacy is really driven by what we call an advocacy agenda uh that is passed at our delegate assembly. So, all 48 Wyoming school districts have uh weighed in and voted on that advocacy agenda and that becomes kind of our guiding principles uh for the legislative session. Uh that uh is one of the means of of

141advocacy that we have. Um, another means of advocacy is engaging with state agencies. Uh, and so I know Dr. Crisp sits on the state board of education. There are currently four sitting school board members who also sit uh on that state board of education. The governor oftentimes reaches out to WSBA and says, "Hey, I'm looking for somebody from a certain region. Uh, can you make recommendations? Can you suggest someone?" And so we reach out to that local area and say, "Do you know anyone who might be interested uh in serving uh on the state board of education?" Uh on the school uh uh the Wyoming High School activities association, we have two uh board members that sit on that. On the professional teaching standards board, we have a member that sits on that. We also

142meet regularly with the office of state lands um on uh state land issues uh as they impact uh students. They call it a beneficiaries update because schools are intended beneficiaries of school trust lands. And so we regularly interact with the office of state lands uh over what they're working on uh and issues uh of concern to school districts uh relating to uh to state lands. Uh, I would say another piece of advocacy is public advocacy. So, if you go to ignitewy.org, that's Ignite Wyoming, our public advocacy campaign. At this point, Ignite Wyoming is primarily a social media campaign uh where we share information about the good things that are happening in Wyoming school districts uh across the state. Uh previously we've done everything from uh movie theater ads to billboards uh but have found social

143media to get the best bang for our buck. And so we really try to share those success stories of the great things that are happening uh in Wyoming. If you go and you look at uh Ignite Wyoming, you'll see uh districts featured. We ask our members, would you be interested in being featured? And then we send a film crew uh to the district to interview students and teachers uh and and get snippets of things that are exciting uh about that district. And so there becomes a library of resources for that district to share with their community uh but for us to also share with the entire state about the great things happening in public schools uh in our districts and across Wyoming. Another piece of advocacy that we do is legal advocacy. Uh we recently

144filed an amicus brief in the school finance case. Uh found out just a couple of days ago that the court rejected our amicus brief. Uh they're uh not real fond of uh entities like ours uh submitting those, but we felt it was important to to put forward a voice representing districts other than those that were party to the litigation uh as to all district interests in that litigation. Um and then making sure that people are aware of things that are happening uh in that realm. Uh for example, we found out just today uh that the Supreme Court will hear the school finance case on November 12th. Uh so if you're interested, you can come down to Cheyenne on November 12th and sit in the Supreme Court chamber uh and and hear those things. And I

145suspect as has been their practice uh recently, they'll also broadcast uh the audio of that um uh as well. So if that happens, we'll let you know about that. Uh and so those advocacy efforts are really important for us. And the last of our uh goals is around providing services uh to our members. Uh making sure that our members have uh access to programs uh that could be beneficial to them. Uh and so uh some of the programs that we engage in uh are are things like uh the school risk retention program uh which is a property and casualty program uh that uh is available to school districts across the state as a joint powers board. Uh I know that uh some districts have had concerns uh with things like riders for firearms uh in

146their in their insurance uh as a school district. Um because the SER board is a board of all member districts, they get to make their own decisions about what their coverage looks like. And so they have not added a rider to their uh insurance uh for uh firearms coverage. Uh there are other things like the Wyoming uh schoolboard association insurance trust which is a uh a health insurance program. And so as you go out to uh bid or seek uh qualifications or proposals in November uh if you were a member of WSBA um then Whisbait which is everything is an acronym these days um would be able to bid on your health insurance and provide you an alternative. Sometimes our program offers the best alternative and sometimes our program simply helps to keep the market

147honest. It's another uh entity out there competing uh in the market to making sure that you are getting the best deal uh for your district. Uh so those are some of the things that we have. Uh a few things that happened during your meeting that just popped into my mind as as we were going. We love consultations. Consultations are when schoolboard members call up and say, "Hey, Brian, I have a question. Uh, I want to know, uh, when is the governor's budget supposed to be released?" And I would tell you, uh, the governor's budget is released on the third Monday in November. This year, that happens to be November 17th. And so, we would share information with you like that. Uh, we've also initiated things like uh, work groups. Just yesterday we did a board

148chairman's roundt uh where uh board chairs from across the state are able to join uh we share information and updates with them for a little bit of that uh call and then they have a chance to visit with each other about issues that are happening in their districts and say hey have you ever dealt with this and and and get feedback and give feedback uh to their peers across the state. Uh we have a uh a a workalike group that we've built for board secretaries. Uh and so as you look to bring on a new Andrea and you want somebody that's going to be as awesome as she's been, um we have a support. >> No way. No way. >> Yeah. We can't find anything like that. But if you find somebody that you would

149like to grow and develop, we have a monthly meeting for board secretaries. uh and those board secretaries can uh do that same thing uh in their work alike group to learn from each other. And so we've done things for them uh everything from uh electronic meetings uh to uh records retention schedules where we've uh done professional development. We even brought all of them into Riverton uh this summer and did free training for them uh just to help them understand some of the issues that that they're dealing with. Uh some of the other workalike groups that we're looking to build in the future are work alikes for board treasurers helping those that want to have discussions around school finance or building budgets uh and ask each other questions. Wyoming school boards association does maintain a lot

150of information that we share with our members like salary surveys. We have salary surveys uh so school districts can get a comparison uh a current comparison. You can go to the state and get the kuru report which is uh at best year old data. Uh but we have more current information for teacher salaries, administrator salaries uh that you can use as you uh think about those things uh for your district. Um tomorrow uh when I leave here uh I will stop uh either in Rock Springs or Rollins depending on how early I get up to do uh the latest in our noon series uh on uh recalibration. We've been doing a 4-week series uh virtually uh to talk about recalibration so that people understand what reccalibration is. What are those elements that the uh consultants

