Jeffco Public Schools BoE Live Stream 4/10/2025

001I'm. I would like to call this meeting of April 10th, 2025 to order. Thank you to the live simultaneous Spanish interpreters for joining us tonight. We are also live streaming our meeting. Roll call. Please. Miss Harper, vice Applegate here. Miss Kenworthy. Miss Parker here. Miss, read your Doctor Barta here. Will you please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance? To the flag of the United States of America. And to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, all liberty and justice for all. The board's posted agenda calls for an executive session. However, because of the length of tonight's meeting, we're going to consider an amendment to the agenda to remove the executive session and to start our meeting tonight in public session with agenda item 8.02, Monitoring Report 1.4. Is

002there a motion regarding tonight's meeting? Agenda? I move to amend the April 10th agenda to begin our meeting tonight with agenda item 8.02. Is there a second? Second? Any objection? It's been moved and seconded to approve the agenda amendment of April 10th. Roll call please. Miss Harper. Miss Applegate, point of clarification is this just to amend that item of the agenda or is to approve the entire agenda? This is just to prove that amendment. Thank you. Yes. I, I could someone to restate the motion. I think the motion was to approve the agenda as amended. The motion was to amend the April 10th agenda to begin the meeting with item 8.02, but it didn't open up the rest of the agenda. I heard it as a motion to approve the agenda, as amended, meeting with

003the changed 8.02. Starting the meeting in lieu of an executive session. So let me clarify then. Let me restate the motion. I you were the one that. Yeah. I, I am in support of beginning the meeting with 8.02, but I would like to consider, or ask my colleagues to consider if we move the two halves of public comment together to be one section of public comment, and I'm trying to decide if now's the right time to bring that up, or if that is a labor motion. There are many ways to get that done under Robert's Rules of Order, and one is like a substitute motion or a friendly amendment. I think what might be the easiest is that the board president would approve would be to go ahead and move, only to amend the agenda

004by removing the executive session and beginning with 8.0 to vote on that amendment and then raise a separate motion. I think it's going to be less confusing. Perfect. Then I again move to amend the April 10th agenda to begin our meeting tonight with agenda item 8.02. Do we want to vote again then? We hadn't. Actually, we haven't voted yet. Okay. It will. Is there a second? Second? Any objections? No. Roll call, please. Miss Harper. Miss Applegate? Yes, miss. Kenworthy. Miss Parker. Yes, miss. Reid? Yes, doctor. Vada. Yes. That amendment passes. Are there any other amendments to the agenda? I would propose that we consider, with the length of public comment tonight, combining the two halves, such that it can all be done at once. Second, any objection? Okay. I am concerned about, the potential of

005changing it so that in the first public comment, it could go for as long as four hours, because we do have people who come and present, and I think it is, a lot to ask people to wait for hours beyond when they were scheduled to present to us. So, I'm fine with like an hour of public comment. And then at the end of the meeting, finishing up with whoever is left. But I'm, I am concerned. Do I understand correctly what you. I think you did, but I let's let's debate that a little bit because what I'm hearing you say is you're concerned having supportive order. Did we have a second? Yes. Okay. Thank you. My idea was that they wouldn't have to wait the additional hours in between. And the four hours if they're at

006the end, so that you could just do all the public comment at the beginning. Sorry. Go ahead. I think what you're saying is we don't want the public comment, the public to have to wait until the end. And you're saying we don't want our presenters to have to wait to the end? I completely agree that we should not ask our public commenters to wait until the end. I'm strongly in favor of your amendment. Okay, any other this month? This may be something that has to wait until we talk about public comment, but I'm also concerned because I saw that some of the groups have kids, and I don't necessarily want them on a school night here till super late. I just say this is like we need to be listening to folks. And they have

007signed up. They're here asking them to wait. I think it's a much larger group. We're asking to wait for a later time than our group of presenters, and I would hope our group of presenters would understand our priorities. Okay. So we've heard the positions and we've heard the motion. So I guess, Roll call please. Miss Harper, can I. So we're voting on the motion to bring it together. Yes. Thank you. Miss Applegate? Yes. Miss. Kenworthy. Miss Parker. Yes, miss Reed? No. Doctor. Varda. Yes. Okay, so that motion passes as well. And that means that. Now, is there any other amendment to the agenda for the question? Yeah. So are we. I know there was some, concern sort of back and forth. Are we also going to be having a motion to suspend policy? 17. Yeah.

008Yeah. To change the length of time that people speak in. Is this when we would do that or is that later? You'll do that when that agenda item, that portion of the agenda comes up. I do have one other proposed amendment I'd like to bring up. I believe I'm trying to find it. We have an item on here speaking to, a discussion decision on the Arvada pool. I would propose that that could be done. Since we are having a lot of time for public comment, I would propose that that's something that we could move to the next study session same time. A second. Oh, can I add I'm I'm sorry. And that potentially we may want an executive session for legal advice. Yes. Second. Good idea. Okay, so it has been moved and seconded to,

009Remove. I'm not sure what agenda item it was on the, Arvada pool. No, we pulled it. I thought 9.01. Okay, so, the motion is to pull 9.01 from tonight's agenda, and address that at a later meeting, and we have a second. Any comment? Roll call please. Miss Harper. Miss Applegate? Yes. Miss Kenworthy. Miss Parker. Yes. Miss Reed. Yes. Doctor. Vada. Yes. That amendment passes. Are there any other amendments or comments? Okay, so, the amendments have been passed. So now if we go to vote on the agenda, as amended. Perfect. Roll call please. Miss Harper. Miss Applegate? Yes. Miss Kenworthy. Miss Parker. Yes. Miss Reed. Yes. Doctor. Vada. Yes. The agenda is approved, as amended. Now, for our first presentation tonight, the board will study monitoring report 1.4. Every student will develop life skills and a

010continuous learning mindset to succeed in life after graduation. The full monitoring report is available for review and board docs. Miss Harper, will you please set of 55 for a 45 minute time? Limit for us now so we can be sure to keep on time for this agenda item. Before I turn this over to Miss Engels. Superintendent, Mr. Engels, excuse me, superintendent Dawson, do you have anything you'd like to say? Yes. Thank you, president Parker, I'd like to highlight a couple of items from this monitoring report. One that I believe is particularly good news. So as you're listening, maybe look for some of these highlights. And and then I'd also like to highlight some challenges. First I want to highlight the graduation rates for students who are participating in and committed to a CTE pathway, otherwise

