School Board Meeting - Study Session: May 1, 2025

001Glad to have you here. It is Thursday, May 1st, 2025 at our B board study session. It is 5:30 p.m. and we are meeting in the boardroom on Legacy campus. We will begin with roll call starting with Todd. Todd McKe, superintendent. Jeff Nielsson, board member. Kathy Christensen, board member. Alan Grunik, board member. Roger Pulzer, board member. Randall Bagley, board member. Terry Rhodess, board member. Brian Chambers, board member. Jared Black, business administrator. Thank you. Uh, thank you all for being here. I appreciate your dedication. Um, our pledge and mission statement will be given by Superintendent McKe. Please stand. Please stand and join me in the pledge. I pledge algiance to 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 for

002all. The mission of the Cash County School District is to prepare students for success in a changing world. Thank you, Superintendent. Uh, first up on our agenda or only up on our agenda is the reports agenda. And uh, first up we have the architects and construction update that will be presented by Bruce Parker. Thanks for being here, Bruce. My pleasure. So, as I usually do, I like to show a picture of where we were the last time I reported. And that's been two months ago. So, the weather has improved quite a bit since then. Um, so there's where we were if you remember. Here's where we are now. Not really drastic change. Um, the ICF, the foam block was completed exactly on schedule. They said they would be done at the last of May and

003they finished on the very last day of or of March and they finished on the very last day of March. So that that is completed. Um you'll notice that on the very left hand end end of the building that the white uh PVC roof has been installed. So that part of the building is actually pretty much dried in other than windows. But um uh so we're not too far off from being able to start uh installing drywall beginning in that part of the building. You can see that the roof deck on the second floor. Roof trusses in that center section are installed and the roof deck is going on. Um so it's moving it's moving well. Um we still think we're ahead of schedule by at least a month, maybe more. Uh you can see

004on the around the gym and here I'll I'll keep moving through these pictures here so I don't get ahead of myself. But so this is second floor looking to the east classroom portion of the building. Um I was there this morning. This picture was taken just a couple days ago. That the roof deck is completely on this section now. So it's changing that fast. Um, this is just a from ground level looking at the front of the building over towards the gymnasium. You can see that the uh the brick veneer is going up which really changes the look of the building. You can start to get an idea of what uh the building's going to look like. I think it's going to be really really attractive attractive building. Um, moving over to Nibbi, this is

005where you'll see the most drastic change. This is where we were two months ago. Here's where we are today. Um, the ICF is nearly complete. Uh, by middle of this month, they should be completed. Um, so it almost appears that this building has caught up and passed Hyde Park. That's not really the case. They're both pretty well about the same progress as far as the building envelope is concerned. The roof deck is just about the same on both exterior walls, brick veneer, probably about the same amount. Although at Hyde Park, they've started on the south end. At at Nibbi, they've started on the west end. The the big difference at at Hyde Park is there's a lot more of the interior, u electrical, framing, um plumbing has been completed. So we we still feel like

006that uh um N Hide Park is probably a month to six weeks ahead of of where Nibbi is. Although Nibbi is on schedule that just that just illustrates that Hide Park is well ahead. Um this is from the west southwest corner of the building um ground level. Uh you can see that a substantial amount of the brick veneer has been installed and it's it's really starting to look like uh like what it's going to what it's going to finally look like. So um this is just along the back side of the building. Brick veneer being installed back there as well. So um next month the roof they'll continue on installing roof trusses and roof deck. U all the other subcontractor trades, mechanical, plumbing, electrical will continue and probably start seeing drywall maybe towards the end

007of this month, first part of of June perhaps, but uh so that's where we're at on the middle schools. Um don't know if you have any questions about anything that's happening there. Any report on the person who fell? I don't have anything firsthand. Everything I've got is is third hand. I understand that he's awake and alert and that he recognizes people that possibly he would be released maybe sometime this week, but I don't have anything real definitive. You know, I'm not sure. He he was a third tier sub. So he's he's a under the general contractor is the the steel contractor who's installing all the steel and then they subbed to another company to help them do some of the installation. So he's he's quite far removed and I don't I don't have many details

008but I but I understand that it's quite favorable the report. Yeah. So that that's good. Yeah. You never want to hear about an accident on your job site. So, as far as the elementary school, we bid that um two weeks ago. We're still finalizing some of the numbers. There's an awful lot to go through. Um literally hundreds of bids that come in and um but right now the way it's looking, we're sitting at right around 25 between 25.2 and 25.3 million. We have budget of 25. So, we're just a little bit over, but we're pretty close. We feel we feel really good in today's climate with the threat of tariffs and inflation and whatnot that we came in that close to our budget. So, I'm I'm I'm hoping within the next week or two we'll

009have an exact final number, but that's that's where it's looking like we're at right now. And we should be starting we should be breaking ground out there. Trying to remember the date they said. um within the next couple weeks we'll be we'll be pushing dirt out there and uh so ne next time I can bring you pictures of of piles of dirt. So okay there you go. Cool. That'll be great. Bruce, would you try to get the contact information for the sub that was injured? Well, just Sure. Yeah, I can find that. Be my pleasure. Okay. Any other questions for Bruce? Thank you so much for appreciate you being here. Okay, Jared, budget report. I'm not going to try to hurry. It's a good idea. Although it would have been entertaining. Might have been. He

010could have stepped over it. I wouldn't have been interviewed. That's true. I didn't think about that. Okay. So, uh wanted to give the board um I'm calling it a budget preview because we haven't actually started building our budget in our financial system yet. But we're at the point of of the year where we have numbers from most places and we we can start to to have an idea of what things are looking like. So I I just wanted to give the board a kind of a quick overview of of where we're at and um see if you have any thoughts or or input or questions after that. So, I'm going to you're probably used to this slide because I do this one with our u regular budget presentation that we'll do in June, but uh

011we we do not yet have a a update on the assessed valuation from the county. That will come at the end of this month or or start of June. But we do have all of our legislative estimates from the state uh meaning from uh USB. And so we can put that together. Our estimated fall enrollment is a little bit higher than the year before. We're not quite at 20,000. We we keep thinking we're going to hit that milestone, but but not quite there yet. But but we have grown a little bit, which uh is somewhat unique for Utah. Overall, uh enrollment has been shrinking the last couple of years in the state. So, we're glad to still see some growth uh in the district. 1.5 new uh teaching FTS is what we're projecting for that

012growth. And uh we have lots of employees about 3,500. Okay. Uh just to I wanted to take you through a few uh impacts that I see on the upcoming budget that we'll be working on. first with revenue and then uh with expenditures. So on the revenue side, we were uh allocated a a 4% WPU funding increase. Uh WPU stands for weighted pupil unit and is funding that we receive for each uh full-time student. That value is uh going up to 4,674 uh for next year. And uh in the cash school district, just with the size of our district and numbers of students, 1% on the WPU equates to right around $1 million. It's not exact, but that's that's a a fairly easy way to remember that. Uh we also received on the revenue side u

013funding to give a $1,446 increase to uh our licensed staff on the educator salary supplement and then a onetime $1,000 bonus for our school-based classified personnel. Um we don't know yet, but uh we may have uh growth funding from property taxes. This is not um uh maybe just to clar clarify that for anyone listening. This is not an increase in in uh what the district assesses for property taxes. But if there are new properties that were built in the county, such as new homes or new businesses, then uh additional revenue can come from those properties for the upcoming year. So we'll know about that in about a month. We are still uh working on um kind of the funding cliff from having uh significant federal funds through the ESSER programs over the last several years.

014So there is uh this is kind of our last year of that, but there is some loss of of ESSER funding that that uh we either are just eliminating what was being paid for from that or we're folding that in. uh for the most part we we built those budgets in a way that they could just be eliminated when when that funding ended. Would you remind people that ESRE is part of CO? Yes, ESSER was pandemic funding through through the federal government. Thank you, Terry. And then uh of course um with uh federal administrative adjustments, we are not certain of the status of all of our federal funding. We we are continuing under the assumption that our major federal programs will be similar as they have been in the past. There's not been any indication

015that that won't be the case. Uh but there is some uncertainty as to how that will proceed. So we'll just be keeping an eye on that. Okay. With expenditures on the expenditure side, we're fortunate that we won't have a retirement rate increase. And with health insurance plans that we're we're looking at, we're we're trying to look at costneutral options uh being costneutral to the district. Um with that steps and lanes uh cost us approximately 1.5 million and then 1% of a cost of living adjustment is typically around a million dollars for our district. Just to again to give the board an idea of of what we're looking at there. And then of course I I put that esser cliff or again we have pandemic funding that's going away. So decisions have to be made about

016whether that's continued or not. Um on the steps and lanes that's um 1.5 million for um employees who are moving a step or a lane. Right. Correct. Yeah. 1.5 million is is uh that's rounding a little bit of course, but but that's what it would cost for all of our employees, all all employee groups for those who qualify uh to for additional funding through a stepper or a lane. Okay. Thank you. Okay. One thing I I did want to talk to the the board about this evening that's uh a really important consideration for the year ahead is that the the school district receives significant amount of funding uh state funding I should say to the tune of about $20 million uh from what is called the board and voted levy program. And the way that

017program works is that there's there's an amount of what we call local effort that's required. And by local effort, uh what I mean is a a tax rate that we that we assess as a school district locally in order to qualify for full state funding from this. Uh we're required to to issue a certain level of of tax rate. And uh that tax rate between the two uh levies, the board and the voted local levy needs to be uh 02,000. And our current tax rate is well below that. Uh you can see on the slide here, it's 01573. And the reason we've been able to do that for the last few years is that there's been uh a hold harmless clause in this program to where you you essentially only need to be at that

018full funding rate of 002000 every sixth year. So there's a 5-year hold harmless. And so uh the cash school district has has um utilized that well and and the last time that a truth and taxation was required to maintain our funding level for this program our local funding level was in 2019. So it's been 6 years. So, uh I am recommending to the board as as we build out and and uh work on our budget this year that the board uh would look at increasing the combined voted and board levies to that 02000 level. Uh if not, then if if we're below that level, then we start to lose state funding. So by by maintaining that level, we we guarantee that we're getting full dollars from the state in this program. And and again, that's

019a huge amount of our budget, 20 million plus dollars. So So this process would require a a truth and taxation hearing in August. Uh the way that that works budget-wise is that we obviously need to pass our budget in June like normal, but we would pass it with the idea of of doing a truth and taxation hearing in August. Um where here at the board meeting, uh we set aside a time for a hearing and then the board votes on whether to to approve that uh tax rate or not. Uh but again that this is something the district has been in in the the I guess the cadence of doing every six years because of that 5-year hold harmless. But I think it it would be important for the board to also be aware that

020a legislative change this year will require that cadence to change to every two years. So the whole harmless clause will only apply for one year. So every at least every other year the board would need to to maintain that tax rate at 02000. Any I know that's a lot of talk. Any any questions about that or or how that would work? Okay. So I I just wanted to get that on the radar and and and officially make that recommendation to the board that that we look at doing that this year as part of our budgeting process. Uh this this next slide was just to show uh how that might look. So again, back in 201920, that was the last time that the board did a truth and taxation hearing for this program. And that was

021to increase the voted local levy to the 001600 that that I highlighted in blue there. But for this upcoming year that which is the top line, we would just need to have some combination of board local and voted local rates that total U2,000. Any questions? Okay. And then the final slide I wanted to show uh just to to illustrate some of the things that we're looking at are a few of the program and funding adjustments that have come from the the legislature this year. And so uh we we have an opportunity to apply for what's called a catalyst center grant and that can be used in our CTE programs. We're excited about the potential there and so we will be uh applying and and looking at that uh new program. We have funding that's called