151are talking about? um what are going to be the big issues in uh this year's recalibration? What are some of the things that maybe we ought to be a little bit concerned about? And then we have a skills-based training. Those that are interested in developing their own advocacy skills, uh we have a skills-based training coming up in October. Uh tomorrow night, uh when I get back to Cheyenne, uh we're going to be doing a public officer training. Um all of us as board members had to take public officer training. the legislature said, "Thou must do this." Uh, the first uh mandated training uh that we had in the state. Uh and so we've offered uh free training to all of our board members and uh any new board members uh that need to get that

152training are able to log on to one of our sessions uh and get that training from us as well. Uh and so really those are kind of the services that we provide. Um but at the end of the day, um our interest is in making sure that our school districts are well. Um we're always open to new things. Sometimes our districts have come to us and said, "Hey, can you do this?" So, we've built a new uh service uh around uh uh climate studies. Uh some districts are looking for somebody to help them with climate studies. Uh we just recently um uh did uh proposals for Albany County and for Fremont 1, which is Lander. So they're both going to use us for their climate studies uh so that they can talk about school climate

153and understand what that looks like uh in their district. That was something the district came to us and said, "Hey, can you help us?" Uh and because we have the expertise within our office, we were able to build that uh and share that with them. Uh, so I've probably talked more than enough. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have. Uh, and uh, at at the end of the day, again, I I uh am most uh, desirous to see uh, Teton County School District do well. If we are able to do that together, that would be fantastic. Uh, if we're not quite there yet, uh, and we're happy to continue to work toward that. >> Thank you, Trusty D. Um, Madame Chair Brian, um, one of the sort of elephants in the room

154about WSBA with regards to Teton County was when WS your board, WSBA board, uh, pulled out from National School Boards Association without any discussion with membership, anything like that. Um, is that continue to be the case that there uh WSBA is not going to go back to the National School Boards Association? Madam Chair, WSBA um will follow wherever our members go. Uh at this time there have been no districts that have request uh membership with the National School Boards Association. Um we have been uh very uh clear to encourage those districts that uh that want to maintain affiliations to do so uh through the national connection program. Um Wyoming actually was uh among the strongest of national connection program states uh in the nation uh some time ago and so some of our districts continue

155to maintain uh that kind of relationship. Um but if our board if our members were to say yes we want to go back to that uh we certainly uh would do that. Um if that is not the direction our members want to go uh then we are are are not uh heading there uh at this time. uh within the last few months or or last several months I should say um Kansas and Oklahoma have left the National School Boards Association. The National School Boards Association has really in many ways begun to pivot toward a local school board membership um and away from state association membership. Uh at present I believe that there are a little more than 20 states that belong to the National School Boards Association. Um it is our endeavor to maintain relationships

156with all states regardless uh of those uh relationships. Uh and so whether a state is a school a national school boards association state uh a consortium of state school boards association state um or unaffiliated with any national uh organization we continue to maintain relationships with those states through workalike groups. Um so workalike groups are everything like uh superintendent searchers. So we have a network that is national uh even though we have uh separate national affiliations. Uh >> I I I I think the problem for us was that it didn't seem like the membership of the women schoolboards association was consulted before the board just decided to take what you know was considered at the time fairly dramatic action without any discussion with the membership of of the Wyoming School Boards Association. Is that still the

157way they do they make decisions? Madam Chair, uh WSBA um was supposed to reach out to its members. We have a board of directors of 19 area directors. Um and we asked our area directors representing their areas to reach out to their member districts uh to seek their input. Uh and so Homer Bennett, who was the uh representative for Area 19, uh a gentleman from uh Lincoln County School District number two, did make efforts to reach out and talk to the superintendent and and perhaps the board chair uh about where Teton County stood with that and then brought that back to uh our board of directors and was very clear to our board of directors of Teton County's position uh on that. So, our board of directors was aware of uh the position of Teton

158County. Um although we did not directly ask uh every one of our members uh every one of the 338 board members in the state where they stood. Um >> well, we'll certainly try to contact the the districts I suppose and not the individual board members. I guess one of the other uh concerns I have is over the many years that I've been on this school board, I've somewhat felt that the Wyoming School Boards Association um while it advocates for some school districts doesn't really advocate for others and we are one of the others because we are different and you know even in recalibration the chair of the recalibration uh committee recognized we are a unicorn um because of the immense cost of living. For example, your your salary surveys wouldn't really help us that much

159um when the cost of living here is so much higher than anywhere else in the state. Um, so what uh you've been doing since we left to make sure that every school district gets representation by the Wyoming School Boards Association, not just the school districts in the Cheyenne and Casper area and Gillette. So, Madam Chair, uh I think the only area that Wyoming School Boards Association doesn't advocate for a particular district is with regard to school construction projects. Um that's the area that we have not advocated for a particular school district in the past. Um because if we were to advocate for Teton County, that potentially comes at the expense of Sweetwater County School District number one or Campbell County. And so we don't pick favorites uh among our members when an issue does pertain

160to all of our members like regional cost adjustment. Um we very strongly advocated uh for the legislature to maintain a best of uh system when it came to RCA. uh in the recalibration, the 2020 recalibration, there were strong moves to go to a comparative wage index uh across uh the state, which would have been uh a tremendous disservice to Teton County School District number one. And we were able to help districts stay together. So the districts that have benefited like Campbell County didn't say, "Yeah, let's go with C.WI." They said CWI works for me but not for our peers in Teton County and we want to make sure that what we do is fair to all school districts in the state of Wyoming. So trying to keep us all on the same team and benefiting