011known as CTE concentrators. Are graduating at rates much higher than their peers, and the gaps in graduation rates for these students across demographic groups are much, much smaller than our general gaps in graduation rates for different demographic groups. This is something we need to pay attention to as a strong indicator of the power of relevant learning for our high school students. And when I say relevant learning, I mean learning experiences, extraordinary experiences for students that align with future workforce interests for our students. I'd also like to highlight, one major challenge from this monitoring report that I believe is particularly concerning and has been ongoing in Jeffco and many districts, but related to Jeffco for many years. We continue to have large gaps between subgroups related to our graduation rates. As an example, graduation rates for

012Hispanic students lagged the district's overall graduation rate by ten percentage points. This type of disproportionality in our graduation rate data is something we'll be looking more closely at with our high school leaders and counselors, and discussing how to intentionally address these gaps in the ultimate goal of graduation success for all students. And finally, I just as a mom of a senior who's graduating, I have to highlight one other point of success that means quite a bit to me, both personally and professionally. Since the 2021 school year, we have increased the number of students enrolled in concurrent enrollment classes, which means for our listening public that they get not only their credit for graduation here in Jeffco, but also credit for higher ed, opportunities, and credits for university credits. And we have increased, since 2021. The

013number of students enrolled in concurrent classes, but from 36 by 3600 students, approximately from 3700 in 2021 school year to approximately 7300 last school year. And thereby saving our families an estimated $7.7 million in college tuition expenses. So as a mom is sending my little young child now not so young at 18 years old, but off to her next journey. You know, I think that's a huge benefit for both our students and our families. And this puts our, our students ahead as they enter post-secondary studies at either a community college or four year college. With that, I'd like to thank Mr. Engels and Miss Waldron for the time and attention you have put into this very robust report. And the presentation tonight. And thank you also to aspiring Mr. Porter and Miss Vigil for being

014here to speak to the impact of this work in real time at our schools, Mr. Engels. Thank you. Good afternoon, board members and Superintendent Dalton. I'm glad to be here and have the opportunity to present this monitoring report this afternoon with my colleagues. As Superintendent Dalton said, my name is Todd Engels. I am the interim chief of schools. Before we start and continue on with the presentation, I'd like to make sure that the rest of the group can introduce themselves as well. Hello. Thank you for having us this evening. Heather Waldron, I'm a director for post-secondary workforce readiness. Great to see you all again. Thank you all for having me. I'm Shannon Vigilant, the proud principal of Bear Creek High School. Good evening. Thank you for having me. My name is Mike. Give your name.

015And the principal of Ralston Valley High School. And I make up Porter principal at our Battle West High School. In order to distill this rich and deep report for you in a presentation, here's a quick overview of our agenda. I would like to highlight the bottom two bullets. We do have a lot to be excited about and proud of in Jeffco, and we will certainly hit those highlights in the on track agenda item. We also know through our data and a number of other observations that we also have challenges to work on, and we're also going to make sure that we hit those in that bottom bullet as well. This particular report focuses on End Statement 3.2, which is every student will develop life skills and a continuous learner mindset to two succeed in life

016after graduation. Several key measures in this report. All are helping to tell a story about how we are doing to make sure that we are meeting this critical and statement. As you all know, Jeffco is the second largest school district in Colorado, serving 76,000 students. Often when we think about the term high schools, we tend to think of our traditional neighborhood high schools and Jeffco. We have a deep offering and also through our option remote and alternative educational campuses, a our 28 high schools have different student populations and different needs that vary by community and geography. You've heard as a board about the work that we are embarked on as a district, with our high school reimagined throughout the course of this year. Most recently, a month or so ago, one of your meetings this

017afternoon, you will hear several connections to that work. As the as the movement of all of our high schools is taken currently is related to this exciting work. I want to spend a little bit of time on this next slide. This is our on-time graduation rates and the State of Colorado On-Time graduation rates. If we take a quick look at our graduation rate data, Jeff Coe's grad rate looks to be stable over the last five years. A simple, quick look at the Colorado graduation rate indicates a stable with a slight increase over the last five years. And as we're talking about making sure that we can tell deeper stories if we take a slightly deeper look at our graduation rate data, we also understand that 19 of our high schools have a 90% or higher

018graduation rate. We also understand that Jeff Coe's seven year completer rate is 92.8%, which is 3.2% higher than the state of Colorado. The value of a Jeffco diploma in the broader context of an environment where the goal sometimes shifts to getting students across the finish line at the expense of of a quality credential. We maintain that we have the strong value of our diplomas. Later in this presentation, Heather is going to talk to you about a demonstration of this value of our Jeffco diploma by talking about a partnership that we currently have with the School of Mines. With our Jeffco and Colorado dropout rates. We also see we see the same pieces, right? We see the Jeffco dropout rate over the past five years, and the state of Colorado dropout rate over the past five

019years again looks to be relatively stable and flat. We want to make sure that we're pointing out one of those bullets, which is 12 of our Jeffco high schools have less than a 1% dropout rate, and we're very excited about that particular number as well, making sure that we're meeting the needs of all of our students. We will talk more about this particular slide throughout the presentation, and particularly at the end of our time. This number certainly looks to be higher than what we would love. And it's true. This number is this is a challenge area for us, not because of our agency staff, as they are working unbelievably hard and are dedicated to all the students that they are supporting. But for us as a system, as do we have the right structures and

020communication plans in place between our neighborhood high schools and our Aces in order to transition students from school to school. And do we have the right RC structures to support our educators while they are doing such hard work and supporting students? As we talked about at the beginning of our time a few minutes ago. We are hitting areas of on track and areas we need to improve. The information on this slide is interesting and a challenge for us. While this is the overall district data, individual schools may have similar data or slightly different data than what is showing up here. Two items that we were working on one. How are we working with our content teachers? Just not in grade nine, but also vertical content so significantly earlier grades as they're leading up to grade

021nine. To help ensure that we are addressing what we're seeing on this. And two, towards the end of our time this afternoon, we will talk about credit recovery and the important work that we need to make sure that we're doing in that area as well. Part of this monitoring report is also in regards to, some of our Advanced Placement and international Baccalaureate tests that our students are taking on an annual basis. This particular slide talks about the Advanced Placement exam results over the past several years. A couple of things that I'd like to point out on this particular slide. In the second column, you can see that over the past five years, we have increased the total number of tests taken by almost a thousand. And I would also like to point out that the