022professional staff funding. This is a formula that's been around for decades and helps we're given a certain amount of money based on the education levels of our um licensed staff and it's been around forever. is to help pay increased salary and wage levels on our salary schedules. And uh it was moved to a new line in the state budget that's called flexible allocation. And we are a little bit nervous about this because flexible allocation is historically um a much more soft funding line than than having professional staff as its own funding line. So, it's something we definitely want to keep an eye on and and make sure uh our legislators and others know how important that funding is. That's about $8 million of our budget, the professional staff funding. So, um the flexible allocation, remind

023me, is that rolled into the W is that part of the WPU or is it in addition to that? It is. um on the budget sheet it's what we call below the line wi-i which is not uh WPU based funding. So it used to be WPU based and that that's changed now. Yeah. Thank you. In the CTE programs uh funding for two uh of those programs was eliminated by the legislature uh CCA funding and CTSO. So, um, John and that stand for, uh, college and career awareness is what CT CCA stands for. And CTSO would be career and technical student organizations, I believe. I hope I got those right or at least close. Um though so uh John and and uh of course Cindy coming into that CT director position will be working on how

024to how to uh manage this but the funding was was cut and not replaced with anything else. Uh we have a new program called shine. Uh shine is an acronym in this case. um fun name I guess but but what it's really doing is replacing the TSSP program which is uh a program where teachers in certain high need areas have qualified for stipens through the state and the state has previously managed this program but it's being transferred to districts for management going forward. So that's a program we're working on developing a policy and a process for in our district. Is this the one that funds um STEM STEM teachers, math, science? Yes. Um and all the others that are in that group. Yeah. And so instead of the the state determining what the high need

025areas are, each district will will determine those and then funding will come to the district and then we'll pay that out to the the qualifying employees. There were program reductions in uh student health and counseling whi which uh obviously we're we're disappointed with with all of these uh because there's only an increasing need um for for these types of funds. also digital teaching and literacy and then sped impact aid which is not our primary uh special ed budget uh line but still a significant line and and uh funds were reduced in those programs. So we're going to be working through how to how to best adjust based on that. And then the final um Yes. So on your student health and counseling, does that affect the counselors and the social workers that are in the

026schools or is that not part of part of it? It it's a piece of that puzzle. So we have a variety of funds that are paying for all of our counselors and mental health professionals. Uh this is a piece of that. And the reduction isn't enough that we're we're um letting people go or anything like that. It's just that we're going to have to um figure out how to how to um address that moving forward and we're we're always looking at an increased need there. So So to have a a small reduction is is challenging. Wanted to mention as well school fees. I know we've talked about this previously, but um there there's a change in school fees where uh going into the next school year, uh our secondary schools will not be able to

027charge general fees uh to students. And so that will be a reduction in uh funds that those schools are used to. The legislature did appropriate an amount of money to help with that transition. It's it's not a full amount. Um, so we're again needing to to work through how to best handle that. The allocation that the legislature gave will be given half of it this upcoming year, 30% the following year, and 20% the following year, and then nothing after that. So, it it's a um it's a phasing of of funding from from the state to to the district. And and so that's something we'll be addressing over the next three years. Any questions from board members on on this? Thank you for that summation. That was very concise compared to what the real budget looks

028like. You're welcome. That's awesome. Thank you, Jared. Thanks. Um, next up we have our paid postpartum and parental leave policy that will be presented by Kirk McCrae. Happy Mayday to you all. Um, I'm bringing a new policy uh for your consideration that actually came out of the 2024 legislature uh which mandated that school districts have the same kind of paid um postpartum and parental leave as state agencies have to be effective on July 1st, 2025. Um so this policy um is uh largely driven by statute that um provides the framework for those uh existing state agencies that have this leave. But um all school districts in the state of Utah will have this in place by July 1st. Um it is an unfunded mandate but it is a nice benefit for um employee employees who

029are eligible for this. Um and what this does is it provides two types of leave. Um the postpartum leave is more restrictive than the parental leave. And just as it sounds, um this would be for um uh employees recovering from the birth of a child. So, uh this would be um the the mother. Um, and this would uh give uh again an eligible employee up to 3 weeks of paid postpartum recovery leave that would be taken uh immediately after the event the the birth. Um uh the parental leave on the other hand is much broader. Um it does apply to uh the mother, the father. Um and the father is defined in several different ways uh in that first definition. And and all of these definitions um do come from statute. So uh we we

030are not using our our own definitions here. But the parental leave then would apply to again mother father. Um, parental leave would also apply to adoption. Uh, and it would also apply to guardianship of a minor or an incapacitated adult. Um, and it uh requires 3 weeks of paid leave uh for those events um that will be taken um within 6 months of the event. So this is much more flexible. Um in the case of a of a birth, um these leaves can be stacked on top of each other. Um so it' be up to 6 weeks of of paid leave. Um however, uh if it's a adoption or birth of more than one child, it does not double or triple or quadruple that. Um, so, uh, just, uh, one leave, uh, for for the

031event. Um, this, like I said, would be effective July 1st, 2025. Uh, I've gotten a lot of questions about this since this legislation passed. Um, I I've had questions about what what if a baby is born uh on June 25th, will this apply? The answer is no. Uh it will be a hard July 1st effective date. Um and um as of July 1st, we'll we'll make this available for our employees. Uh and again, this would still be in addition to uh we have parental leave that employees can uh use their accumulated sick leave. So this would be in addition to that. Um, this would not be in addition to FMLA, family medical leave. This would still be within that 12week period, but it would make up to half of that, those six weeks paid leave.

032I'm just, this question just came into my head. We used to have another policy that gave them five weeks um, birth of a baby. So, that is the parental leave that I'm talking about. Okay. And that allows them to use accumulated sick leave. Um it's actually for up to 40 days. So this again would be an addition to that, but that does require them to use their own accumulated sick leave. Thank you. Yep. Um, do you think in sections B and C on the first line of both of those, since you have stated multiple times that uh July 1st will be the beginning day, should we put a one in there? Yeah. Instead of just saying July, we could we could do that. Yes. And after this year, of course, that'll become um unnecessary, but

033yes, that is the effective date. Yep. Thank you. Any other questions for Kirk? All right. Thanks, Kirk. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate your work on this. Uh, next we have a middle school committee report and academic requirements policy from Britney. Hi. With the Thank you. With the um anticipated move from sixth grade into the middle school in a little over a year, um we have been planning for the schedule so that when it's time for us to start registering kids, we know what the schedule looks like. So, um I've been working with a committee to determine what recommendations we have for that. Um, so in last spring actually I asked for volunteers for a committee and believe it or not we had 140 volunteers. I don't know that we've ever had that many people volunteer for

034a committee before. Um, so it took a little while to to weed through all of the applicants for the committee, but we ended up um narrowing it down to a little bit smaller than 140. Um I think we had about I can't remember the exact number on the committee probably about 15 to 20 but we had parents, teachers, counselors and administrators on the committee. Um we asked teachers to who represented English, math, science and then we had one teacher to represent all of the electives. And then um we when we reached out to parents or when we selected parents from the committees volunteers, we made sure to have one from each of the communities that would that serve the new middle schools would serve. Um we began in February and we held three meetings. Um,

035and a couple of things that we discussed were a need to have alignment so that we would have similar offerings at each of the schools, but also allowing flexibility based on staffing and facilities and things like that. Um, looking at what we want the sixth grade curriculum to look like and that configuration to look like. Um, it's a big change for many of our families who've not had to sixth grade in middle school before. So we wanted to ensure we were um thinking of all the options. And then um a big question that took a lot of discussion was what does fine arts look like at in sixth grade? Um do we allow fine arts in the sixth grade? And then um we also had a lot of discussion around US history in 8th grade

036because right now US history we don't do the same thing at all of our middle schools. So my request was that we have alignment across all of our schools so that we can collaborate effectively. So that that was the purpose of our our meetings what we discussed. Um we had some guiding principles. I won't go through all of those but um this is these are the things that we tried to follow as we were discussing and making our decisions. Um and this was the schedule that we came up with for sixth grade. We did discuss the potential of having kind of a sheltered sixth grade that was more of an elementary schedule, but all of the committee felt as though the the students want to be a part of the middle school and and let

037them be a middle school student. And so we decided on a 50 just to follow the same trimester schedule we've been following 50-minute class periods um for six periods a day. There would be an intervention time built in, but that would be dependent. When that is and how long, well, I guess not how long because we know how long if we do the minutes, but when and how would be up to the school to determine what that looks like. Um, and the first, second, and third trimester, they do not necessarily have to be in this, the courses don't have to be in this order, but that just helped us to kind of when we were planning. So we would offer a full year of ELA, a full year of math, full year of science, education

038technology/keyboarding class, a PE and health class combined where we teach both PE and health standards in that class. Um, a writing extension class, which we've been teaching currently in the seventh and eighth grade. So we would just bring that down to the sixth grade as well. Essentially an ELA extension. It doesn't just focus on writing. Um, but that's what we've been calling it. um two trimesters of social studies and you'll notice the math lab. We had a lot of discussion about math. We're going to be going from 90 minutes, what they're getting right now in the elementary to 50 minutes. And we felt like we needed to ensure that there was additional support for math. This would not be a a course that's for intervention, but it's a supplemental class to build skills. So every

039student would take it and it would be a skill-based um building mathematical mindsets is is our vision for this course. Um where students are working on hands-on activities that help to build confidence in math and um we have a few ideas for how we might build that class. We've been doing a math camp at our middle schools the last few summers and we thought we might try to use that math camp idea and build it into a course. So that's the math lab. Um there'd be one course of fine art and two elective classes. What would those elective classes? Great question. That's my next slide. Maybe. Am I going the wrong way or did my remote stop working? number four. Thanks. Um, so what we decided is we wanted to ensure that every middle school

040offered for for certain these elective offerings. So we would have art, choir, band as an option for three trimesters, orchestra for three trimesters, and then DLI for those um schools with the DLI program, which we'll get to that later in this meeting. Um and then one additional sitebased option that would be up to the site depending on who their staff are, what their facilities look like, student interest, teacher interest. And so we didn't really want to say every school will offer the exact same additional elective, but we wanted to guarantee the options above that all schools would offer those. Um, one thing that we did, the committee did ask is that our music teachers go back and collaborate on the possibility of offering band and orchestra for less than three trimesters. um the band and

041orchestra programs really feel that three trimesters is ideal, but the parents and some of the teachers on the committee felt like there was students who really wanted additional electives. So, um, this is what our recommendation is, but we're also recommending that the band and orchestra teachers consider reducing that if possible or as an option for kids who might want to take additional, which it's always an option, but advertising it as an option, I guess. So, what questions do you have about the sixth grade schedule? But as I look at this and having taught sixth grade for many, many years, one try at PE that concerns me because those little bodies need to be get. Yeah. Well, right now they're only getting PE for a very short amount of time once a week for so about

04240 minutes. So they'll be getting a little bit more um through this course. Um but but now their hormones are starting to flow. they're they're just they're just up and they they need more more going to do it. So, if you'll notice, PE is one of the potentials that we have for an additional elective. Um, and if if the board feels that we need to consider offering more, we would have to determine what would we take away to offer another trimester of PE. I'm a PE major, so PE is near and dear to my heart. So don't think that I'm they have they at least get some free time outside of the elementary school right now. I think they need that. I don't know about band for three trimesters in this period, but I I

043just think the kids need that to get rid of the energy. So I have a comment, too, and I'm not sure that this will work out, but it used to work out and it sounds very personal, but it's not personal. Um, I really like the idea of having guitar in the middle school because it reaches those kids that don't want to have anything to do with art, choir, band, orchestra, but gives them a music experience. And it's usually well I won't say usually but in that group there's usually a bunch of well get rid of the usually um kids who don't come to school who when they come to school they cause trouble and it sort of helps. So that's just my point. So we did discuss other options for PE for not P excuse