161all of us is certainly an endeavor for Wyoming School Boards Association. Just because a particular school uh uh facilities issue may be unique to that district when the issue deals with all districts such as major maintenance issues um reallocations uh of that. We have certainly engaged in lobbying the legislature uh to do things like to improve uh percentages for major maintenance allocation um or to uh do things like uh increase uh reserves in order to benefit all school districts across the state. >> Thank you. >> Trust game. >> Thank you. >> Um Brian, good to see you. Um I I have to say I I remember uh when I was chair during the end of COVID the chair roundts were extremely beneficial to me. It was wonderful being able to get on Zoom with all

162the other chairs across the state and almost sort of support each other and commiserate over what everybody was doing. And and u I found that as a as a a very great benefit uh to to have that ability to once a month get on a Zoom call with all the other chairs and and um and talk things through. Um I also uh I would assume we would start having dinners again with Pinedale and Star Valley once a year um potentially. Um I I had three questions for you. The three questions were are we the only district that doesn't belong to you? >> Madam Chair, yes, that is correct. And then um if we came back to you um the the the reason we started discussing this and so just to make sure that that um

163that uh um you would to be on board on this um one of the concepts was we got talking about how expensive it is for superintendent searches and then I think um either Kate or Beth here one of us remembered that um when we hired Gileian we did through you and and it didn't cost us anything because we did it through it was part of our membership. Um is that something that a if we rejoined you b do you have the bandwidth right now to assist us potentially with a superintendent search? >> Madam chair. Um yes. Um but unfortunately your recollection is not quite correct. We did charge you $6,500. >> Okay. That's way less than what it was. And despite inflation, we've continued to keep our superintendent search at 6,500. So >> less than

164anybody's wanted to almost free it in my >> Yeah. I I think when you look at national firms um and we'd be happy to recommend some of those to you to take a look at as well. Um do range from uh 40,000, 30,000, 20,000, 15,000. um we we tend to be the lowest because uh that fee is supplemented by your dues. Um we know that you're not going to do it every year. Uh but your dues help us to keep that cost as low as possible. Um that cost includes the costs of advertising. Uh and so we do advertise uh that as well. Um yes, we do have the bandwidth. Um last year uh we did superintendent searches for I believe seven districts uh across the state. Um to be very honest with you, the

165superintendent market looks incredibly different from when uh Dr. uh Chapman was hired. Uh that is the largest number. I've done about 60ome superintendent searches. Now that was the largest number of applicants I had seen uh in in that totality. There were about 35 applicants that we saw during that time. Uh last year um because the market is so uh crushed uh we were in Duboce uh and we had two candidates uh and Duboce had to rethink and talk about my goodness what can we do different to expand our pool and so we talked with them about how can we do this a little bit differently and we went back and we did a second search for them at no additional cost um based off of that and were able to draw in a bigger pool

166for them uh so that they were able to narrow that down and select their candidates to be interviewed. Um we are different from uh uh some of those national search firms because they have a relationship with people that they've done uh in in in prior searches. So, if they did a search in Texas uh or a search in uh in uh Illinois uh and they had a candidate who was not selected for superintendent, they might say, "Hey, candidate, would you be interested in uh Teton County and Wyoming?" And and so they go out and they do that kind of uh individual recruiting. Ours is all organic. We put it out there uh and and those that uh uh that are interested um engage with us. Um it it's kind of important to know what holes

167to go fishing in uh and and to go fishing for the person that's the right fit for this district. So finding out what this district is looking for uh is really essential. Uh, for example, there are organizations that if we were looking for uh an an individual of color, um, there are uh, Latino uh, uh, uh, principal associations that we might engage with or black principal associations that we might engage with in order to enhance the diversity of of a pool. uh at times where we have looked for districts that have Native American uh populations and said we're very interested in somebody that understands our cultures and our traditions. We've known where to look to find people that might match them. Uh so back in in those days of 35 candidates, it was wonderful. Uh

168compared to other districts, they were getting around 24 candidates at the time that you were getting around 35. Today the the number that most districts are seeing uh is 12 to 18. So the pool has shrunken dramatically uh as we've seen a generation of superintendent retire uh and as we see uh a uh a a smaller age cohort of those that are entering the superintendency. Uh and a lot of people have said this is a really hard job at a very political time and it's just not desirable. And so the number of people that want to do that job has certainly reduced. And there's data from the American Association of School Administrators that backs all of that up. That's an important relationship that we have uh with AASA to make sure that we're engaging uh

169folks uh across the country um who might have interest. Um if we get started early uh and are able to engage, we partner with the Wyoming Association of School Administrators. So, our state superintendent association and in February uh right around Valentine's Day is the AASA conference. Uh and I I forget where that is this year. Uh but sometimes we've actually gone to AASA to recruit candidates uh for a school district for their superintendent search. Now, the ideal time frame to be searching for a superintendent is you want to be doing your interviews in the month of January, February, or March. That's the best. That's when the hiring pools at the best because your candidates are generally people that are under a contract from July 1 through June 30. So, it's unlikely that we would find

170somebody that's going to come in here in March because they're not out from their other contract until June 30. And so that pool of candidates is engaged in teaching and learning and administration in their district. And as they as they're doing that uh and and thinking about uh you know maybe I might be interested in looking sometimes the first time they catch their breath is during that winter break, that holiday break at Christmas and New Year's. And so our recommendation to any district is if you can, you want to have your advertisement on the street before that holiday break. And so you need to do the work to get that ready so you can begin advertising in December. You want to advertise for a minimum of four weeks, but I think you want to go