022far right column, which indicates that in the 24 school year, the percent of students that scored a three or higher on their AP test rose to a fantastic number of 74%, really indicating that the students that are taking are advanced placement tests and courses are really succeeding at a high level. The importance of documenting this with a three or higher is that at most colleges, a three or higher may qualify students for college credit as well. Thank you. And so, this slide may look familiar from our conversations about high school reimagined. But we've been doing a lot of work around what is a career pathway. Part of our goals within 1.4 is making sure our students are ready for whatever their post-secondary life might look like, and this is one of the ways that we

023work towards that goal. So just as a reminder, when we talk about our career pathways in Jeffco, we're talking about students having access to two or more years of career connected, vertically aligned learning. They have active industry advisors and partners that are parts of their programs. They have student leadership opportunities through our, CTA. So sorry, I just forgot for a moment. Through our organizations, and that all of those opportunities are aligned to high demand, high wage careers. The piece that we're really excited about to share with you all, and Superintendent Dalton was able to touch on this amount, a little bit during our introduction is the graduation rates that we see for our students that are concentrated in these CTE pathways or these career connected programs. So concentrators are for our students that have done

024two or more years worth of that coursework. Right? So they found something that they really enjoyed. They see a future in it and they commit to that program. And what we see is that when our students have that experience, our graduation rates are significant higher than our overall graduation rates. The piece that we're especially excited about is, if you look at the last two columns and you have the opportunity to compare our subgroup gaps, within our concentrate, our data compared to our subgroup gaps, overall. So we're seeing that across the board. If our students really do have that, that focused future, we're reaching that graduation number, at significantly higher rates. Can I just pause for a second? So this is like one of my points of pride. So I just want to go back and

025forth between a really robust report of many, many pages, and this presentation. So when you look at this CTE concentrators by subgroup and you check the, for example, economically disadvantaged graduation rate for CTE concentrators, which is that third column, fourth column to the right, 95.7%. When we look at the graduation rate for 2324 for economically disadvantaged students overall in Jeffco, it comes in at 72.6. So we're looking at a 20 point percentage difference for students who are connected to learning a learning pathway that shows them a career option at the end of the tunnel. And I just think that's incredibly powerful data that we all need to take stock in and really dig in deeper, figure out how we can expand those kinds of opportunities, especially for students who may be, in categories that are

026less likely to be on track to graduate just through our traditional comprehensive high school experience. Thank you. Okay. I will point out that this is our the reason that we're here at the 22 to 23 grad data in here, compared to the 2324 that you might see throughout the rest of the report, is just based on the lag that we have as we communicate back and forth with the state in the space. So. Another area of pride that we have in these, programs is that oftentimes our students have the opportunity to earn a certification and that those certifications are approved at the state level, by board of industry members that really say that these certifications set students up for high wage, high demand careers upon graduation. We've talked before about how sometimes students will use

027that as an opportunity to work within the field as they pursue a post-secondary degree. Sometimes students will use that to go directly into the workforce. And then they may and reenter that post-secondary degree option later. We've seen significant growth in these areas by really working side by side with our school leaders to build out these programs. You will see fluctuation in this data year over year, because that list is approved at the state level year over year. Sometimes, like when you see the large drop that occurred at Warren Tech, while some of that may have been attributed to Covid, a lot of that was also that certifications that used to be valid were no longer valid. Right? Until we have to reassess, because we want to make sure that our students are leaving with the

028skills and certifications that really are going to make a difference as they go forward. Okay, I'm going to I'm going to jump in again because this is also like striking to me. So since we, started work in around high school, reimagined and really taking a more broad look at, certifications, I think it's important. And we're all going to be working on communication and helping our families understand that these, industry certifications and opportunities for career pathway work doesn't just exist at Warren Tech. And I know we have long waitlists at Warren Tech. It's something we're also trying to work on. But when you look at the number of students earning certifications at their home high school in 1920 and 2021, compared to 2324, that is a striking improvement. And so it's an important message for us

029to get out that we have certification programs not only at our Warren Tech campuses, which are amazing. We also our high school principals of our comprehensive high schools, and their teams are doing incredible work to make sure that the the coursework that kids have opportunities to take in their traditional high schools is also aligned to career readiness and certification opportunities. So thank you to our high school principals for doing that work. Thank you also to our Warren Tech team for the support they provide and making sure that we can have these opportunities not just in our Warren tech sites, but also our traditional high schools. This is evidence that we are making progress, both what we call high school reimagined and the opportunities that kids have to receive these certifications and be ready for a

030career as they walk across the graduation stage. Thank you so much. And I think one piece that I'll also add in on that last call, this is a duplicated student. So we sometimes have students that will graduate with 2 or 3 different certifications because of the different opportunities I've had in their schools and in their programs. But this is individual students. This is what we're reporting in this data. So I'm really excited to as Superintendent Darlene mentioned, the work that's really happening within our schools to make this happen. Is why we've been able to bring some of our high school principals along with us. So I'm excited to hand it over to make up your name from Roslyn Valley High School to talk about the work that she's been doing there in the space. Thank

031you. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much. So when I was asked to come and speak about how we strengthen the pathways at RVI, what we did was we started with the. Why? So when I met with our teachers, we started with really helping teachers understand the need around strengthening CTE pathways. And we started by looking at our state, our district and our school matriculation rates. So we talked a lot about that. And we also talked about the Colorado paradox. And what that is is really 70% of Colorado jobs require a certificate or some sort of post-secondary education. So only 50% of high school students in Colorado go on to attend college. And we know that. So if we know that many of our students are not college bound or even if

032they are college bound, we know that obtaining a certificate in high school will help them not be at an economic disadvantage when they pass high school, so obtaining a certificate while in school is very important. So when I met with my teachers, we talked a lot about that, and we looked at the data and we looked at the whole picture. And so, the first thing we did is we sat down and we, I asked them to audit their pathways, and I said, I want you to look at all of your pathways, and I want you to look at them through three lenses. So first, do you have a complete pathway as Superintendent Dalton was talking about? Will there be completers within that pathway? Next are your pathways offering some sort of certificate for students. And