044me for um electives but not in the sixth grade and there's a reason for that. um students have a hard time deciding on electives and it's it can be somewhat overwhelming for them to have too many choices and as a committee we felt that limiting the choices would benefit the students. Right now they don't have any choices in the sixth grade. So giving them some choice will be beneficial but not overwhelming them. So that's why we decided limit the choices to what's above with one additional based on the needs of the staff and the school and the students. But seventh and eighth grade is different. So if we have any other questions about sixth grade, we can continue there. But we'll get to that with seventh and eighth. Okay. And I agree with you on

045that. So I just wanted my opinion expressed. And I hope no one thinks it's personal because I'm not looking at it that way at all. I'm just looking at the benefits for kids. Right. Do we have other questions about sixth grade? Okay. Can we go to the next one? Sorry. seventh grade schedule. We didn't have any recommendations to change what we've been doing. So, this is our recommendation and this is what we have been doing. Um, you'll notice at the very bottom it says arts with an asterct or elective. Um, the core requirements for middle school is that they take art in either seventh or eighth grade. And so, we've put that as an asterct. So, if they didn't take an art class, they could, and when I say art, I mean band, orchestra, choir,

046um, art, ceramics, whatever the school's offering, that's a fine art. Um, so they might take that in 8th grade instead if they needed to. For example, if they were a DI student or actually, if they're a DI, we might have to make other accommodations, but if they were um wanting to take other electives and art wasn't one of those. So ceramics can be an option for seventh grade but not sixth. The art teachers were very adamant that ceramics not be offered in the sixth grade. Got it. As were the administrators. Yeah. Will you go to the next one? Well, and also we the facilities and the facilities can only handle so much. So we have to take that into consideration. So these would be the elective offerings. they're the same for the the number one,

047which is what we'll guarantee every middle school offers. Number two is we they can offer additional courses based on the needs of the school. So, we didn't want to limit um we do have some strong guitar programs out there. We wanted to be able to allow students to still have that option at whatever schools they have a teacher that teaches that. We have lots of strong elective programs. So, we didn't want to uh potentially harm staffing decisions and things like that by limiting electives. Any questions for about seventh grade offerings? So, notice that they had three electives if they don't choose an art. And of course, art could be an elective, too, depending on how you think about it. All right, next slide. And then the eighth grade schedule is mostly the same. Um you'll

048you'll notice the big change there is US history. Um actually sorry this is not the new schedule. This is what we're doing now. Um you'll notice US history at North Cache they have US history for three trimesters and at South Cash and Spring Creek they offer writing extension and that's a writing class that's taught in isolation. So they're just teaching writing. Um, and then they have the the three or four electives depending on whether or not they're taking arts in seventh or eighth grade. We go to the next slide. Our recommendation is to go to a three trimester US history with a writing component built into that course so that students are teaching or learning to write through the subject area rather than in isolation. Research shows that this is best for um learning how

049to write and it improves literacy. Um, so this is our recommendation and we'll be working uh if approved, we would be working with our ELA specialists to incorporate writing throughout all three trimesters rather than having a writing extension class on its own. So that's our eighth grade recommendation. And then again, the same elective options for um all four middle schools with the option to add additional as needed by the school. You had a class CCA-B. What is that? Yes, that is college and career awareness. So, they take that in seventh grade. The um the A portion and B is uh the eighth grade portion. How are those two classes different? I don't know. Is John here? He might be able to tell us. No, I should know that, but I don't. Okay. What questions do

050you have for me? Looks great. Thank you. Um so our next um recommendation is that um our current middle school policy outlines our current what we're doing currently but we would like to retire that policy and adopt a new policy which um the the policy we'd like to adopt or approve would be to kind of outline what the requirements are. I don't can we pull that up or you guys have seen it so I don't know if you have questions on it for me. Um but three of us are senior. Okay. Oh, that's right. Um the policy for middle school. We have it on our Oh, you have it on. Okay, then you can just look at I'll pull it up on my computer. So, the purpose of the of the policy is just to

051um allow us to write procedures that would in incorporate our recommendations for the committee. So we would retire the current policy which has um all the requirements we are doing now and then we would um incorporate the new policy which essentially says we would align all of our curriculum to USB standards. We would focus on academic um standards that are aligned to those. Um it talks about student placement and how students and parents have have an choice in that. Um parents can can make those placement decisions if needed. And then it talks about retention of students essentially not recommending that we retain students in middle school that we keep them with the their class. Um anyway, so it would be asking or directing us to write procedures that would direct what the schedule looks like

052at the middle school. And then there are two procedures to follow that um policy. Policy um or excuse me, procedure number one, it is essentially what I've just outlined for you on the the board. And then procedure number two is what we're doing now so that we have something in place that directs what we're doing for the next year before we move into the middle schools with the sixth grade. What questions do you have for me? That's good, Britney. Okay, thank you for your work. Yeah, it was fun. I the thing that's most exciting to me is that um the US history challenge not having them aligned has been difficult for collaboration. It's been difficult to support with professional development and it's really exciting to get all the schools on the same page and incorporating

053writing. So we're really excited about that. feel on board then or or some you still have Well, I was ready for a lot of argument and there wasn't really any. It was kind of like we presented it and then people hemmed and hot on it. We had an administrator who was worried about uh losing writing um as that writing extension class. But when I said that Ashley was willing to incorporate the writing and help, he was all on. He's like, "If Ashley's there, I totally trust you." and I would I will do it. Just recognizing the most important subject in any school is history. I think that was one of the things they were thinking about. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. I like the end size of one. Well, one of and a a driving factor too

054is research shows that um when students get a a great social studies curriculum, they do better in ELA. So, they the two subjects really support each other. They do better. Their literacy is improved. And so, if we have a solid program in US history, I I think we're going to see that just supporting what we're doing in in our English classes. So, that is exciting. Yeah, I like the coding portion that you have in there. That's great. Yeah. And and we're offering that at a few schools right now and kids, some of the kids really like it. Not all of them. Opportunities in that. And the guitar, to go to your point, I know so many kids that have done that that maybe aren't choir or band or orchestra. They'll love it. Yeah. And they're

055always packed. Those programs are packed. They are. The guitar is very popular. So my other question is in the sixth grade it used to be blocked. So there was a language core and then there was the math and science core. Will we be doing that? We will not be blocking. We talked about that in the committee wanted to have and actually it was parents more than anybody. Parents wanted their students to have a middle school experience in sixth grade. Um and then counselors of course appreciate that too because the block is really hard to schedule. So yeah, that's great. Any other questions for Britney? Thank you so much. Thanks for your work on this. Uh next we have Kevin Wamik who will present the data governance and information technology security policy. It's got to be

056one of the longest titles of policy that we have. Sorry. It is a long policy and it's about 20 pages. So we're not going to go over all of it. I don't want to bore everybody. Um so I think it was about 2017 um uh the board approved uh a data governance plan and a technology security plan. Um so what we're proposing here is to bring those plans into policy and a few procedures and and a form. um some things that have come down uh from the state. Uh there there's some uh statutes uh that have changed over that time or have been added. Um and so it was a good time to to kind of bring this all together and and and bring this into the policy and procedures. Um the again I'm not

057going to go over 20 pages of it, but the big things that that um have been added or or updated with uh current uh code or uh board rule um really touch on uh training. Um there's also a piece where it it had been very heavily uh studentbased and we've we've rolled in the importance of obviously employee data as well. So, um there's some been been some additions uh to that employee piece, but again, the the things that really spurred a lot of this was um we outlined very specific uh training that cover the student data privacy laws um that have changed over uh the years. Um and it outlines what that training uh should be, frequency of training and those things. So, that was a big change. Um, another thing that kind of was

058in place with those other other plans, but really hasn't been focused on is the the form that's included with this, which uh is a an agreement that we would have um staff um sign off on. Um, and that would affect people that have access to the class one data. That's uh typically the PII that for our students and for our employees um which are all outlined in the in the policy of what falls under class one um data. Um uh a big uh thing that came out of the legisl uh legislature this year um was I believe it was House Bill uh 124. um outlined several things and we've incorporated um these things. I I feel that we're already doing most of these things if not all of them. But it was good I think

059to add that portion here. Um that primarily uh covers how we will or will not share employee data. It talks about the sale of employee data. I these are not things that that we do. Um, but it's good to outline to have that in place that um gives us those guard rails of what we should or should not be doing um with employee data. It also covers um what the district should or should not require somebody to do on their personal device. So, that's all from the the uh current legislation, but we wanted to add that in there to make sure um we're doing what we're supposed to with our employees. Um, another uh big item that that uh we were asked to add um was some more detail of how we handle data incidents

060or breaches. Um again, mostly outlined by either uh state code or board rule. Um and it just outlines the process procedures of uh reporting those things to the state. Um, and then the last thing I really wanted to touch on and then then you could ask me questions. Um, but uh the state has been really going down this this road of suggesting or or wanting uh districts to have a framework. We've already been following a framework for quite a few years. I think probably going back to that 2017 time frame that we've uh had a framework that that the district has followed as far as security um for for our networks and systems. Um but we wanted to really outline that here and so um we define define what that framework is. that's often asked

061when um grants are being filled out or cyber insurance is being um the question cyber the cyber insurance uh folks ask us. So it's nice to have that outlined in policy that that we have a a framework and we're following it. And that's just for people that aren't um that don't understand what that framework does. It really is just a set of um rules and suggestions really of what um what you should or should not be doing in various different uh pieces of cyber security. So it it gives a good a good base of this is where you should should be with password uh requirements, that kind of stuff, all all sorts. It's it's a big framework. Um, but it gives us a nice baseline of where and it helps us gauge where we stand

062um because they're constantly updating um that framework as well. So, we're able to gauge when we do our uh security audits um where we fall in in that framework, how we're doing. So, okay. I know that's a lot. So, are there any questions? Any questions? Kevin. So, just so the other board members know, um Brian, Kathy, and I went through all of these policies last week with um the presenters and um Brian read all the lines of this um data governance. horrible reading by the way, not because of you, but just and uh and made some really great suggestions and Kevin has done a great job with this. Thank you very much. Thank you. Uh next up, we have the board handbook uh revision. when um I told you uh at our last meeting when

063we had um in my president's report that when I came back from our National School Board Association conference that I realized it had been a long time since we had visited uh or revised our the entire handbook. also asked I asked Brian and Kathy to uh join me as the policy committee and we went through the handbook um all the pages line by line and uh made some suggested changes some recommendations and at the end of the uh document I we put the uh rationale for the changes that we are recommending so that you can all see those and so you can uh look at those changes, look at the rationale and we can have some discussion now about that if you're prepared or we can have discussion about that uh in two weeks when

064we uh vote on it. I would suggest that we all look at the vision statement, how we're going to change it, because that has gone several different ways over the years. And um this is the one that was in the board handbook originally and we talked about it and decided that um this is the one we would like to have in all of the documents. But I'm just wondering if anybody has any other opinions about the vision statement if they would like it to be one of the others. Yeah, the vision statement in our policy 1000 is three paragraphs long, right? So it's much longer than this vision statement. So that was one of our recommendations that all of the vision statements should be the same from the board. Um the other thing that will

065take some uh thought is there is a place in the handbook that talks about the board role in hiring process. This is on page eight. And uh right now the handbook says that when uh when hiring school administrators, the board may have a more direct role. Board members selected by the board president come participate in the interview process as part of the initial and final interview teams. Typically the superintendent will present three names to the interview team for selection. So our current process is not this. Our current process is there are several different committees that um those uh potential those candidates for employment go through especially uh school administrators and then the superintendent makes the final interview does the final interviews with those. And so we we felt like before changing anything on that uh

066in that particular paragraph that we needed a discussion with the full board on that. Do you So that's something that you need to think about if you feel like the board should be involved in the hiring process of school level administrators or if we should uh continue with our current process. And um wherein the superintendent after making a selection uh contacts the board members who um that school is in their um their area their precinct and to ask if if there are any issues if the board member has any or members have any issues with um that particular selection. So that's something another thing that that you need to think about um so that we can have a fuller board discussion on that. I think it's fine as it is. It says board president can