171longer than that. I think six might be more ideal, particularly when you're over the holiday break. And so over that time, um, people are going to slow down, catch their breath, and say, "Okay, I might be interested, and now I'm going to look." And so that's why you really want it out there during that time frame. Uh, so people are looking uh, and seeing, "Hey, can we do this?" Uh, and uh, and you know, if you don't hire us, that's okay. Give these same strategies to your consultant. Tell them to do this. You're the boss. Um, but uh, uh, so you want to be hiring sometime over that holiday break. uh or I'm not not hiring so advertising ending your advertisement period sometime in January because you're going to have to be selecting candidates and

172then setting your interviews. So if you end the advertisement period in mid January, selecting in mid to late January, that means February is when you're doing your interviews. So you do have to go backwards and build from there. We have hired superintendent as late uh as uh March or as late as April and and even into early May. Uh so it's possible to do that. Your pool just shrinks. The available pool becomes smaller as you get further and further uh along the year. Uh but we'd be happy to consult with you. We'd be happy to uh work with you. And even if you choose not to be our member uh and and say uh no that's that's not going to work for us. Call me and let's visit about it and I'll share ideas with

173you about best strategies going forward because we do want the best for your district. >> Madam Chair, I just had one more question and trust Scarlet maybe jump in the gut if you may have that same question. Um the uh how your your pay your >> this formula >> the the formula works um it gets charged to us based on how much money we're receiving from the state. So, I don't know if it's actually accurate, but Trusty Scarlet and I were talking about it and u it sounded like we get charged more than like Laramie County that has way more students where I would think it would be based on the size of your district. You're basing it on how much money we receive. Has there been any thought of uh any change to that

174formula or we stuck with that type of formula and and more importantly, how much is this going to cost us per year? Madam Chair, uh so the way that uh that our formula works is it's based on your district expenditure. So not quite what you receive from the state, but what you expend in the prior year, pretty pretty close. Um and then we have a multiplying factor to that that expenditure from uh your state. And so that gives us what we call a raw due. Um and uh the raw due comes up against a cap. There's a point where we say there's a point of diminishing return. If we actually were to charge Laram County School District number one $95,000, which their formulaic uh result comes to there's no way we're worth $95,000 in a

175year. So there's a cap. There's a hard cap. That cap had been at $21,000. are uh we we had not increased that in 15 years. So we have increased that but we've said a governor that a district may not increase more than 5% per year uh until they reach the new cap of $28,000. So it would take roughly seven years to get from the old cap to the new cap. So the readmittance of Teton County School District number one would be at $22,000 $22,50. Um that is uh interestingly kind of right smack in the middle of uh WHAM the Wyoming Association of Municipalities charges the town of Jackson right around $15,000 a year to be a member and Wyoming County Commissioners Association that charges the county about $36,000 a year to be a member. So,

176everybody has their different formulas and this is an area that I love to geek out in because there are different ways of coming to that number. Some places look at uh size uh so based off of ADM or enrollment numbers. Uh some places look at revenue that makes absolutely no sense uh in Wyoming. So, a revenuebased formula uh wouldn't really work. Uh and expenditure. So, uh, population, expenditure, and revenue are the three primary models used across the United States. We did have discussion based off of your letter to us, or at least the communication from Superintendent uh, Chapman to us about this issue and our board felt like the district uh, here um, benefits from the RCA in order to pay for things. And so at this time they weren't ready to make a change,

177but they're very willing to have uh engage with Teton County if you have other ideas. We did form a committee uh that looked at the dues issue uh and we looked at the possibility of a uh ADMbased model. Um we looked at the possibility of different revenuebased models. Uh unfortunately those models had dramatic disparities to some of our districts across the state. Uh and so districts uh felt like it was it was really important to them uh to maintain some level of consistency. So I think our board remains very open to suggestions uh specific suggestions of how could we do that differently. um but at this time has said uh we don't we don't see a way to be fair to all districts uh in in doing that. Um but we'd be open for discussions.

178So yes, uh Teton County is at the cap. Uh Sweetwater County School District number one, Rock Springs is at the cap. Uh Casper, Gillette, Riverton are at the cap. Um, I believe I looked out at some forecasting and and I I I'm not sure that when we get down the road whether or not Teton County would meet that new cap uh or not, it would benefit from whatever uh the formulaic expression is uh as we go along, if that is even the formula when we get to that point. Um, as I said, our our our board and particularly our officers have talked about this issue significantly and said we would love to come to the table and have a discussion if they have a proposal they'd like to make. >> Back to >> Thank you,

179Madam Chair. Mr. Farmer, I've had just a couple questions. I think we'll see in your handout value of membership. Um you at the last couple pages you have uh a bunch of the districts listed and then the services that you provide. First one is superintendent search. You've already identified that that's an extra charge of $6,500. Uh sounds like most of it just advertising in cost of some sort. Then you have uh a bunch of other things including climate survey, board development, board self-evaluation policies on that. Are any of those other ones uh are those also for lack of better words alakart charges that we would have to pay in addition to the dues? >> Madam Chair, uh yes, those are all uh fee for service uh programs. Um all of those are similar to the

180superintendent search below the market rate because they are subsidized uh by uh the uh the uh member due. So for example in order to receive the model policies uh that is a one-time charge of uh $5,000 which I believe Teton County was previously a member of that service. So, we would wave that and then it's a $500 a year maintenance fee. Uh, and that's for our attorney to go through and update policies as a result of legislative changes, make recommendations, make sure you're in compliance with Title N for policies. And so, that's a lot better than an attorney rate uh of of doing that on your own. Uh, for a uh climate survey, uh, it's based on the size of the district. So we offer uh even within the allocart we offer allocart if you