033finally, are we offering tier two work based learning experiences for our students? Are we moving beyond having speakers come in but really offering internships and connecting students with industry? That's really important. So we did that, we also connected with, as Heather mentioned, we really talked a lot about, what is the support that our teachers need. And so we brought in our post workforce readiness team from the district, and we had multiple meetings with them. And we talked about let's look at our pathway development and our certification in alignment. Let's look at the actual curriculum in our classes. And are we obtaining is there an opportunity for them to receive a certificate and if not, why? What are the barriers and how can we get past those barriers? Mike is going to speak a little bit

034about the challenges and how we overcame those as well. Finally, the one thing that we did is we looked and I stole this idea from Micah at West was we looked at the funding that comes through, the state. So when our students receive certificates of some sort, the state gives us funding back to the district and that a lot of that funding goes back directly into the programs. Of those pathways. And so we looked at that and we said, okay, we have many pathways, but not all of them are receiving certificates. So how can we expand the opportunities for our students? And so what we did is we sat down with our teachers are CTE teachers, and we said, okay, let's look at your funding. And how about you keep 50% of that funding and

035we put the other 50% towards a CTE, C dip bank. And what that allows us to do is then take that other 50% and spread it across all of the CTE pathways in order to really expand those and help them with the startup cost and, and help provide certificates with students so they don't we're not charging students fees for them to take these tests. The seed money that we receive back from the state, and we're using that money to pay for the cost of certificates. So when students graduate, they are college ready or career ready or both. So I stole that from Micah. Thank you. Micah. So one, I just wanted to highlight one of our programs that we just recently, expanded on is not only do all of our CT programs and our 11

036pathways, almost all of them, provide some sort of certificate and concurrent enrollment. But we recently started two years ago, something called, and I'm sure you're aware of this is geometry and construction. And our students not only receive one certificate, but two certificates, both in the fall and in the spring. And they are, both of those certificates. Students are very excited about. And we started when we the first enrollment that came through was 52 students. And since then almost half of our sophomore class and we have almost 500 kids next year are enrolled in our geometry and construction. And so that means many, many sophomores are going to be moving forward with certificates, not just one certificate, as Mrs. Waldron said, but two certificates. So those are just a few of the things at Ralston Valley

037that we have done to, and it's possible for all schools to do, to really expand the opportunities for our students and make sure that they are ready for, life after high school. Thank you. So my topic, I'm going to talk a little bit about things and strategies that we've employer employed over the last two years that at Arvada West, as well as as conversations that Mike and I have had over the last couple of years about expanding CTE programing is how we've done it, how what are the strategies and the supports that we've had at the district level that have allowed us to actually accomplish this? My time at Warren Tech, taught me that this is a very complicated process, and there's a lot of federal, state, and local hoops to jump through to meet

038these goals. So first, I think having the post workforce readiness team to support schools is essential. We could not do this work in a vacuum. Mike and I talk regularly about ways that we're implementing these in both of our schools and feed off each other, but knowing that Heather and her team are there is is really essential to, to navigating this complex work. And then I think the the liberty and license that that district leadership is given us to explore and be creative and progressive about how we schedule, how we give kids options for other ways to earn credits. All of that has opened up opportunities for students. That was not there to begin with. So and a lot of that begins and starts with CTE. We also did a program review and an audit

039of of our CTE offerings. And really one of the ways that that really advanced our, certificate programs is our teachers advocated for it. They knew the advantages that our students would receive by earning certificates. So I think day two and my job, at a West the CT teachers were in there talking about the certificate advancements that they wanted to add to the programing. And so having teachers that advocate for those advancements is critical. The why as well, to add a little bit to that is our students told us, they told us they wanted this in the, in the ALC data and the panorama data. Our score engagement scores are not where they need to be. Not only the West, but I think district wide. We see that and our CTE engagement scores triple that. So

040our students just in the way that they're sharing what they want their learning to look like, made it very clear as a building leader that that we needed to advance these offer offerings to to our students. And we one of the things that strategies that we employed this year and we did an industry, advisory night where we had over 35 industry partners in TI West. They had scheduled meetings with our all of our pathway, programs, and they meet and they discuss what is it that industry needs to see from our graduating seniors. That's a requirement by CTE. But we did it in a way that was very robust. We had it was almost an event as opposed to just a meeting, and it allowed for all of our teachers to see the opportunities that students

041had and the what our industry professionals were telling us, that input that we received from industry guides, our programing. It lets us know what certificates that we should be offering, which certificates are outdated, and what we need to plan for for the future. Everything from equipment to, the certificate programing to OJT and work based learning experiences. So that's an essential part and a strategy that has to be implemented in schools that are really advancing CTE work. We also, we really reprioritize our budget this year to hire a career hub coordinator. Through working with Heather's office, it's really technically a work based learning coordinator, but that individual is solely dedicated to supporting our CTE teachers. The paperwork alone for CTE teaching is it's really, I won't say insurmountable, but it really does drive quality educators away

042from career and technical education because of the additional responsibilities. So we added a career hub coordinator that really helped manage all of that work for our CTE teachers, who also have three four preps. And so their their challenges are different than a typical gen ed teacher. And to attract quality educators to CTE programing. We built up that, that position so that they can help manage, that workload with our teachers. That's been a game changer for our school, but also has taken a hit on our budget. But something that we essentially need to do and then, you know, just really it's clear and I think we all know this money motivates and the the funding that we get back for certificates is really has a significant impact on how we can advance our programing potential FTE

043coverage. We actually use some of our CDP money to, to be able to hire a full guest teacher this year so that they could be in the school year while our students were experiencing an industry, opportunities with their their classroom teacher outside of the classroom. So there were a lot of there are a lot of advantages, obviously, to to adding and growing CTE programing. But you have to be really strategic as to how you budget and how you use those funds. So that it can be done in a way with, with great, fidelity by talking about challenges as well. You've hit a few of them. Okay. Yeah. I did talk about a few of the challenges. But one of the things that I think Mike and I both learned is it's really important that we're

044talking to each other about the programing that we're offering. It doesn't make sense for both of us to be offering a highly specialized program in the North area. So that's something that that high school reimagine is tackling is how can we offer these programs outside of Warren Tech that students from Pomona, Ralston Valley, Stanley Lake, Arvada West, Arvada can have access to? That's going to be a big challenge logistically. Scheduling conflicts, transportation. That's something that we don't have the answers to yet. And we're we're exploring. We will. Scheduling complexities are really hard. You know, CTE, they have a lot of singleton courses. So that pulls educators away from gen ed courses. It it increases class sizes for a lot of gen ed programing. So we're really having to be thoughtful about how we balance that.