067so you could select someone to participate. It's not should or will participate. So it's kind of up to your discretion. I think it's nice to just leave it open as my opinion. Anyway, so we'll um some things to think about and we'll um uh vote on this in our next meeting. Terry, what precedents have you seen with that topic? Um everything from You mean across the in other boards in the state? Everything from the board is not involved at all to um the board is uh is the selection committee. So the full full spectrum full spectrum. Okay. Kind of depends on how large the the district is. Sure. I think it became an issue with one of the school boards, big school boards, when there was a gentleman on the board who thought they should

068have quite a important role in selecting who they were going to going to hire and should be at all of those um committee meetings for it or whatever. And it seemed like it caused a bit of a problem to do it that way. We can't. And right now we have, if I'm right, the school has a committee made up of teachers, parents, administrators, and they do the interviewing process and they come up with their selection, and then the superintendent okays it. Is that how it so? Yeah. Um our current process is we try to be inclusive. It starts at the the school level. So there's a stakeholder committee that's teachers, staff and parents as well as administrators. They re they interview all candidates. Um depending on how that proceeds, it could be one, two or

069three that typically come out of that. Um for school principles, it then goes to executive council right now. so that there's a district view from departments and they make a recommendation to me for a final interview. So there's three three phases of interviewing um to to make sure that we have the right person to leave you know if if I might couple of say a couple of things. First um this process was not intended to in any way to go against what you have in the handbook. I I believe it was an omission on my part as I look through policy and procedure not seeing anything. I I stepped into the hiring process that I'm most comfortable with or aware of. So there was no intention to to do something different on my part. I

070will say that I've seen the spectrum of districts. What I would prompt the board to think about um just from my experience and you mentioned a district that had board members in a part of the ground level process, it really does move board members from that governance level into a management level. Um as try as we might and I found this even in my own experience as a superintendent, I can't ever take that hat off. And if I'm in that process really early, I have found that there's def too much difference given to my opinion in the process. And I believe that is also true for board members that you're once you're in the room, you're always the board member and staff are just a custom whether we like it or not. They'll they'll defer

071to the board member. So that's just something to consider because it will change. it changes that role very clearly. Um, and then it it starts to complic I think complicate the lines down the road as we work with employees. Uh, the other item that I would just put out there for your consideration is we've gone through a lot of of hiring this spring with leadership. Um, I believe it's unusual. It's just a domino effect and a timing with with um retirements and so forth, but there's just simply a practical matter of of if board members were part of every process being available to to be a part of those committees. So there's a practical sense as well as I think role and responsibility consideration. Thank you. So, if we vote on it next time and

072we want to reward that, um, would we be able to vote on it or would we have to Mhm. wait and reward that section so it fits what is happening in the district right now and then vote on it maybe the following month. We could have some we we could have a suggestion for a rewarding and vote on whichever version that we most of the board members like if that works. if you want to move it forward like that or if you want to make the process longer then we can wait you know and just just to follow up on what Terry had suggested the practice is I've outlined you know the steps of the interview every time we've hired a principal I have reached out to the board members over that particular school before

073making the offer so that there is a place for board members as well But it's on the back end rather than the front. Up front. I kind of would like to see maybe a rewritten version of it before the next meeting. Okay. Uh that includes the all of this that we've just talked about. Okay. I'll write something up and send it out and then uh you all can edit as you will. Okay. And we'll um add that in uh for our next meeting's approval. And my other suggestion is all of the board members, if you go to page 17 and 18, the rationale is there for the changes. So you can look at that before we take a vote on it, too. And thanks to Terry for writing all of this up. Um, so we

074would have this information to help us in deciding. There are a couple things I shared after our meeting, Terry, um, with the three of us. probably the only thing that I think if I were to highlight the things that are most important for me the public communication as a school board member I don't at least for me I don't feel there's a lot of direction in our handbook about that and the paperwork that you had shared with us I felt like there was some good direction just to give us some guidelines of what's appropriate and what's not so I would recommend we include a section in the handbook about uh public communication. Okay. Do you want me to type that up and send it to you, Terry? It came from the board training sheets we

075used to get on. What was it called, Brian? I don't remember. Public communication. Let's um create a Google doc for all of these pieces that we're going to put in and you can add it to that one. Oh, share it to you and let you know. I'll share editing the Google Doc with you and then you can put it in. Okay. Or you are you going to make me learn how to do that? Yeah. About time. I'm just about learn all I want computer. You can do it. Brian, anything else? I know there I would go back through I think there's there is a typo I felt in there that you could probably look at and I think we could tweak um that's probably all okay anyone else thanks for all your work you guys

076it was a fun afternoon a couple hours yeah one other thing you might consider as you're looking at your handbook is um how much of that might you want to be more public facing and is there is there a way for us to make it more public facing for you? It might be useful for some in the community to really understand the roles and responsibilities and how you're holding each other accountable to different things. So much of that now is living in your handbook. Um, there may be value just from a transparency and communication piece to to make more of it public facing. I like that idea. I do too. And we could we could make it uh a procedure to one of the policies in the 1000 section. Certainly. Um, just attach it as

077a procedure. Um, and then it would be public facing. Absolutely. Yeah. If you remember the data that Tim gathered last year about how much the public knew about what we do, nothing. So that there's a lot of truth to that. I think there's I think it's a continual effort to try to put out there to the community what our work is is about and what how we hold each other accountable and we expect of each other. I think they the more they would understand I think they appreciate. But but superintendent I think that everything as long as everything goes well nobody cares. You know it's when something happens that that's when it comes up and and all we can do is make it available. That's right. And it's all right. So if we're making every

078effort to put it out there, right, when when something does come up, it, you know, it's hopefully they'll see that and it won't change maybe not change their feelings or opinion, but at least they become more aware and that's what we're trying to do is just educate our community. All right, great discussion. Thank you everyone. Last but not least, the moment we've all been waiting for, uh, DLI committee report. I'm not on the DLI committee, but I the first half of that, I guess, but you're on the agenda. [Music] that. So, the superintendent asked me to put together some data around DLI um with some specific questions and and data to look at. Um so, I compiled um a bunch of different things around those questions. I understand that there you might discussion today might

079generate more questions that I don't have data around, but we could probably find it. Um also um maybe my my little caveat to this to sharing this data is that um I have very limited contextual knowledge about the DLI program in Cash District. Uh and so I can speak to the data. I may defer questions around meaning or implications or history or those sorts of things to Shauna or Britney or anyone else who has been a part of that program. So Jeremy, pause right there. You're not nervous by any means, are you? No, I I've I've did I I did the same thing about a year ago when Box Other closed their Chinese program. We had a lot of conversation and um meetings really. Um and so um as we go through just we'll we'll

080look at these. I shared it all. Um well I sent it off and I believe the superintendent shared it with you. um some questions came back initially about it and I I hope to be able to speak to some of those things uh as we go through but um some of the the data that's on there that we'll review. Um I do have one thing that we added uh to to this list, but we'll go through enrollment data, retention data, spec specifically speaking about students that stay in the program over time. Um, Apple results. Um, Apple is an acronym within an acronym. Essentially, it's the the test that we give to DI students to measure their proficiency in the language. Um, and that test changes year to year. We give them uh third start beginning

081in third grade um going through 9th grade and they alternate years of taking um certain tests and so the data kind of leaprogs a little bit. But um we have DLI and nonDLI state test scores um specifically RISE and Aspire Plus test scores, AP pass rates um of um a three or higher on the AP on test that they take in nth grade. And then historical bridge enrollment, C is concurrent enrollment. So, the bridge courses are the concurrent enrollment courses that DLI students take that are the 3000 level language courses. If they pass AP, um, then they can enroll in those in high school. And so, that's what that's referring to when I when I'm talking about bridge or concurrent enrollment. It's those specific courses. So, enrollment data over time. Uh, this is beginning. So

082this doesn't include I think our first two two years. Um we didn't we didn't have specific data around enrollment. Uh and so beginning the year that we had good data we kept track for per program. Um we you can see it over the last 10 years essentially uh averaging 210 students enrolled every year in the in dual immersion. Um and over the past six years, uh roughly 23% of that enrollment is students that are out of boundary for that particular school. Um and so again focusing on beginning program. So this is first grade enrollment starting the program. These are our cohorts starting. And so Oh, you're right there. Shauna, you could maybe confirm that 23% out of boundary. That's partly because we we created those parameters, right? Intentionally so. Correct. That we're reserving most seats

083for the boundary students. Right. It completely was based on the current enrollment at the school every year. So in order for this two strands to function in the school, we have to look at the current enrollment of kindergarten. If it's a high enrollment of kindergarten, we can't bring in a lot of outbound students. needs to be mostly inboundary that folk that run the program if it's a lower enrolling. So, you know, it would vary anywhere between 75 and 110 over the years that each school would have. So, sometimes we had high out boundary spot availability and others we didn't. And that's pretty consistent for DI programs throughout the state. when it when you house it when you run a program this way that's not a magnet program you really you end up balancing um based

084on load and FTE within the building you know your your kind like she said your kindergarten size kind of determines how you can fill I have a question so is the goal to have 58 kids per language per class not per class. Yeah, that's a really great question. When we first began the program, um we sort of look, you know, kind of listened to what was happening uh in other districts that had begun the program about 5 years before we had um and and they were all looking at attrition, you know, over the years they'd had it, but none of them had gone all the way through yet at that point. So over the I would say the first five years of the program, we finally landed on what we felt like was a decent

085number, which was 57 being our goal enrollment, which would be did I say 57? Yeah, 54. 54. So 27 27 per class uh in the two in the class. So um there have been years when it's been higher than that. There have been years with some of the classes that have been lower some of the languages. Um, but we feel like if we can get them at 54 that that's pretty decent number to keep our attrition throughout with 23 24 school year. I'd ask the follow-up question. We had 40 kids in uh French and uh Chinese. What was the reason for that dip? just not enough interest. And I actually one of the questions I have at this point too is I don't really know what our kindergarten enrollment was across the district, but I

086do know that we've had some years in the past five years where we've had lower kindergarten in total and I believe that has something to do with it. But that's it would be interesting to to look at that actually. And then I was going to ask, we just had the lottery in February. What What are the numbers for the 2526 school year? So, right now we have uh 54 in our Spanish program, we have 54 in our French program. We're at uh 50 at Chinese and 48 in Portuguese. Um but we've got some good plans to get out and up those numbers. So, I'm hopeful still we've got a little time, but that's where we're at. Any additional questions on this enrollment slide? Okay. Uh our next uh couple of slides are on retention data.

087Students that stay in the program over time um and continue to take DLI courses. Uh so this first slide is Chinese. Um if if you see a number over a hundred and that's because we added two after that initial start number um and there there are various reasons that that that can happen but if you that that's why you'll see a number over over a 100. How do we go from 83 to 98? How does that move in? So kids moving in. So they already have been in that DI program in another part of the state. They come in. You you can do that or specifically for Chinese. I'm I'm speculating at what might cause that or what I've seen in other districts or um heritage speakers. Yeah, we have heritage speakers also move in.