181want to do just students. If you want to do students and staff members, if you want to do students and staff members and community, we have uh ways for you to build what fits to you uh with costs associated with those. And I can't say for certain, but off the top of my head, I think uh climate surveys run in the range of uh $3,000 to $5,000 uh for a district to get uh those kinds of things. Uh the the big package >> uh board development, um we charge uh a flat rate of $500 uh plus the mileage uh to the district. Um so when we have consultants this district has used uh Sue Bellish in the past uh when we have a consultant we pay the consultants fee and we pay their travel and

182we pay their lodging and we pay their pdium and all of that. So the amount we receive from a district does not cover uh the amount of the board training. It helps to uh to offset that. Um but again it's it's sort of the subsidizing uh of the cost through the member due. Okay. Um, in in some of these like the board development, I'm sorry, Madam Chair, the board development and the superintendent search. I mean, you have almost every school district on here. Well, maybe not a superintendent search, but at least on board development. Um, the other areas are these newer type services that you're providing. >> And Madam Chair, my apologies, I've not sought your permission either. Oh, that's >> uh yes, the climate survey, the strategic planning, uh the board self-evaluation and policy

183audit are all new services uh where members said, "Hey, could you do this?" And so we built something to meet their needs. >> Okay. Um with regards, I want to back up just a little bit, Madam Chair, if that's okay. Um to the uh superintendent search that you were being asked about. Um, you were talking about timing and advertising over that holiday uh break. Um, if if if we got you started, let let me ask you this. You back out from that. When would we have to get you started on that? um you know for you to feel comfortable that we could get the best um the best results out of that given that timeline and given a four to six I think you said four to six weeks on advertising right what would be

184the timeline that you need an okay from us on >> madam chair I think we would prefer to start in in mid November um we're certainly fine starting in in late November um because Um we we have gotten pretty aggressive at building the front end and so we can we can cram to get that done uh to get it out by December 15th. Um so if we were starting in mid to late November, we would be able to get that advertisement out by mid December. >> Okay. >> And and just for your knowledge, uh Madam Chair, the way that that starts is with a survey of qualifications and characteristics of board members. Um some districts have said we want to survey our staff as well. Uh uh or we've engaged with focus groups uh with

185administrators to identify what they're seeking uh in in that uh particular uh realm. >> Okay. So, but that's all covered those if we wanted to go that route. That's all covered by that $6,500 that you said, >> Madam Chair. That's correct. >> Okay. Other questions? Trusty Scarlet, do you have any qu anything? >> Uh, no. Keith, as he pointed out, u took away my thunder. Madam Chair, if I might again, I would like to reiterate that um while our board had the discussion uh and talked about it, um that was without an advocate from Teton County. Uh that was talking from understanding uh a desire to do it different. And and the important thing that our committee looked at is how did different proposals impact other districts in Wyoming? Uh and and so that's something

186that we do have to look at is what is the impact to all districts across the state. Uh and if Teton County were to come back and say, "Hey, um create a unicorn formula for us." Um our board would have a discussion. >> Thank you. >> Anything else for Mr. Farmer? >> Thanks for coming. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. All right. Um, okay. Presentation and questions. Any public comment? See, seeing none, uh, I guess we'll need a motion to have a conversation or a conversation before motion. Uh, Madam Chair, I would move to approve rejoining the Wyoming School Board Association to pay the annual due in the amount of uh 22750 as presented. >> Second. >> Uh, discussion. >> Madam Chair. >> Yes. Trusty Scarlet. >> Um I'm I still sit here

187and I look at Lincoln 2 that pay I'm not sure what their annual dues are but Lincoln 2 is a 100 students more than us and that's a star valley and I think we probably pay significantly more um than them even though they have more students than us. I really would like to see an ADMbased model because I know the rest of the state just loves taking Teton County's money um whenever they can get it. Um that being said, I think the policy um service I I think that helps our administrators do their job to make our jobs better. And I I am okay with a $6,500 additional expense um and would be happy to um just to move this thing forward um support going ahead and authorizing um that $6,500 to do the national

188search. So, but we can save that for another day. I guess uh from my perspective I think um that there are benefits to being members. You know, I think it was sort of a perfect storm when we pulled out is that we were frustrated with the pulling out of the National School Boards Association because I think we saw some value in being, you know, in that um aspect of being members along with the maybe I'm not going to say inequitable, but the varying uh the way that dues are figured out. So, I think that was a perfect storm. made sense for us to pull out. Um, you know, it concerns me a little bit that we would be the we are the only district in the state that's not a member. I mean, I think

189we are can be uh Ton County can be an anomaly. That's the word we used the other day in my system's education meeting. Um, but we don't want to exacerbate that, I think, is how I was looking at so that I um could support join uh rejoining the school sports association. >> Madam chair, >> yes. >> Um I think I was the only one who voted against leaving the Wyoming School Boards Association, believe it or not. Um for the re simple reason that um while I think the Wyoming School Boards Association needs some changes, you can't do it from the outside. You have to be a member. And um to the extent that we want, you know, that we want to change how the dues are made, that sort of thing, I think you have

190to be a member in order to do that. And I do think that not only did Wyoming School Boards Association add value to our superintendent search last time, but I think County School District adds value to the Wyoming School Boards Association. Um, in that, you know, we have a lot of different opinions. When we go to the November U event, you know, people people do listen to us even though we sort of aren't the same as the crowd. Um, and I think it's always important to um, if you want to change something, you got to do it from the inside, not the outside. So, I would vote include this. Anybody else? Madam Chair, um, as the newest member here, I wasn't around when all this other stuff happened. So for me looking at this uh