045As a school. And then probably the biggest one and I've had several conversations with Heather about this is transportation. We have to we have to have easy access for our students to go out and work with our industry partners without having to wait two weeks to get a bus or the bureaucracy of of, field trip forms. You know, there's there's some things that we can do and provide those opportunities for students that we really need to explore as a district. We talked about funding for, a bus or a small, you know, a small vehicle that would allow our educators to get, our students where they need to be. We don't have that yet. So that's an we're a school that is growing in enrollment and has a healthy budget. And that's a huge barrier. But

046we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. And the other the last thing I wanted to to mention about a challenge is that we have a lot of work as leaders to make sure their teachers are. Offering programing that is student centered and not teacher centered. And that's just something that that is part of the shift from a more traditional view and education to a more progressive view, where we want our students and industry to be guiding what we're teaching, not our educators deciding what interests them and offering to students. So there's there's all of these are not, insurmountable challenges. And we've already had started talking about strategies of of ways to solve them. And we're excited about, about what the next steps for certificates and CTE might look like, not only in the north

047area, but throughout the county, too. Thank you guys for sharing the work that's happening at schools. I think the thing that we're most excited about is that these are conversations happening at every high school as a part of our high school reimagined work. I'm going to try to move this along relatively quickly. I know Superintendent Dalton highlighted the success as well of really just seeing that continued increase growth, within concur and enrollment across our system. I'm going to mention a couple strategies previous at a district level to support this work and then hand it over to Shannon to our ten miss. Be able to talk more about what's happening at Bear Creek High School. We've really been focused on a variety of areas in the space. One is decreasing the spaces where our students have

048had to pay for credit in the past, which is the dual enrollment, in order to increase concurrent enrollment opportunities. We've been working with our teachers that are really close to being able to offer concurrent enrollment and doing tuition reimbursement programs to help get them over the edge. To be able to offer these courses. We've also been doing some really intentional work of cross walking, AP and concurrent enrollment courses. So if an AP teacher is offering AP biology, they can kosi that with a concurrent enrollment opportunity. That's some of the areas that we've seen this growth. And we like Shannon Talk for just a couple of minutes about what's happening at Bear Creek as well. I was told to go kind of quick. And I can we really dug in two years ago to the way,

049just like Micah and Micah did. We really talked to our teachers, and I even showed them, report card of my grandmother's from South High School and mine from Lakewood High School, and my daughter's from Columbine High School, and we all took the exact same courses, even though 100 years had passed. So what we decided as a staff was that we were seeing all the struggles post-pandemic, and we decided we really had to increase the relevancy within the classroom. We had to deeply invest in the work of high school reimagined. And not only is it the certificate work that we're all working on, and definitely Micah and Mike are leading the way in that, but it's also this concurrent enrollment piece. And at Bear Creek High School, where 50 over 50% of our students are economically

050disadvantaged and over 70% of our students are students of color. We really wanted to expose our students to rigor and college level expectations, because if we don't increase the rigor and the expectation, then we're perpetuating inequity. So we tackled this by going from having just a handful of concurrent enrollment courses in two years to having 32, and we've saved our families over $2 million in tuition. And I'm very proud of that. And what we had to do is literally beg our staff to bring in their transcripts from college and master's degrees. And then we audited them with help from Heather's team to say, hey, here's something really cool you could teach and much more practical, and we'll get kids college credit before they graduate high school. And we've been able to do that. We went,

051just this year, we've had 441 students already obtain college credit, and we think we'll have 800 more this semester. So we're really proud of everything. It took a lot of work by our teachers taking extra classes, spending money out of their own pockets to advance their own education so they could qualify to do this. And we've supported them where we can. And now our families and students are just reaping the benefits. I could say a lot more, but that's the quick version. Thank you. And yeah, the the growth that's happened at Bear Creek has been such a huge team effort, from their counseling department to their teaching staff, their school leadership team. We've been really excited to to see what's been happening over there. So the last piece that I get to share with you

052all is something that has been, an extra bonus for all of us this past spring. We've been having it. We have a close relationship with many of our post-secondary partners. And when it comes to our Stem programing, we're fortunate enough that right within our own backyard, is a Colorado School of Mines. And so as we've been building out Stem programs and Stem opportunities, we work very closely with Bynes to make sure that that aligns to what our students will need to be successful in a in a high level post-secondary program. Like the like those that they offer at mines. And we've offered a Stem endorsed diploma, which is a, a state legislated diploma endorsement. We've offered that for a number of years, and we've worked closely with mines across the development and implementation of that

053program. We're incredibly excited that this year, Minds has been recognizing the phenomenal work that's coming out of Jeffco schools, and how prepared our students are to say that if students meet our Stem endorsed diploma requirements, along with a couple of other pieces, they want to make sure that students, they're looking for a 3.8 GPA. They're looking that students have, you know, completed at least through like Pre-Calc. They don't need to be accelerated in math, but they want to see a fourth year of math and college and high school transcripts. Really basic requirements, along with that Stem endorsement, that they're going to allow those students to have a guaranteed admission opportunity to Colorado School of Mines, should that be where they choose to go to, to pursue their studies? We're excited about the idea of being

054able to keep our students here within our community, and knowing that they can continue on on that post-secondary path and their career opportunities here at Jeffco. So this is something we're all excited about. So we've talked a lot about throughout this entire presentation, about a lot of the numbers that we're very proud of to be on track. We've talked a lot about, and acknowledge some of the areas that, we have as ongoing, pieces that we want to make sure that we're working on. I think the piece that I want to highlight prior to turning this over for any questions are the two slides that our principals chimed in on, and that is this. I think that I think they all said it well of when we if we have principals telling teachers what to do,