088Heritage like someone come in that a student speaks Chinese, they can join the program and you see that with other languages as well. French these percent I'm sorry I have a lot of questions are these percentages based on the 54 kids the initial number of students and so those those first that first slide it's a percentage of that number of students that start so the percentage of students that started that first cohort here and and so I mean you you'll get some move right Yeah, there were some years in French that we actually had 60 kids start. Yeah, because the enrollment was so high in kindergarten that our traditional side was also at 60. So, we upped it to 60 as well. When you have a big drop in French, say 123 to 88, that's

089a big drop. Is that kids moving out? Is that is that families moving? Um, that's a pretty big number. I'm just curious what causes that. Is that a teacher issue? Well, those are percents. They're not numbers of students. So, it could be only a couple. That's 30%. So, 30% even of 20 would be that's still without six kids. Six kids. So, it's it's it's a hand. I mean it could be representing just an handful of kids. Yeah. All the numbers. We're we're pretty consistent though. 96 88 90 95. It's just a pretty big drop. So I'm just curious what the reason you could have a family. You could have a couple families up toward Heritage and they move they have two families move and that impacts you have three kids in a family and that

090impacts those numbers quite a bit. This this slide is not over time. These are are current students. So, so this isn't year to year. Th this is our current students, the percentage of students in that grade that are enrolled. So, when you you can't jump second to third. Second is of our current second graders, 123% of the initial number are there. So, since they started two years ago, the 88% is our current third graders. Great. Sorry, I I should have clarified where we moved from a slide of overtime to a slide of current cohorts. So, so you would look at the 10th grade for example, and it's not a drop from 9th to 10th. It's 35% of our current of the kids who are in third grade or 10th grade, our sophomores in French represent

09135% of what started the program in their in their cohort nine years ago. Why is so 35% I was going to ask this too. In 10th grade, that's the lowest percentage of the four languages. What's the what's the reason or what's the thought behind that? May I speak to this? So all you want. So the program as you know is a K9 program with a K16 vision. So students are able at the end of 9th grade to take that AP test should they choose to. The pathway then allows them to wait a year if they wish and to stay in um and take it in the 10th grade. Uh or I mean they could stay in it longer if they wanted as well. But in the ninth grade is the first opportunity they have to

092take the AP test. Uh 9th grade is not usually a grade in which AP is allowed. But um we were allowed by the Utah did work with College Board to get that approved for this these immersion programs. So if they pass the AP, they can then get those credits for AP and choose then to go on to those bridge courses or they may not pass. They may decide to leave then as well. Right? So there's a combination I would say of those two things. Um they've culminated the K9 program. The opportunity then exists for them to go into those bridge concurrent enrollment classes to get those credits. Uh and they do have to pass the AP in order to do that. So it's a choice at that point to continue and also a gateway uh

093I guess requirement. So can they take it in 11th grade? They can take it any time. So some of them might drop out during 10th and then come back in the other and we have had that happen. And any student who takes the AP exam whether they came through the immersion program or not can enter those bridge courses as well. the the Portuguese. Um, and I might add a caveat to Portuguese just so you also understand that new it's called the the national exam for world languages. It is a college board endorsed uh test created by American councils. So it is not an AP exam. It is a proficiency exam um that does not have the cultural component the AP language and culture has and it is college board endorsed but it is the um

094it is the chosen test for Portuguese because there is not an AP Portuguese exam. So it is the endorsed exam for Portuguese. Um and I think it's good to know that. Yeah. especially as we get to the the concurrent enrollment and and you see like the numbers there, you'll see a pretty dramatic impact of I believe that test on enrollment in in 10th, 11th and 12th grade. The Portuguese pass rate is higher, much higher than the other three. And then Spanish. And then here's our current DOI bridge enrollment. So this is the current number of students enrolled in each grade um in those bridge courses. And while this is split by grade, they are combined in the courses. Yeah. So so the way bridge courses work is each year the university offers one course that

095anybody who's taking bridge in high school takes that course. And so these are blended courses with 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. Multiple sections usually um but but they're all together. And so if a student wants to take it every year, they would they would take that course that's offered each of those three years. A three-year cycle, a rotation of courses, but this slide represents all of the students in bridge courses across all four high schools. Correct. So say Chinese the blue there's 12 in 10th and 12 in 11th and then it jumps up to 18. Are we are we comfortable with those numbers? Is that where we want those to be? You feel well the nice thing about those numbers is that they can be combined in the section and it's a very strong you

096know so allows us to have those two two section numbers which is nice. Um, so yeah, I'm comfortable with the numbers. I would always love to see more obviously, but um it's it's a strong we have strong sections of bridge in our high schools. So the way that the school would likely schedule this is the Chinese bridge would have 32 kids in it. Well, and USU because it's a college course, they do have a cap at 30. So we've got two sections. 16. Yep. Well, one more. You have to split it to two. So, do they do that remotely because they're across four high schools? So, each Oh, no. They're not across four high schools. Sorry. They're assigned specific high schools. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Part of the bridge, these numbers are based on the kids

097passing the AP test as well. Correct. Correct. That's a prerequisite to this course. So the you'll get to this slide later, but the percentage passing the Chinese AP is low. So it makes sense that these bridge courses would be lower with Chinese. French is lower. It's increased through high school, which is great. Portuguese has seem to be pretty effective in keeping kids in it and progressing. So that's nice. Well, and perhaps We have really encouraged the kids to take the AP in ninth grade. Take it, you know, see how we do. Um, and that also reflects in the scores because we're asking them all to do it even though we know that some of them may not pass. Um, but we do encourage them to take it so that we can see where they're at

098and how we can help them to continue. Um, we'll move to Apple results data. And so again, this is the the language proficiency third through 9th grade that they take. Um, this is a I'm glad that I sent this out before so that you could review it. There's a lot here and it's pretty small. Um, there's not um there's not state level data to compare this against. Um but Apple data is not collected through state DI programs. Um I will say that um having come from having been over DI and assessment boxer I had some access to their data and I may have done a quick comparison. Um and that's off the record. Right. No, it's a it's okay. I met I made the presentation and so I'm pretty confident speaking to it. Um and

099from from that general observation um we we are at that average or slightly higher um with these percentages uh the same fluctuations that we see yeartoear in some things. So like fourth grade listening for example is up high, drops low for two years, pops back up. Uh we see that same thing um across the state. Yeah. Um and there's so there's a lot of factors that play into this sort of thing. It could be a change in teacher. It could it could be um difficult I mean a difficult group of kids um that come through the same that you see in normal normal testing situations. Yeah. I mean those same things exist here. It's it's a classroom full of students and you see different things. It could be a focus of the teachers and they

100can say, "Oh, we were low last year. Let's really focus in on this year." And you see that jump up, but sometimes it's at the cost of something else, you know, depending on what they focused on. But you see those on on average, we I would say that these are um are average to slightly above what I've seen other places. So there's four languages, but there's five bars in here. Is there a the years? Each bar is a year. Oh, okay. So the the Oh, okay. That Okay, that makes sense. And then so this kind of gives you a progression of time, but but knowing that each year is a different group of students. Technically, if you if you jumped colors, you could kind of follow a cohort through if you wanted and a different

101type of test, right? the tests aren't the same every year, right? So, yeah, they're they're tested on speaking in third grade, then fourth grade it's writing, listening, reading, and then speaking again in fifth grade. So, if you wanted, you could look at 2020 third grade speaking, and then jump to 2022 fifth grade speaking and compare those a little bit as you as you jump through. If you're looking to track cohorts, you could do it that way a little bit. And then the next slide is the same thing through secondary uh ninth grade speaking. Um we they added nth grade for those last two years the speaking component whereas before it was just the other three. And so that's why you've got two extra lines of data there. Any questions on Apple data? This is great.

102Thanks, Jeremy. Okay, our next data um is proficiency percentages um in ELA, math, and science comparing DLA students to non DLA students. Um the way that that data is recorded is by year. Uh and so a a student falling out of the program or opting out of the program could be in both bars in different years if that makes sense where this is four years worth of data. Um and so if they were took a DLI course that year, they were flagged as DI. If they weren't the next year, then they would be in the nonDLI group. Um but this is percents proficient for each of those years. Um and so I think the question that caused us to create this initially is uh and and it's not unique to to this board or or

103this district um as I have pulled the same data in boxer when I was there. um is is a worry that students that take content courses in a different language won't have the vocabulary or or the understanding to be proficient on an English test. For example, students that take science in Chinese, how are they going to do on an English science test at the end of the year? Right? That's that's kind of the concern. um that that some parents, some principles, some board members have had at times. And so we've we pulled this data together to kind of speak to that. Um I don't know that this data represents or or is enough evidence to conclude that uh DLI has a positive impact on these test scores. But I I feel confident saying that it

104doesn't have a negative impact on on test scores. Is this um like the blue sections is that the total of all of the students that are in DLI in every in the right every grade level? Yeah. So if you look at like third grade for example on the blue that that number 801. So there was uh over those four years there were 801 third grade students in DLI that took the ELA rise test and there were 4,817 nonDLI third graders that took that test and this is a comparison of the percent proficient of those numbers and that and and you'll see as you as you move down the row um smaller numbers like 10th grade so Aspire Plus, we have 355 just because we haven't been that far into it and of the attrition that

105we see in our students taking DLI classes. So, to restate what you you were just explaining, this is best viewed as how do students perform on the test, not how do students compare to other students. Correct. Um I I will say for for sake of comparison both of these percentages um across the board on this ELA slide are above the state average both DLA and nonla. The next one is math. and similar similar numbers uh some fluctuation um but generally that the the DLI to nonDLI gap uh is fairly consistent. Uh, and the same with this one. All um all of these scores are are generally about between 10 and 15% above the state average. So when you see math, sixth grade math for example, or 10th grade math go down, the the state average

106also went down on all of those. And then science is our last one. Any questions on any of the rise and aspire plus data content data? Okay, next one is AP pass rates. So this first slide is uh over the last four years um three years for AP and four for new um the percent of students that took the test that got a three or higher. Um so these are are percentages. On the next few slides I have that compared to state averages. Um the state averages are not DLI specific though. Uh and so you can kind of see the difference with the new and AP um with this slide uh which kind of speaks to um how AP can be uh a limiting factor for the bridge enrollment. Um where whereas the new is

107likely less so with the with these pass rates. It really is more of a choice than students that would have if they could have p if they might have passed the AP. How many times does a Chinese student have to take the AP test to pass it on average? Two or three times. Answer to that. Yeah. How parents feel about that? Because one of the selling points with DI is completing AP test and getting college credit. So if we're getting 30% passing the AP test, what's the general response from a parent? I personally have not had any interaction or reaction hearing about it. So can't speak. Let me just add my perspective. Um having been in a district that offered Chinese and we were seeing similar kinds of results, there was a feeling that ninth

108grade may be too early for the Chinese program. If you were to look at languages and how they're ranked, the foreign service ranks Chinese as level five language, which states it's like 88 weeks of instruction or 2200 hours, whereas the other three are level one languages in terms of learning English learning a language. Um there's there's a huge difference in terms of what it takes to learn Mandarin compared to Portuguese, Spanish or French. So, you know, when we're making judgments between languages, we ought to be be really considerate of that that there is a clear difference between Mandarin, learning Mandarin as as opposed to the others. I'm just thinking as a parent, if I'm thinking of DLI and I want my kid to go through DLI and I want them to get college credit, Chinese

109would be a difficult one to complete college credit then. More difficult than the other classes. Well, it doesn't preclude them getting credit, though. It it it might mean in ninth grade they don't get the credit, but it doesn't mean they won't get credit. Yeah. And that they won't be able to clip out, that they won't be able to continue. It it's just a snapshot of where they are then. Um and I know that the teacher also the teachers have worked very hard also to you know keep them in and keep allowing them opportunities to you know take the test which we haven't really granularly like you know aggregated in this way. So, um, you know, it doesn't preclude them at all from getting the credit. It just means they're not going to get it at

110that moment. The the other thing that I might speak to and and maybe a little bit of my um my experience as a parent, so all all of my children, I have a senior right now, but I have five daughters that are all in the Spanish DI program. So, I've kind of seen the parent side of this as well as been on the the state assessment district's side and and seen what happened there. Um, I I think initially um there were there was language around passing the AP and they and we talked about passing the AP test. We talked about the college credit. We talked about the the bridge courses. um trying to fill a program, right? As we're as we're starting a program, we want people to join. We want to share all the