191and considering and looking at the other uh proposals that we received to do a national search and given the close to 50 searches that have been done in the last 10 years um at least from that standpoint and a monetary standpoint I think this is a no-brainer. Um, I would actually agree with Trustee Scarlet that um, I'd like to move that this be approved and then I'm all ready to go ahead and get started on the rest of that process as well. Uh, versus putting anybody further down the road or kicking the can further down the road. Um, I also I I want to hear more and I'm excited about some of these other things that we've talked about and now we have at least um an association that's done them like climate surveys um

192strategic planning board selfboard board self-evaluation I think is extremely important. Um I know we at least I was part of doing something with uh Miss or Doc was it Dr. Bishoff >> Bellish Belish I'm sorry >> sorry. Um, so, uh, this to me is a no-brainer. Um, and if we approve it, I don't know if we can. I would, uh, defer to some of you that are better rules experts than me, but I would like to just go ahead and move as well to get them started on the superintendent. >> Madam Chair, I don't like we can discuss the other items later, too. Any other comments on this motion? This motion? >> Oh boy. Madam >> chair. >> Yes. >> I I appreciate um Director Farmer coming over and presenting to us and just hearing

193all the questions from the rest of the board. So, I'm just taking it all in. And um it's it it seems as though um if we do go for the association, which I agree with trustee me, you got to be in it to be able to um make changes. Um and we should be a part of the state as much as possible um with other organizations. Um are we fully leveraging or did in the past did we fully leverage the membership? So just ensuring um that if we do join that we really take advantage of it this as a member. >> Betsy D. Anything else to add? >> I'm feeling a lot more positive than when we took the vote last time. >> All right. Well then I'll call we have a motion and a

194second. All in favor? I >> opposed. Motion passes. >> Casc. >> Uh now I believe we are moving on to consideration of the school improvement plans. >> Dr. Chris. >> Yeah, Madam Chair. This is a summary of the individual school improvement plans um linked here. saw many of them today in our workshop discussion. Um generally how the process has worked in the past is we um approve the plans. These plans are posted for public view including our district plan. Um so request is to approve as posted um and then we will submit these to WBE also. Any questions for Dr. Chris or director? I just say I appreciated the format today. I I appreciated the being able to uh meet with every single principal and move around the room and do it more in a

195small group. I I thought it was a very um very efficient um manner in which which you organized that today, Dr. Chris. I appreciate I give credit to Megan Stephen. Yes, there are words on this. Um also on that we understand that plans can be a little bit overwhelming sometimes for the non-educator. Um but I would say if you think about each school 10 schools we have an organization we have 10 organizations and so that packet you received today is a is a detailed plan to that organization so there is a lot of details in there so we appreciate your patience speaking >> anything else madam chair >> I've been thinking a lot about the workshop up today and I was really impressed with the depth at which each school examines itself and each student

196gets examined. It's a complicated process and I was really blown away by how much every single school's put into it. Madame Chair, I would move to approve the Ton County School District number one school improvement plans of the and schools and the district's plan. >> Any more discussion? All in favor? >> I opposed. Motion passes. uh consideration of the first interstate bank donation for career technical education aviation pathway. >> Madam chair, trustees, this is a action item that um brings some excitement to some additional programs that principal Lieberman is just doing a fantastic job building our CTE programs at the high schools um and deserves to be applauded in every way. Our kids are engaged differently now. They have more opportunities and different programs. Um, this is a request for the trustees to approve $25,000

197grant state bank through the fund for public education as a pass through the dollars will be earmarked toward the high school and help pay for um software associated with the aviation program. Any questions? Trusty Bosch. >> Um, >> thank you, Madam Chair. Dr. Chris, if I'm reading this right, the First Interstate Bank is offering 25,000, but Jackson Airport is covering the balance, which is like 85,000 according to this. Is that correct? >> Um, the total cost is 85,000 25,000 per person, but you are correct. Um, the airport board, which going to their board meeting soon has been tremendous partners in this um working directly with the high school and Bennett on this program design. They have really stepped up. They came to the workbased learning workshop we had with outside ters. They are all in

198great support. >> If we could maybe have principal Leman come up because he was shaking his head to some of that. >> And then just to follow up. Um, so this cost, the simulator is a start, that's a one-time thing it looks like, but then what would be the potential annual cost going forward? And if we thought about like how we're going to fund that, >> so excellent question. Um, so the total cost of the five flight simulators is $85,000. The first interstate bank grant passed through the fund would subsidize a portion of that 85 at 25,000. The airport board has committed in this initial purchase to purchase extended warranties for both hardware and software. That would take us out five years. So there would be no additional cost to the program for the district

199for five years. And then we would evaluate the program as it stands then and how to move forward. >> Madam Chair, just uh who's teaching this? >> Uh Keen Anderson is going to be the aviation teacher at the high school. He's currently our engineering teacher and he's being trained on a curriculum for aviation called AOPA, which is a a free curriculum and it's the it's the national standard. Um, and the airport approves of that. >> Awesome. >> I feel a little confused. Do we have to find the difference between the 85 and the 25? >> The No, the airport board is paying the difference. They've already in their I think two or three months ago, their board approved that expenditure. They approved the entire 85 expenditure and then three or four weeks ago they began