055that's not going to be sustainable and we're not going to see this explosive growth in some of these numbers that we're seeing, the why that has been shared with them has been absolutely shared with our teachers. And these results take a tremendous number of teachers and authentic, genuine involvement and commitment and dedication from our teachers to be able to make this happen. So I really appreciate, our principals that have been able to help our, our staff understand, the critical components of this work. And I think with that, we will turn it over for any questions with remaining time. Thank you. Board members. Comments, questions read. I have a question. I am excited, by how well we're doing with kids taking AP and concurrent enrollment classes. The thing that I feel like is kind of missing

056from there is that we talked, we broke some of the other things down into, subgroups, showing how some of our more traditionally underserved kids are doing. And I'm wondering, what data we are keeping on. Whether or not all students are getting into AP classes and concurrent enrollment classes at at the same proportion that they are in the population, or are we seeing gaps there as well? And if we're seeing gaps, what are we doing about that? I can answer the first part of that question, and then we'll have one of our principals chime in. The first part of that question is the information that we are getting back from AP is not broken down into some of the subgroups. So we are giving the information. Although if we had the deeper pieces, we would certainly

057make sure that that was available. But I do want to make sure that our principals can answer that second part of that question about what they're seeing with student enrollment in those courses. The first thing we all thought of and, Mike, I just whispered it in my ear. So I'm going to echo her thought because it was the same as mine. And a lot of our CTE pathways. That is where the concurrent enrollment is tied in. And I think we have really good data to support that. Those are reaching those subgroups within our own schools. I know I do, but yes. Okay. Across the board. And then the other thing I would say is we there are gaps. There's always been gaps in our AP and honors course offerings, with those subgroups. And even today

058I have two administrators and two counselors within AP for all and a and a conference out at the Gaylord Hotel today trying to troubleshoot and brainstorm with other leaders across the state in the district about how to increase enrollment for all students into the concurrent enrollment and AP course offerings. So I'm excited that that is something we're desperately trying to close that gap. Usually, I try to give people a heads up when I'm going to ask for data, and I just didn't think of it in time. But if if we could sort of get an idea of that at some point, maybe in our Friday update of how, you know, what are those numbers looking like for us, I would appreciate it. Thanks. And we can, we can definitely pull enrollment data for some of

059those. As, Mr. Angles mentioned, we're not necessarily getting the demographic data back on the reporting end, but I can also work with our data team to see where we can find President Parker. We are at time for this section of the agenda. Just a quick question. If you have a comment, I'm happy to send questions by email afterwards. Just really appreciate this work. It's super important. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay. Yes, I do know that. Thanks very much. It's very exciting to see where this is going. And I am going to call a very brief five minute, recess, break right now to make sure we get all our recognition people, seated. I see a lot of, empty reserve spots. So, as quick as we can get that, we'll be back. In. Okay. Welcome

060back. Everybody. Every month, the Board of Education has a pleasure of recognizing students, staff, schools, and community members for their achievements and contributions to our community. Now, we will move into honors and recognitions for our first recognition of the evening. The Board of Education is pleased to honor Tim Reid, Executive Director of Facilities and Construction Management, for providing outstanding service in maintaining and upgrading our Jeffco facilities. Will Tim please come to the front of the board, the board room to receive the our people, our strength, recognition? I have more to say. I have way more to say. Under Tim's leadership, over 300 projects within the facilities and construction management teams have been completed. Projects have ranged from new builds to athletic field upgrades. A few notable highlights throughout Tim's career include projects with Kendrick Lakes,

061Prospect Valley, Marsh Dale, Sierra, Warren Tech, South Green Mountain High School, Fletcher Miller and Alameda International. Tim was instrumental in leading an $836 million voting, voter approved capital improvement campaign which supported safe and modern facilities for Jeffco students and families. In partnership with the Environmental Services team, Tim oversaw efforts to remove lead and drinking water throughout Jeffco. Additionally, Tim supported the implementation of water conservation efforts for Jeffco. Tim is a strong advocate for staff development and was a vital stakeholder in the modern registration of new equipment for custodial services, as reflected in our Jeffco Thrives priority priorities. We firmly believe that our people are our strength. Throughout his tenure with Jeffco Public Schools, Tim has consistently demonstrated a collaborative and inclusive approach to leadership. His contributions have significantly advanced instructional excellence and enhance the overall

062educational experiences of our students. Please join us in celebrating the remarkable achievements of Tim Reid and his outstanding service to Jeffco. Through his leadership, he championed numerous programs and initiatives that have had a lasting impact on our students and families, and will continue to do so for years to come. With heartfelt gratitude, we extend our appreciation and wish him all the best as he begins his retirement from Jeffco. And for our next recognition of the evening, I'll hand it over to Director Applegate. We often say these are some of the bright spots of our meetings. And so, this is one that I'm really excited for. I'm proud of as an alumni of the Colorado School of Mines. The partnership that I'm about to talk about is is just incredible to me. And as Miss Walton

063mentioned earlier, we have a gem in our backyard. And I'm super excited that we are we are utilizing it with that. The Board of Education is pleased to recognize Liz Cox and the Colorado School of Mines for a unique and generous partnership that guarantees Jeffco students who graduate with a Stem endorsed diploma from any Jeffco high school will automatically be eligible for admission into any four year Bachelor's of Science degree program at mines. Will this please come to the front of the boardroom to receive the our community, our legacy recognition? Act? I also have more to say. The Colorado School of Mines is a top rated research university located here in our backyard in Jefferson County, Colorado. School of Mines is ranked as the third best engineering college in the United States. The newly established

064partnership between the Colorado School of Mines and Jeffco Public Schools will foster opportunities for Jeffco students with an aptitude and interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The opportunity for our students who are passionate about Stem to build on the current skills and experience they develop in high school and directly transition to a prestigious institution like mines is inspiring and meaningful investment in their education. Mr. Paul Johnson, the president of our Colorado School of Mines, has said, quote, by providing a guaranteed admission pathway, we are ensuring that Jeffco students who demonstrate excellence in Stem have the opportunity to pursue a world class education and earn a highly valued degree while staying close to home, creating positive, mutually respectful and trusting connections with Jeffco families and our community partners supports student success as emphasized through a

065Jeffco Priority Check. Authorized Priority our community, Our Legacy. This partnership between Jeffco and the Colorado School of Mines is a pillar of pride and demonstration of our value for excellence, so please join us in celebrating the Colorado School of Mines for fostering student success and opportunity in Jeffco and Go orders. And with that, I get to pass it to Director Reid. Thank you so much for our final celebration of the evening. The Board of Education is honored to recognize Ken Sweet and the Kiwanis Club of Columbine for their ongoing commitment to supporting Jeffco kids, students, and families through their contributions to school programs, student recognition, and generous monetary donations. The Kiwanis Club of Columbine plays a vital role in our community. We deeply value and appreciate their support. Well, Ken Sweet and other members of