111positives about it. Um but I I don't recall ever from from local district or from the state um seeing AP and college credit being the purpose of enrolling your child in DLI. um that and I and I think that it's important to as we look at these things to have that in context of the purpose of DLI is to learn a language um somehow because it's a state program and we have accountability to parents and stakeholders we have to assign a metric to success for that right and and so whether that's AP whether that's enrollment in bridge whether that's Apple whether that's an interview what whatever that might look like we end up doing that um But um I I think it it's erroneous to assume that the purpose of dual dual language immersion is

112to pass the AP test and get college credit. I think that's valid. I think we need to do a better job communicating that from the beginning because I've spoken with parents who that's a selling point to them. That's why they chose to put their kid partly in the program. So perhaps that's something we could re-evaluate when we're selling that from the beginning. I I would agree and I I think that while a perk and while a potential benefit of of learning a language is hey if you learn this you'll you'll be able to take this test and you you'll you'll be have these opportunities but it it's it's not the purpose it's not why you're in the program and it's not I I I I agree with you I think some some clarity of language

113some better marketing yeah I mean just a different tack with the marketing of here's the benefits of speaking another language. Here's here's what it does for your brain. Here's the research around that as opposed to maybe as an older person now. You know, I'm thinking about what can I do with my brain to keep it growing. And there's a few things that they always say. One, write a book, play an instrument, learn a language. Those things keep your bl your brain and there's others but keep your brain growing and going and learning and expanding and um and that might be something we do need to mark up more to it is what it does for the human brain which helps you in a lot of other things besides speaking a language. I think we do

114I think we do hit on that. You can go to the district website and it hits I think five key points. But some of the conversation I've had with parents when it comes to the AP test, that's an area that parents can get frustrated. And sure, we don't have to talk about Chinese. 57% 52% 53% if we're looking at French and Spanish. I mean, I know AP tests are hard. I don't know. I don't think those are glowing numbers necessarily. One year we did 76% with French, which I think is I think is good. So, I'm just trying to self-evaluate. Sure. Are we doing our very best? Kids, I think, are doing really well in elementary school. The numbers are up. They hit middle school and it drops. There's electives they start taking there. There's

115fatigue. There's not as much interest. Sometimes it's depend on the teacher. And so, we invest a lot in this program. We have to keep them engaged throughout. So that you know part of the purpose of this is finishing what we promised from the beginning. Well, can I add one really quick? As a AP coordinator, I think it's really important that we keep in mind that the AP average for the entire district is 73%. So this is other than, you know, the the 50% or whatever, but we're not that far off from the district average. And most of the students who are taking AP are seniors. So, we're comparing freshmen to seniors and that's something we really need to keep in mind as we're looking at this data. And I agree also that and I think

116we've been really trying hard you you know our Apple scores are are excellent and we do send those reports home. We send home lots of information to parents so they can also understand that you know this is an important skill they're gaining. uh they are actually for the for the for the most part most of our students are leaving our program whether they leave it in 9th, 10th or 11th or 12th they're leaving it at an intermediate mid intermediate high advanced level which is um not at all what uh any world language program will leave them leave them in a high school with. So they are they're leaving with strong skills and and we know that and if I might add one comparison data the national 24 average pass rate for college for AP English

117composition is 54.6%. Sounds like we better focus more on English. Yeah. Um the the next few slides, the next three slides are just AP um slides percentages compared to the state of Utah. Um again, not just DLI. I I can't disagregate DI students uh on the state report that I get. I just get a a single percentage from uh from AP on those. Uh, and so you'll have multiple grades and multiple people. Uh, so you'll have heritage Chinese speakers that move to Utah that take this test. You know, those are mixed in that Utah. I'm able to to weed those out of our data, but not out of the Utah data. And then the French and the Spanish. So Jeremy, back to your point earlier, um it sounds like if if we have to always

118explain it, maybe AP is not the the way to define our return on investment, right? I mean, what have you seen in other districts that uh if we had to go and explain to somebody we're making we're getting a good return on our investment, how would we define that? You know what I mean? I I see similar frustrations everywhere and and and maybe Sha Shauna can speak to that as she she's involved in more districts, but of of parents that I interact with in other districts I see um the especially in high school, the immediate go-to for parents that we that we gauge success on is is GPA and then college credit or or AP. But when we're talking advanced, it's like, "Oh, I'm in AP US history. I'm in a I'm taking AP calculus.

119I'm taking stats 1040. I'm st, you know, what what are you in?" And and and as parents, very often we we assume, oh, this is something that we've been doing. What is the the ROI uh for this? And and I think it takes a lot of strong messaging to say the ROI is that your child speaks another language and well and and you know I mean I we could do that. We just have to define what sex success looks like rather than right and I don't think any I'm not aware of any district that has done that for a program like this uh in a in a different way primarily for the difficulty of standardization of that practice. How do how do you set parameters around around that? Do they do they have to have

120a conversation with a native speaker for this long and be able to understand this much? And you know, I mean, there there's so much to it or they have to read an article that's this level and be able to summarize or Yeah, I mean that it it's difficult to standardize success in that way. And it's true for I think any any curriculum that terminates with an AP class for parents. And let's be honest, parents are always looking for return on investment on on dollars, thinking credits. They always have. Whereas, you know, I think from an educational standpoint, we're looking at the learning and the experience, the engagement of the child and what does the child get out of that. Those don't always equate. And that's where we start to to bump into this into in

121terms of parent expectation. I think it's really problematic when we lead with a conversation with any parent about promising college credit for anything. They they don't always align perfectly. It just becomes a real challenge for us. That's not exclusive to DI. I think that's across all curricula. Well, yeah. And I mean to to Brian's point, if that's why the parent goes into this program, you know, we maybe not should not even mention that or you know what I mean? Certainly shouldn't lead with it. Yeah. I think it's always been uh important to us to present this as an opportunity to gain a skill that will broaden their horizons, help them with cultural competency, global awareness, provide them with skills in the workplace economically as well that are valued. Um those have been our selling points.

122We know that college credit is an option because of this the way that this has been built and we think it's a wonderful opportunity for them. But we do really try to market it as the opportunity it is and the skill that it is. And the program was designed and developed by our former governor Huntsman because of the 21st century skill need that he saw and hence the language roadmap that they created in 2009 that then you know precipitated all of this with dual immersion in the state of Utah. So it it was always meant as an opportunity for a 21st century skill to to make sure that our kids are globally aware that they're linguistically competent and talented and culturally competent as well. So has it turned into a 21st century skill that's needed

123in our workplace in Utah? I believe so. Yes. And I I would I would agree with that. It's beyond the language, the specific language. I think it's the if we look at I think we survey employers one of the highest need is critical thinking. Yep. Top thing you know and what better way to help develop students develop critical thinking than learning a language and a different culture because that a culture is inherent with a language as well. We don't have courses specific to critical thinking. They come through they're embedded through curricula. Hopefully critical thinking's in every absolutely every course. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. But forcing kids to think differently than maybe what they experience at home and experience something that's unique. And if they can find a passion in a in a culture and a language

124that's different than their own, whether that translates into a job or not, I think benefits that child. Durable skills. Absolutely. That's what you're creating. metacognitive skills that a child that go beyond you know those marketable skills in terms of employment. Yeah. To um Jeff to speak to your your your question about measuring success a a little bit. I I would be hesitant to measure the success of an of the LI with AP scores the same way that I would be hesitant to measure success of our math program by how many kids are enrolled in AP calculus. Is that same type of thing? Or or is that our success metric that we're we're only successful if kids enroll in AP Calc or 1050 and by a certain year? I I I don't think that that that's

125the best use. And and I I don't think very often parents put those on the same level that the um that oh if if my kid's not in AP calculus, that's okay. That's not for everybody type of a thing. Um but they're still learning math. They're still progressing. They're still going to graduate. their GPA, their grades are good in the classes they're take. You know, th there's other things that they use um with different content to judge success and and I think that we might broaden our our view of success um for DLI as well. It's hard to get parents to think that way. It's well, it's hard as a parent to think that way as when when you've committed to something that that you you see the good in and the value in and

126you want um you know, you see opportunity at the end of that and you want your students to achieve that opportunity. Um, it it's hard to to separate that or or like you mentioned or if if that was a motivating factor for signing up in the first place, you know, then then that's going to be your success criteria. Um, this is the number of students passing AP in ninth grade. uh in each of the three the three years that we've given AP and so as um there's there's data further on that talks about the percentages that are enrolled in in bridge and and it's based on these numbers. Um, so you can we do have some that take it in 10th grade and pass and and begin bridge courses later, but the majority of them

127that pass um or that are pass in ninth grade and take it later on. Okay, so here's our historical concurrent enrollment, our enrollment in the bridge courses. um our our Portuguese started a year earlier and so they have have those and then I think this uh this one really shows the the impact of the AP versus new. I think there's more to it than that, but I think that this slide highlights that. And this slide is the percentage of students that pass AP in ninth grade but don't enroll or are not currently enrolled in a bridge course which this one I think I felt was interesting. Um specifically you look at our our current junior class in Spanish. Um we we have 60% of our students that passed AP in 9th grade that that could

128take a bridge class are not currently enrolled. Why is that the case? I I think there's lots of reasons. Um many that I talk to um I think feel limited or want to want more electives. Honestly, I I think that's a that's a common one that I hear. Um I think some like you me mentioned, some are good with with the credit for AP. It's like, oh, okay, I'm good. I want to try other things because to that point, a DLI has taken a lot of their e elective credit. You know, as as you go through middle school, it's it it eats up some of those opportunities to try different things. And so when they if they pass, they say, "All right, I that's successful to me. I I'm going to I want to try

129different things. I want to try some of the arts classes that maybe I didn't have. I want to try some of these these different things." And and they they can do that without having to leave the program and and risk, you know, success or credit or something like that. And so I I think I see some of that, but I but I I I wouldn't be able to really speak to that quantitatively without like surveying the kids as an excive all through middle school or or orchestra or maybe have played football and now they want to try something different. And I think that's very healthy for kids to experiment with as many things as they possibly can. Yeah. while they're in public school before they make some choices. The trimester creates some restrictions on options

130for kids just their inherent when you only have five courses at trimester to choose from. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's there's a you know there's a little bit of Yeah. DL is at Ridgeline and not at Mountain Crest, but some of those students are zoned in the Mountain Crest. So, we do have kids who stay in through the ninth grade and take the AP and then move on to Mountain Crest or Bridge is not available. I think there was two students in each of those grades. I I looked at Spanish to see which of those um so I didn't count the moveouts if they moved out of district and are not currently in district. I didn't count that. But if they moved to a different school, I left them in the number. So, some

131some have moved to different schools. Okay, our last section is on teacher retention. Um Shauna will be able to better speak to the to these slides. Um do you want you want to So this would be by year. Uh the num number of so fully staffed we have 32 teachers. we would not have reached full staffing until let's see what happened. I should have thought that through. But the first year we had four teachers, right? Because we just started in the first grade, right? So, whatever year that was that they So, um, every year we've probably had the first few years we we've always had to replace a teacher. It was like one the first two years and then I would say we we average three probably a year um that we turn over. So

132is this the the language teachers or the the language teachers? Yes. Just the dual immersion teachers. Okay. So can they only stay in the program for three years? Then that would be part of it. Yes. And then they have to go back to their country. So starting in 2015 we brought in our first international guest teachers. Um right now currently we have 18 total and this and then we've got 14 or not. So um yes and a J1 visa. So when we bring teachers in they come in what's called a J1 visa which is an exchange visa. Allows them to stay for 3 years. We can extend it up to five. France for example does not allow them to stay the country itself. So the United States would allow them to stay for up to