200conversations with First Interstate Bank who wanted to get in on it and uh and be a part of the underwrite the program. >> Nice. >> I was I was I'm going to sound like trusty me. I was listening to NPR this morning and they were saying that even with the situation with the shutdown and the air traffic controllers, there's already something like I don't know what three or 4,000 air traffic controller deficit before you throw in that we're not paying them. So, um, you know, it's it's a career that I'm sure the airport would like people, you know, because I when I was reading my board packet, that was one of the optional future careers you could get out of this. >> It's projected that in the next 10 years, 1.3 million aviation jobs will

201be created in the United States. >> There's not enough pilots. >> Not enough pilots. >> That's awesome. >> So, this is amazing. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> A few of them traffic careers. >> Yeah. >> Looking for a new career. >> Yeah. >> All right. Uh let's see. Any public comment? Seeing none, do we have a motion? >> Madam Chair, I move to approve the donation from First Interstate Bank through the fund for public education in the amount of $25,000 as presented. >> Second. >> Any further discussion? >> All in favor? I >> oppose. Motion carries. All right, we'll move on to the consent agenda. >> Uh, let's see. >> I think Jerry got a question first about Go ahead. >> Madam Chair, um, if possible, I'd like to pull item M out because

202I have questions about that item and have for several months, but just haven't asked them before. >> I don't know if that's to be pulled out. we can just talk about it. It's the board travel one is that that's when you So, and maybe this is for Kristen, maybe it could could some of this is um >> my recollection was we've been putting things on the consent agenda for a few years and many of the items end up not actually having anything under them. They just go on there because they're sort of placeholders. When Trusty Tesy was on the board, she traveled a lot on our behalf. So, we were always very appreciative of it. We put this on here because we needed a spot where we were approving board travel. Um, but like as

203you pointed out today, there is none there today. So then your question is why does this show up on the consent agenda every month and then there's z there's nothing there. Should we remove it or is it okay just to leave it there as a placeholder and and maybe that that that's your question, isn't it? Yeah. My question is I I feel a little awkward voting on something and saying approve it, but we don't know what it is. And I don't know what it is. And there's never a dollar amount put with it and in six months there hasn't been a dollar amount put with it. I don't begrudge anybody traveling on behalf of the school district, but I just am a little bit of a fiscal conservative and like to know what we're paying

204or what we're reimbursing. That's all. So, um, a couple things. When Trusty Tusky was traveling a lot, she would she would actually pay for her own expenses out of her own pocket and then we would reimburse her. So, that is often what showed up here. Um, now that we typically, unless a board member is traveling on their own, the group that's gone to the recalibration meetings, um, I have a district credit card, Dr. Crisp has a district credit card and so we are we're we're it's following the regular approval process that we already go through. So, um I would say I think it's fine to remove the blank item. You're not actually approving anything. Um it is just a blank item. Uh we we could if you'd like we could submit a supplemental report in

205under finance committee of just the the summary of the expenses when we travel to recalibration. I mean that's an easy enough um thing to do if if you guys would like to see those. >> Madam chair from my perspective I don't what your expenses are and Dr. Chris for anybody else is one thing I just didn't know it says approval of board travel and every month it's just nothing there. So I just wanted to ask that question and say well what do we approve and so if we're not approving anything then let's just take it off. >> Yeah. So why don't we just take it off from now on and then if we do have somebody who's good a board member who's going to travel and pay for their own expenses and then want to

206be reimbursed while added into the consent and agenda for that particular >> well and I think the point of it being on here on that note was that um it needed to be approved before the travel. So, um, for example, Trusty Tusky would ask for approval ahead of and she had a significant amount because she was traveling and she was staying in Cheyenne the entire session of February. Um, and so she she had it pretty worked out where she'd get a really discounted rate at the hotel, but those would be approved in advance of the travel. And that's the point of having it on here as a regular item is if anybody's going to travel to have it approved in advance. uh the way that we're doing it now and we travel with the trustees,

207I think it it meets all of the criteria of our policy, but if somebody was going to travel on their own to the session um and would incur expenses, we'd want to do that ahead of the travel and just have a summary. So, for example, when we have staff travel Oh, go ahead. Just really quickly, Madam Chairman, and our our policy, is it our policy that says we have to get pre-approval for staff travel or for trustee travel so we all are aware what we're doing as a board? Um, as sending board members like to recalibration, I know that's what this is about because October 27th, 28th. >> Yes. >> Uh, there'll be three board members at at that and so everyone's aware that we're doing that. And typically we have um >> Oh, go

208ahead. >> When we have a staff member, they have to submit a professional development form that has estimates of what their travel's going to be before they travel, an estimate for the if there's a plane ticket or hotel or meals or whatever. So, that's a process we follow as a district before anybody travels. Um we could do something similar for board members. Uh >> Madam Chair, >> excuse me. Um and sometimes for example uh many board members have gone to national school boards association meetings um which generally involves a fair amount of money to go to the meeting just as registration and then the travel um so that's what that's been used for um in the past when people want reimbursement. Mhm. >> I guess before we pull it off, excuse me. Um before we

209pull it off, we would need to double check that policy and make sure that we don't need pre-approval because if we do, then we want to have it on there >> as a blanket. Yes, >> chair. I'm looking at the policy which is uh lettered bid. Um >> and it's kind of a stranger. Yeah. Um, I don't see anything that says it needs to be pre-approved. >> All All expenses in the district have to be pre-approved. So it >> it's not just board member expenses like every that's why we have POS that's why we go through this process of um getting and whether it's on the board agenda or not depends on the threshold of cost. Um the one the one exception that we do have is the use of the credit cards and they're