066the Kiwanis Club of Columbine, please come to the front of the board room to receive the our community, our legacy recognition. The Kiwanis Club of Columbine is dedicated to serving the local community through various service and fundraising projects. The nearly 70 member club has been in service to our community for more than 40 years. Kiwanis empowers communities to improve the world by making lasting differences in the lives of children. Kiwanis strives to be a positive influence in communities worldwide, so that one day, all children will wake up in communities that believe in them, nurture them, and provide the support they need to thrive. Our partner at the Kiwanis Club of Columbine has developed positive, mutually respectful and trusting connections with our Jeffco families. Their commitment embodies our Jeffco thrives priority of our community, our legacy

067through school science fairs, recognizing students of the month, generously offering monetary donations, sponsoring key clubs in multiple high schools, and partnering with the Jeffco Action Center to distribute summer food bags to families. The Kiwanis Club of Columbine has been and continues to be a trusted and reliable partner for Jeffco Public Schools. Please join us in celebrating the Kiwanis Club of Columbine for supporting programs and initiatives for our Jeffco Student. A sincere thank you to all our recognition honorees this month. It is our pleasure to honor you for your commitment to our community. Now, we will turn to our board proclamations. The board publicly recognizes special events and significant issues by issuing proclamations in the month of April, we are commemorating World Autism Day, which was April 2nd. National School Librarian Day, April 4th, National Student

068Athlete Day, April 6th, Columbine day of service coming up April 20th. Day without Hate April 26th. Public School Volunteer Week, the week of April 21st through 25th and Child Abuse Prevention Month, which is the month of April. We encourage you to read the Jeffco School Board's proclamations. Items 5.01 through 5.07 are presented in board docs as proposed proclamations for the month of April. Do I have a motion regarding the approval of proclamations? I move to approve items 5.01 through 5.07 on the action proclamations section, as published in board docs. Is there a second second? Any discussion? It has been moved and seconded to approve the April proclamations as presented in board docs. Roll call please. Miss Harper. Miss Applegate. Yes, miss. Kenworthy, miss Parker. Yes, miss Reed. Yes, doctor. Vada. Yes. And the proclamations are

069approved. So now we will turn to public comment. As part of a collaborative agreement we reached with JCA and Jasper. During collective bargaining negotiations, the board reserves the first 20 minutes of public comment for our association's ten minutes each for Jasper and JCA to address the board regarding negotiations, processes and interests. In addition, we have well over 30 members of the public signed up for public comment. Policy. Board policy JB 17 provides that when we have 30 or more speakers signed up, the speaking time is reduced to one minute per speaker and three minutes per group. I hesitate to impose that type of a restriction on, such on short notice. I think we may have a discussion on this here. I would like to entertain a motion to waive that language in favor of using

070the time limit set by policy for 20 to 29 speakers, and those limits would be two minutes per speaker and five minutes per groups. Is there a motion to waive the, one minute and three minute time limits under JB 17 and allow tonight's speakers and groups two minutes and five minutes, respectively? May I amend that motion, or do we need to vote on that motion first? Well, that motion hasn't been made and it sounds like maybe it isn't forthcoming. So an alternative motion is certainly appropriate. I would I would propose, to my colleagues that in light of a lot of interest in public comment, and the belief that, these items that folks are bringing to us are really important to them that we waive 17 of them in its entirety and let folks speak for

071the full time, understanding that this means there would be a pretty significant amount of public comment. Is there a second, second? Any comments? So my comment is not really to oppose this. It is, just to make the statement that. Either you have a policy and you use it or you don't. And if what we're deciding is that this policy does not serve, the interests of the public or the board, that not tonight, but that at a future date we revisit whether or not we should have this policy at all. Thank you. I agree, I just also wanted to say so that folks realize, why this came up to I believe that our public comment time will be set for about 3.5 hours if we stay with the time limit. So I just do want to

072acknowledge we I think that is what Director Applegate is suggesting. And and I will agree. It does mean some people won't speak for about two and a half, three more hours. And so I just want to acknowledge that people will be here for a very long time in order to speak and to have that full time. So I know that's hard on on everyone, especially families. And we all work. So, but I do appreciate people are here and want to make sure we give them time. And I if I can add. I'm sorry, President Parker. I think it's also important that folks understand maybe those who aren't here, because those of you who are here probably do understand this, that when you sign up for public comment, that doesn't necessarily set the order. And so

073when folks arrive, they get a number. And so for those listening public that might have seen what was what was posted publicly, that is not necessarily the order that folks will be speaking in. So I just want to clarify that for our listening public. So I will go back then to my motion to waive GP 17. It's in its entirety. Okay. So we are ready for a roll call. Please. Miss Harper. Miss Applegate. Yes, miss Kenworthy, miss Parker. Yes, miss Reed? Yes, doctor. Vada. Yes. Okay, so that motion passes. I also just want to clarify, because my script is not going to be appropriate right now. We also moved to change the agenda earlier so that there will be just one, continuous session of public comment. There will not be a breaking it into two.

074So, all right. So we will start with the associations. And just want everyone to know that, public comment is an opportunity for the community to share their thoughts with the board during public comment. The board does not engage in discussion with or respond to individuals. As you just heard, we, waived GP 17 and we are going to have all the public comment at once. I do want to mention that there is an overflow room right now at four E. There may be some people there, waiting. They want to have their chance for a public comment. So if anyone in the room completes their comments and wants to go down to the overflow room and and watch from there, the rest of the, the meeting so that others can take the seats so that they can

075comment. Okay. So there will be a three minute time limit per individual speaker if there are four or more people who sign up to address the board, they will have ten minutes to collectively present their group view. And I think we have, representatives from JCA and Jasper here. Correct. So, JCA, do you have someone to come speak? Welcome. Please introduce yourselves. And you have ten minutes. All right. Brooke Williams, art educator and JCA president. Rob Cassidy, science teacher at Stanley Lake High School. Michelle Miller's Spanish teacher. Green Mountain High School. And a third grade teacher at Hackberry Hill Elementary. Dale Mulholland, JCA vice president and American history teacher at Pomona High School. Richard Sanchez, I teach sixth grade social studies at Bell Middle School, and I'm also Jesse's organizing action team chair. Stephanie Jones, JCA