133five years. France wants them back because they also are having their own teacher shortages for example. So you will see that we have had more French teachers than the others. Although interestingly enough, we've had 18 Chinese teachers, different Chinese teachers, 20 French, 18, it's pretty similar cost of languages. Um the yellow there is our nonimmersion teach uh guest teachers who are still in the program. Um total retention is the blue. So when you say non- guest, does that mean they are localized? So we did not bring them in on a visa. Is is the retention going to change with this latest administration and some of the immigration challenges? Do we know what that looks like? What that will look like the next few years? So we're just right now um hiring. We've hired the teachers

134for our district. Uh we're going to bring in three new guest teachers. Um I I do not know yet if there are going to be any challenges because they're just now applying for the visa. Um we made it through CO. So somehow we brought we brought teachers in CO too. I didn't think we were going to make it through that, but we did. So um I'm hopeful. But yes, the the visa game is a game sometimes. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Some of the feedback I've heard from parents, they u they appreciate these teachers that come from Peru or France or wherever it is because their dialect is so much more unique. But it's it's correct, right? And so when you have teachers here and some of them are fabulous who are from the United States

135and they're teaching and they have to be at a higher level to teach still for some of the kids and parents both they feel like there's a drop and kids sometimes lose that interest or maybe the quality of teaching isn't quite the same as someone from you know a South American country or from France. Um, well, I can't I I I mean, I can speak to the training that, you know, we work with our teachers because I'm involved with that obviously as the Portuguese, German, and Russian director on the state level. So, we do lots and lots of training. Um, those, you know, it is true that the language from a native speaker obviously is great and wonderful and the culture that they bring. Um but we have to do quite a bit of training

136um for those who are coming in from other countries to adapt to our system, right? There's that as well. So I would say there's trade-offs. There's definitely trade-offs. Absolutely. And I I would say I've found that as well. So I was the dual immersion director in Boxiller for the four years that I was there as assessment director as well. And we and that's there's a constant give and take of you know a a new teacher straight from China has has some some strong language and culture to bring but also it's wildly different system and of how to teach and manage a class of students and how to live in our country compared to what they're used to. and and then if we only have them for three years on a J1, then we're replacing a

137teacher that we've just gotten up to speed out of what we might consider not provisional anymore, right? And so there's there's a lot of give and take on on what's best and and and really it's it comes to a teacherbyteer type of decision I found as as both a principal and a director of finding finding those best people. You know, we want our students to see bilingualism. Right. Right. And that is important to see that it's happening in our country as well as others. Yeah. Um, any other questions on the data, I've taken a good chunk of your time with this and I will now turn it over to Britney. Before you step down, can we say thank you to Jeremy and to Sha? Thanks so much. You know, we were really fortunate to have

138stolen Jeremy from I hear from his former superintendent all the time. Is that on the record? That's on the record. On the record. Okay. You know, he will tell us as well. It's It's not many districts that have a state specialist on staff to help guide through the complexities of a program like this. And we're really fortunate to have Sean on staff as well. All right. I want to echo superintendent's uh comments about Jeremy and Shauna. I They are fantastic people to work with and this was a tall order to collect all this information and get it in a presentable form. So, I appreciate that. All right. Um, so I don't remember how long ago it was, but the board decided to u move our DLI elementaryaries into magnet schools. And as part of that

139um decision, we were tasked with two questions um and that you wanted us to explore and that was for us to um look at how do we improve the access and the equity of the program across the district. um specifically exploring transportation options and then also make recommendations for the secondary schools because that was not decided at the time and um I've done some work with a committee over this last few months to come up with a few recommendations for you. Um so the committee um had these objectives here um and this is what we kind of kept as our driving. We we referred back to it quite a few times cuz there's, as you know from this discussion, there's a lot of nuances to DLI and sometimes it was we would get off on

140a tangent and we'd have to remind ourselves, oh wait, let's get back to what we're we were asked to do with with um the decision to move to magnet schools. So, um, our committee makeup, we had seven parents, two representing Spanish DLI, two representing Portuguese DLI, one representing French DLI, and two representing the nonDLI community. We had two DLI teachers, four administrators representing high school and middle school. Um, Shauna was on the committee as well as myself. Um, I I was not I did not when we voted, I did not vote. So, when we talk about votes, it's everybody bumped me. I didn't um take part in that. Um we met and there there was a typo on the slides that you have so this is slightly different but we met once each month in

141um February and March not in January so ignore the January there and then we met twice in April. We started by um talking about we kind of needed an opportunity to talk about what was troublesome or scary about the move to magnets and then also what we hope for with the change. So we started with that in our first meeting and then in our next meeting we jumped into transportation. Um we explored several different ideas with transportation. Um the first one was we didn't when you consider how many students we have across this valley it's it's pretty big and so looking at transportation our first idea for tackling that was to um suggest a just a thoroughfare transportation where parents could get their kids to a a school on the along Main Street and then

142we would bus them to the magnet schools and back. And so that was our first exploration and when we met with transportation the approximate cost of that was about $880,000. Um the committee quickly decided that that was not feasible um for us to recommend. Um we then talked about just transporting from the current DLI schools to the magnet schools because those are the students who were impacted the most by the move to the magnet schools. So, um, we met with transportation who at first gave us the cost of $22,000, which seemed great. And then they added all of these other things for us to consider. Um, first of all, we would have to purchase additional buses. Um, then because they would have to change the routes for every single route in the district, which would

143in incur additional costs, it was much more than 22,000 and not really something that was quantifiable. Um, it would also require us to change the start and end times of every school in some way so that we could get kids from their home, bus them to their boundary school, bus them to the magnet school and back. And if you're not aware, most of our buses are not just serving one community. They serve multiple communities in multiple schools. So the complications outweighed the benefit of busing. So the committee also decided that wasn't feasible. So then we discussed the possibility of just providing a bus independent of our traditional bus routes. So parents get their kids to the boundary school at a different time than um the buses would normally get their kids there and then they

144would ride a bus to the magnet school and then at the end of the day they would ride that bus back to their home school or boundary school and go home. Um, and we looked at the cost of that for three years. So that it would only we'd only be offering that for three years for those students who are currently in the magnet school or excuse me, currently in the non-magnet school who would be in the magnet school. Um, the cost for that um would require purchasing a bus and it was $572,000 for 3 years for each bus. A bus fits about 80ish kids. I can't remember the exact number. we would most likely need multiple buses. So that's just for one bus. Um and so then if we didn't need to purchase a bus

145because if there is a possibility of adjusting start and end times and then using a bus that's um outside of the route schedule and if we did that it would only be 192,000. But the committee didn't feel it was reasonable to have a different start and end time than the rest of the schools. So we also decided that that was not something we wanted to recommend. So ultimately the committee felt that transportation was not something that we could recommend for the magnet schools. Sorry, I'm out of breath because I've been talking a lot and not breathing. So what questions do you have for me? Um the the as I talk to the community, those that are in DLI right now, especially Heritage, especially Sunrise and even Providence, getting their kids now who have been walking

146to school, many of them, to a new school, to a magnet school is not going to be easy. And there's a percentage of parents that won't be able to do that. Do we have some understanding of what kind of numbers that represents? Because for me, I mean, DLI is a cost to the district. You put in a lot of time. If we take, you know, 54 students and we're already not getting 54 students in some of these languages and now we drop it more because we don't have parents that can commit to that. How how does that look like? What what are these parents saying? Well, they're not really committing right now. Um, and the reason for that is we haven't had a decision for what the secondary schools look like. And so when you

147talk to the parents, and I have only talked to a few, mostly those on the committee. And so I've I would rely on the committee, a couple of who are Well, are they here anymore? Oh, yeah Heather's right here. Oh, yeah. They're they're here. um they've done a lot of talking and that's been a big concern for parents in moving to the Magnus schools which is why we spent a considerable amount of time looking at transportation. Um and we don't really know cuz they want to know what the secondary situation looks like before they really decide if they're willing to make the drive to the magnet schools. That's one of the things we've heard. Um we've also said I don't know. I I haven't decided yet. So, and then there's some that have said yes

148and some that have said no. So, we could survey them. The challenge with that is what I feel today might not be reality what happens in a year. I might say I'll drive my kids and then I change my mind or I might say I won't and I change my mind. So, it's kind of up in the air. Just a it's a big decision. It's a big investment to not know. I mean, we've invested so much to get the kids in that are in it. And I'm, you know, the idea of magnet schools made sense that the school board voted on that based on the recommendation from the district. Um, but in speaking with parents, it's a big it's a big change and we're going to lose some parents. So, how much as a district

149are we willing to sacrifice in the number of kids that will stick with the program? It's expensive to to run. We'll have fewer kids in the class. So, what's the what's the break even point? What's the point of like this might be we might have to offer transportation for example? What if we lose 30% of the kids? I I think that's a fair question and it's a it's a tough one that we're going to have to monitor. I think there's also an unknown on the other side of it as well by moving um a school into another location. We don't know how many other parents are saying, "Wow, I really want my child in that program now. It's clo it is closer to where I'm at and maybe I do want to enroll." So there

150there's unknowns of those who will choose to opt out and those who might now choose to opt in that haven't had that opportunity before because of location. I it's just there are a lot of unknowns here that we'd have to sort through. There's also another consideration and then when we move to the magnet schools we will no longer be limited by boundary and our boundary numbers have limited who can be in the program because we have to accept a certain amount of students who live within the boundary. Um once we move to the other schools we're no longer limited by boundary. We we can accept students from all over the community and it's just now by lottery. I mean, it's been by lottery before, but that limitation is gone. I agree. And I think it's

151easier in those Magnus schools to perhaps build again from the ground up. But I'm talking about existing students. If I'm a if I have a kid that's in third grade or fourth grade or second grade for those next two or three years, we're not going to have kids in those classes. And I can't just go to the Spring Creek community and say I'm I need 10 more kids in the third grade class because they're two years behind. So it's it's the next two or three years that I'm concerned about. It's not filling the first grade class. At what point do we stop accepting? Do we need to do more to understand that or are we willing to take the gamble? Well, I think there's some factors that we've got to to decide on. As Britney

152has mentioned, there's a lot of unknown about the secondary program. And I know there are families, they're waiting to determine, you know, what's the what's the uh the feeding where where's the school going to feed if it's going to if we're going to change the secondary schools, that may have an impact. U so there there are a lot of variables. I how do we start to surface that? You know, right now I don't have a an immediate answer off the top of my head how we figure it all out at least in a timely fashion. And then my my question is, okay, if we're not satisfied that then what is it that we do? Are we are we so far down this path that we are we trying to back out of that? I mean

153that you know there's a lot of on the table in terms of where we're at. we've done there. There are a lot of decisions that were made upstream if to make any dramatic changes now would have a huge impact on so many other things beyond DLI in terms of our facility use, boundary setup, new schools, right? So there's yeah, these are significant decisions. So to back out of the current I think starts to impede a lot of other decisions that are not DI. Yeah. Can we continue with this because secondary school locations is the next Y and so oh I already said this but our recommendation is that um providing district transportation was not in the best interest of the community. um our second school location, our secondary school locations was the next thing we

154discussed. Um and we we spent a lot of time discussing what does accessibility and equity of the program look like. And the first thing you think about with accessibility is transportation. We pulled that as one of the options for improving accessibility. And so what that left was what does it what does that mean now if transportation isn't one of those um items? Um so a few things the committee asked for some data to help consider the um question. Um we reviewed the current number of students at each of our DLI schools. We also reviewed the number of EL students in our secondary schools specifically those who report their primary home language as Spanish. One of the reasons we reviewed that information is we have a high Spanish speaking um population in the community as compared

155to other languages besides English. And research shows that students who have the opportunity to learn in their in both languages, their home language and and English benefit. So that was one of the things we also considered. Um, one of the interesting things that we learned with um the e student population is it was fair with the Spanish speaking it was the numbers were fairly um constant or the same. What word am I trying to think of? Consistent. Thank you. Um across all of our secondary schools, our high schools. So, we were anticipating seeing some differences across the district and they were not that different. So, um we currently have a program at all of our middle schools, but only three of our high schools. And so, right there, we felt that because it the program