210very limited. So we no purchase over $500 um with few exceptions. So our our policy or expenses in the district is that everything should be approved before the expense occurs. >> Do you have a suggestion of >> um let me I think Dr. Chris and I can work on it. I think um we'll have to figure out just what that board travel um schedule looks like and when people are planning to travel and then I think you know whoever the next board clerk is they could be filling out those forms in advance and getting them posted so at least there's an estimate of cost to be posted. >> Madam Chair, >> yes. >> I see no reason to take this off there. I mean, it's worked in the past. Um, you know, when we when

211we've gone to recalibration, we drive uh a vehicle from the district or some of the uh staff members go with us. Kristen uses the card for meals. Um, and so there's always going to be this whenever there's something. And I hate to have the staff have more work, have to do more work than they already do just to take this off our uh consent agenda. I guess the reason I raised the concern trusty me just so you understand is is that u you know we are looking at reccalibration all these things coming down the road and where we're going to end up and I am just wondering and I've never seen and that's my first question is I've never seen what the board travel actually is if it's mileage then that's one thing but if

212it's hotel rooms and we're spending this money to do these things then the question I will have after that is is okay is that effective is are we getting what is the return that we're getting out of that um you know and the problem is is I don't know and maybe because I'm new you guys have done it for a way I'm not trying to throw a monkey wrench in this whole thing but I'm trying to see what the cost actually is for board members or how I ever went to recalibration when no offense I watched it on the computer you Um, and I don't know, I'd like to hear from you or Keith or Bill or any of you that have done this on a regular basis. I've talked to Janine, for example. What

213is the effectiveness? What are we getting out of that? And so, um, that could be a conversation we have at another time. Um, I'm okay to leave it on there if if that's what you're if you and and let's just I'd like to see at some point in time what those numbers are before I just blank atly sign and say, "Yeah, that's fine." Does that make sense? >> Yeah. >> Okay, >> that's good. >> Thank you. All right, Trusty Gingry and Trust Green. Thanks. All right. So, the consent agenda, approval of staffing considerations and reports, approval of the check register, approval of the executive m meeting minutes of September 8th, 2025. Approval of executive meeting minutes of September 10th, 2025. Approval of the board of education special meeting minutes of September 8th, 2025. Approval of

214the board of education regular meeting minutes of September 10th, 2025. Approval of the Teton County Sheriff's School Resource Officers purchase order. Approval of the fiscal year 2025 tuition agreement with Teton Idaho School District 401. Approval of the snow removal contract and purchase order. Approval of reimbursement for private transportation or maintenance of isolated pupils. Approval of the Jacksonville High School vestible vestule initial design concept. Approval of CB's con CB Bosey's contract and purchase order for student tuition. Approval of board member travel and approval of the consent agenda. Do I have a motion? Madam Chair, I move to approve the consent agenda as presented. >> Second. >> I'll second it. >> Any more discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? >> I opposed. Motion carries. Communications to the board. like it's been a very quiet month. Um, communications

215from the board, future agenda items, scheduling, and topics. >> Trusty Bosch. >> Oh, Trusty Bosch. >> Yeah. I'd like to have on next month's agenda um for action item to approve um hiring of a um consulting firm, whether it's the Wyoming School Boards Association or one of the five received proposals from to proceed with the um national search that we had discussed several months ago. I'm not sure that's what we agreed to. >> I think that's what you agreed to, but I think we need to have a deeper conversation, maybe an executive session because because you you're going in a new direction with the rest of us. >> Uh we >> I'm just saying I think this needs to be an executive session, not I don't think you need to discuss this right now. >>

216Well, the thing is is you said I was going in a different direction. We >> I get what you're about to say. I think you need to talk about that in executive session. >> I don't you've already raised the issue, but you've already said that we said that I was going in a different direction. The direction I'm going in is the direction we publicly announced. >> I get that you have an issue. >> That issue needs to be discussed in executive session. >> You can't be doing this in public. based just so I understand your objection to what I you don't even know I think what I'm going to say but maybe you do but we already announced a timeline for what we were going to do that's what we announced I get that you

217think that all I'm saying is you need to have a conversation with the rest of us before you start say these things and I think you need to do it in executive session >> so you think that hiring a consulting firm is an executive session. >> I do not. >> Okay. >> You're going in a different direction than us. You need to talk to an executive session about this. >> I am not going in any different direction. I'm just saying that we agreed and I asked that it be added as a consent or action item for next month's meeting that we make a decision on what we have already gotten proposals from and including in those proposals what we just heard from the Wyoming School Boards Association. That's what I want added to the agenda

218to have an action item to have a vote on this. And if you want my rationale is is because if we keep kicking this can down the road, then we'll be asking for a whole another year because then we won't meet the timelines that have just been outlined for us by Mr. Farmer is to be able to advertise over that weekend. This was the same reason we didn't do it this last time. So I don't see Keith, I'm sorry, Trusty Gingry. I don't see how that falls under executive session when all I'm talking about is having an action item to vote on hiring the consulting firms including Wyoming School Board Association. Um, I think that what I'm hearing and what I'm thinking about from the meetings in September is that it's a both and situation

219and I think we need to have a discussion um because it was a two-tier process that we discussed in executive session last time and so we do need to meet in executive session to have some discussion to be able to confirm our plan and vote on that in the during the meeting. So it could be put on the but we do have to have a conversation in executive session before we move before we vote on anything. But we can add it to the agenda because we can continue it again if we need to. But does that make sense? >> I believe it does. Okay, >> Madame Chair, >> uh, Trusty Scarlet, >> may I Is there anything else or may I make the, uh, Trusty Doran's motion? >> Yes. >> I move to ajourn. >>

220Stole your thunder. >> Is there a second? No. >> All in favor? Thank you everybody. >> What's that chamber?