156was only at three of our schools, it is not accessible to everybody in the community. And so, the best way to increase accessibility and equity of the program was to expand the program throughout the community. Um and so looking at that was kind of our our next thing. Um so we proposed several different options for secondary schools. Um we started with the Spanish program and the possible options there. And that's because um we just had a lot of questions about the Spanish parents moving to the magnet schools and not knowing we if they were committed or not. That seemed to be one of the biggest driving concerns of the committee. So that's why we started with Spanish. Um we pro proposed a few different options. I I asked the committee to write some Shauna and

157I gave them a couple of ideas and then we sent them home for a week and said let's come back in the next meeting and we'll have you guys propose more. So they proposed these options and we wrote them on the board and then we talked about the pros and cons of each of these different options. So option A was from the magnet school to South Cache to Mountain Crest. Option B was from the Magnet School to South to Mountain Crest with a three-year transition for Ridgeline students who are currently in the program at Ridgeline. So they'd started the program there and they would have the opportunity to finish the program there. um so that they wouldn't have be asked to change high schools if they wanted to continue in their DLI program. And then

158option C was the magnet school to the new Nibi Middle School to Ridgeline. Um we talked about pros and cons of each and ultimately when we talked about equity and access um option A and B provided the most equity and access to the community. And so those were the um options that were decided on by the committee. So when we voted as a committee, option B um was the unanimous decision. Everyone voted for that. Um that would be dependent on USU being willing to work with us during that transition time when we have a DI program at both Mountain Crest and Ridgeline. and we have not been able to hear back from USU because the department head is out of town. So, um, we are waiting to hear back if they're able to to work

159with us. Do you have any other comments on that communication with USU? Did I represent that correctly? Okay. Um so that was the first option that was unanimous and then um it was proposed that we vote if USU was not able to work with us what would we recommend? So we voted on option A and C and the committee voted 9 to2 for option A if option B is not feasible and that we did have one parent and then of course I didn't vote so there was one parent absent so that's why the numbers are held there. Yes. Oh, I forgot that part. So, option B, I skipped the part where it says, um, we would recommend that Ridgeline continue to offer AP Spanish for those students who don't want to, if they live in

160Ridgeline boundaries and they don't want to continue in the DLI program, they could still have an opportunity to complete um, or not complete, but have an opportunity to take an an exam and kind of culminate their years of DLI. What questions do you have for me? Were those hard discussions? Yes. Yeah. Most difficult for the heritage. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's difficult to think about, you know, we've had in our mind this is where we're we're going and now we're essentially pulling the rug out. I I don't think that's an exaggeration. It feels that way to many parents that um were pulling the rug out from under them. Um ultimately, I I don't remember who on the committee said it, but somebody said, you know, what we're we're talking about is we don't believe that a

161specific language at a specific school is important. We believe that all language at every school is important. And so ensuring each program has a language was the number one priority. And then um which language was was fairly easy on the north end because there's already two high schools. I already have a language. Those ones were easy decisions when we came down. In fact, um we can get to the next slide which is the DLI languages. I said, "Okay, we've made the decision for Spanish. Let's talk about the next three languages." Put the proposals up. And the first proposal, I wrote it on the board as they said it to me. I said, "Are there any other proposals?" Nope. you know, so that was kind of how it went for the other three languages. Um, there

162were no concerns about these proposals at all. It was mainly the Spanish that that had a lot of discussion and and concerns. Um, so the committee voted unanimously for these other three recommendations. The other ones seem easier to me. It's the Spanish. That's Eli is a complicated program. It's so good. I've met so many great teachers. I met awesome students. We spend so much time as a district with really good people to support the program. But it's it's heavy. And sometimes I think about that to try to balance the workload of our teachers and administrators who are having to balance all this. I think about is it the best use of our resources. You know, if we have 52% that are passing the English, you said 54.6 are passing the English. you know, math, science,

163and English are the core of what in my as a parent and as a leader of youth, too. How how do we focus on those things and not get overburdened by some of these other things? At the same time, we've been running this program for 10 years. Parents are invested, teachers are invested. How how do you change it? It's tough. Boxeller made a change with Chinese. Tulilla made a change with some languages. There's been 80% of the DLI programs in the United States are Spanish. In our area of the four languages we offer, Spanish from an application standpoint makes the most sense. We're taking two schools in two really busy areas and saying community members who voted for these schools to support your community. We're moving DLI kids here. um that would be about $80

164million in schools. If we were to go out and bond for that today, that'd be a tough sell. So there's just there's complicated difficult things with DLI that from from my perspective as I spent 25 years in the employment sector working with employers all over the valley and all over the state and all over the country outside of the country languages are valuable and important but it's a tiny tiny percentage of what um employers are looking for and that's not the only reason why we do these things. I understand the whole cognitive side of things. We can get that in music. We can get that in math. We get that in so we get a lot of those things from these other classes. I'm thinking about the cost and the weight to the district and

165all the time that we spend trying to run a program that we can't even get 54 kids in sometimes or we have a dip and we're trying to figure out how do we recruit more kids in and at the end of the day 06% of kids even need you know French or Chinese in any form of appointment. If I can get more kids into STEM or CTE, I can increase their earning potential by $20,000 when they graduate from high school. As a parent, I see the value in that. So, you guys probably get sick of Brian on the school board always asking these questions, but I'm looking at it as someone who's hiring these kids. I've hired about a thousand people. I work with Silicon Slopes. I've worked with three dozen employers in the valley.

166And these things aren't the first thing that employers are looking for. They need somebody who can think critically and they need somebody who can communicate really well. They need a good attitude. But these other skills that we're teaching in these classes are super valuable. And I love the cultural impact that some of these teachers make. I think it's amazing, but it's again it's a heavy lift and we're having to recruit. We're having to spend a lot of time training them. And is that the best return on our investment? So Brian on the school board that always has these DI questions, that's why is because I I question about is is this is this really what will benefit our kids the most? And if we have if we run a good DI program, are are there

167some things based on the data that we need to fix or correct or improve or adjust or modify? I mean, we're making decisions on new school buildings based on DLI. and readjusting boundaries and all these things that are super complicated. So, it's I mean, we're practicing what we're preaching right now and that is thinking thoroughly through what this means and if we're going to make these changes with magnet schools and South Cash and and Mountain, what does that mean to the heritage kids that are in a language that's the most widely used? And if we lose 30% of them or 20% of them, again, that's more cost to the district. If I have 18 kids in a class or 20 kids in a class and another class has 30, where's the equity in that? So,

168I'm I'm trying to also represent the nine out of 10 kids that aren't in DLI. We fight so hard for the one in 10 kids that are in DLI. What about the nine and 10 kids that aren't? And so, Brian, what do you see as the solution? Well, I don't want to keep going down a path that maybe is continuing to be complicated and not return the investment that we want. Um, the solution is not an easy solution. Like Todd was just saying, uh, this is really tough stuff that we're having to try to figure out. And I think you kind of commented too, I I don't know what the right choice is. All I know is that we have we have kids that love DLI in elementary school. They get to middle school and

169the interest drops. They want more electives. Um parents put their kids into DLI sometimes for status. We don't do a good job evaluating kids to make sure we're getting the right kids in the program. So, we lose some kids because of that. And and then um I don't know like every teacher I talk to wants fewer kids in the classroom. Do you like teachers love their classroom because they have fewer kids and they can focus? Well, that's not always the case. We do have in if you think about first and second grade, most of our first and second grades do not have 27 kids in them. They have a much smaller class size than that. Um, and then there are classes at the high school that have 37 sometimes. So, um, it's it's not always

170comparable. understand it's I'm just sharing my view as a parent and as a voter and as a representative people in my community. I'm glad that Mount Crest and South Cash are part of this because previously not many parents would drive from Wellsville or Mend or Petersboro or Hyum to go to Heritage or anywhere else. And that was a big part of the discussion we had as a committee is as a magnet school there's no longer going to be transportation. And so um every community will now at least have a boundary school that where their kids can ride a bus to a DLI school. So it would be in the secondary but now that every student would have access to DLI program in their boundary if they were to be accepted in the lottery. Yeah. I

171think this is really important conversation because it gets to the heart of what what do we owe each and every child? What is our responsibility to each child in terms of their learning and their engagement right at the Portuguese graduation Tuesday night for those 18 students this was the world to them and to their parents. This was their experience that they that they rely on. And I would say that as you know spending majority of my career in a high school high school administrators are making these trying to decisions all the time in terms of what is efficient and yet meeting each and every child's need. Maybe it's a lower class size for DLI, but they're also making those same kinds of decisions for jazz band or in my case, I I remember very clearly

172the year I had to make a decision. What am I going to do for where these kids six kids that want linear algebra? It's not not required part of the curriculum. They really didn't need it. I didn't really need to offer it, but that was where they at in their trajectory in terms of their learning. What? And it begs that question, what's our commitment to each and every child as we're trying to help them prepare for success in a changing world? We make decisions, these kinds of Yeah. opportunity cost decisions and looking at costbenefit analysis all the time when we're looking at, you know, master schedules at the high school of over 400 classes and how do you balance out the demands and interests of kids? Not an easy conversation, but it's a critical one

173about what do we stand for when we when we say we're about every kid. Do they all have to have the same experience or is is there something about personalized learning? What is it that connects them? And yes, we should be attuned to to future career and so forth, but there is a lot more to that learning that we're trying to help them become human and and good, productive adults. That's more than just job skills and they can learn those same things in just as well in athletics or extracurricular as as DLI. It's across the board, right? So, what is our obligation? What's our response to each and every child in our district? Yeah, I think academic diversity is important. It's good to have options, but again, at what cost? There's a, you know, we

174could say the same thing about special ed. If you want to talk about an expensive program, Yeah. that services only a few kids. And sometimes, uh, the goal for one student for a whole year is to be able to communicate that they're thirsty. But we do it. Yep. And we're bearing that cost. I think that's an important program to have. I don't know if I'm allowed to say I would just say, you know how passionate I am about this program. Yep. I remember meeting with you. I will say this. I know this program has the numbers. We all know this. We have up to this point we have had the numbers. It has functioned well. We've managed it very well, I think, in this district. Um, this will be a change. This will be another

175transition. We transitioned uh Chinese from North Park to Cedar Ridge. It was tough on those parents. The school board did a great job at transitioning and helping to make that work. I have full trust that you will make good decisions. I also believe that it's a program parents are happy with and that if they remain happy with they will continue and that is our that is our job right our job is to make sure this is if a program that is actually realizing what we want it to realize for these students who recognize its importance to them. So I I I think right now we can say that this program does function well. It is it is working. But we always will need to continue to monitor to look at and to and and we

176will need to take on the opportunity to really market and and understand what it will mean for our community to move it to a magnet school. And one of the reasons that we think putting it in those secondary tracks is if I have if I have a parent who thinks okay for six years I'll drive them to a magnet school but then in the secondary they're going to have the opportunity to be bust because you know I live in these areas that opens up some accessibility that we felt was important and I know that that's where even those heritage that's a tough tough decision to make to move to to Mountain Crest that accessibility point was it. So, um, up to this point, it has been a very excellent functioning program and the parents have

177been happy and I think we're seeing these first groups coming through. We're seeing where we're at, where we're going to continue to improve, and I can see that we're already starting to improve. Um, so I I'm I'm very hopeful, but I also recognize that numbers is what this program needs. So, we'll continue to make sure we have those numbers. And when we don't, then I think we talk, you know, very seriously about it. But right now, we've had those numbers. Do you have any other questions for me? Great discussion. I Yeah. Oh, so this is my I forgot I have one last slide. This was our recommendation for the for you to consider. So, thanks. Thanks for your committee. Yes, our committee did a lot of hard thinking. Any other discussion on DLI data and

178the committee progress report? All right, seeing we have re arrived at the end of our agenda, we will adjourn.