076member and, Stoney Creek self. All right, good evening, directors. Barta, Reed, Parker, Applegate and Kenworthy. We we're here tonight on behalf of JCA to provide an update on the state of bargaining. But also to share deeper concerns about the direction of our district and the future of public education in Colorado. We know that for our students to thrive, they must be at the center of every decision. And for that to happen, educators must be a priority and action, not just in words. Right now, educators across Jeffco are sounding the alarm. We are calling for meaningful investment, collaborative leadership, and transparency, not just at the bargaining table, but throughout every level of district decision making. This year, Jake here has been an advocate not only for fair compensation and affordable health care, but also for stronger

077educator voice and critical decisions from changes at alternative education campuses to the future of Jefferson Junior Senior High School. We're asking you to listen to people closest to the work, the educators in our classrooms, parents, students, and communities, and to take a bold step to restore trust, ensure equity, and build the sustainable future of our for our schools, for the future of our schools. We also stand firmly behind seniors brighter priorities at the state level. Increased education funding, improving accountability to support students and educators, the protection of worker rights, the defense of our public schools from privatization and a commitment to safety and dignity for all students regardless of gender, race, immigration status, or socioeconomic background. These values are not abstract. They're directly connected to the daily realities we face in Jeffco and the policies

078you choose to support. Tonight, we are presenting a letter signed by our elected building association representatives across the district who believe it's time for action. We ask you to read their words, take them to heart, and join us in creating the kind of collaborative, transparent, and value driven district our students and educators deserve. Finally, I want to acknowledge that during our joint, negotiations with Jasper, the district agreed that UHC would come and publicly answer questions at the table so educators and ISPs could get answers to questions they have about the switch to the sheriff's plan. Today, Adam Barnett informed us that UHC will come at 330 next Thursday before our bargaining session begins, once again pushing what should be a public conversation behind closed doors. I'd like to mention that many of our educators and

079ESPs cannot even make a 330 time. We need the district to honor their commitment to have UHC at public bargaining, at the public bargaining table, and provide educators and ESPs with the transparency they deserve. Thank you for your time and your commitment to public education. Last Thursday, the district offered JCA steps and lands and to honor salary commitments made for appendix B, our coaching and activity sponsor schedule, which were made in prior bargaining sessions. Although the district speculated that the proposal would have a cost of $8.5 million, there were several oversights in these calculations. First, the district minimized turnover from their calculations, ascribing a step in lane cost of $6.9 million. However, since employees generally enter lower and exit higher on the schedule, the total cost of staff's mathematically must be cost neutral over time.

080Despite some annual fluctuation. If we accept the district's cost assumptions at face value in approximately 16 years, every single employee will be at lane six. Step 22 and earning the maximum salary possible, which is an unrealistic assumption. Second, the fact the district did not re-up the 2% stipend at a savings of approximately $8.5 million was not noted. Third, the district did not include a reduction in staff of 63 JCA full time employees at a savings of nearly $7 million. All told, JCA calculated calculates that the district financial proposal will actually result in the district spending approximately $14.5 million less next year on GCA unit employees, which makes us wonder how deeply management values us. Furthermore, although the district stressed the continued loss of students, they failed to mention that our JCA bargaining unit is decreasing.

081It didn't even faster aid. For example, next year it's projected teachers will decline at over 2% and students had only 1.2. Because of this loss of educators, money is actually being freed up to spend on other priorities. Further removed from students, such as sizable increases in central administration staffing. Is this the message we really want to send? As the district benefits have also been a frustrating barrage of no's. Next year, most employees will take home fewer dollars than last year. In real dollar terms, this ranges from less than, earned from roughly $100 for recent hires with individual insurance to well over 3500 for those with family medical coverage and those at the top of the schedule. After accounting for inflation. These losses range from well over $1,000 to nearly $6,000. The district team has said

082no to nearly every monetary item, including reducing special education class, caseloads, saving that money, saying that that money will be saved for compensation, but then offered a compensation proposal that drastically reduced spending on the GCA bargaining unit. With over $7 million being expected from the state. Is this how we should be valuing those on the front lines in the classrooms of our district? Every bargaining season has a different plotline and points of conflict, and this year it feels like we're in the season of just now to begin, not to be and to continue our bargaining article eight, which is class size and caseload. It's an issue that comes up every single year at the table, because year after year, educators have been buckling under the weight of added workload. One of our article, Bargainers, relayed

083this year at the table that this year alone there have been so many new initiatives that for her, it's been an average of one new thing she's been asked to do every six days. We are struggling to keep up with what is already being asked of us as more continues to get piled on, which actually hurts teacher retention. Colorado has one of the highest rates at 22% educator turnover compared to the national average of 16%. And while Jeffco may currently be lower, educators are telling us that this is the year that is finally breaking them. But we are asking for collaborative leadership in order to improve communication between the Ed Center and schools so that when these new initiatives are rolled out, educators who will be impacted by yet another change, yet more to do

084a new action item will have a voice in that work. We are in the best position to speak to our capacity, reasonable timelines for implementation, and the supports needed for any new best practice or initiative to work. In the end, there isn't a whole lot of difference between a bad idea and a good idea that lacks support and is poorly implemented. We need to be real partners if any of these changes will result in real improvements for our student, and not just be one more thing for us to do. And then finally, regarding article 13, our leaves article, GCA is proposing a change from separate sick leave and personal leave to general leave. This work was done in collaboration with district and GCA members as directed by last year's MLU. This cost neutral proposal will

085have a positive impact on educator wellness. Many neighboring districts already offer a similar leave plan and this helps us stay competitive. Most importantly, educators deserve the flexibility and trust to use their leave according to their individual needs. We have proposed small but meaningful tweaks to our end of term pay out of unused sick time, allowing for a greater range of payouts depending on the length of service. This could be a significant incentive to educators who came to this career leader and want accrue the 20 years currently required for payout. We propose an additional pay out tier for educators with 25 years of service. As a greater incentive, we're also advocating for additional parental leave to match what's allowed by law, as well as additional clarity from the district around how Jeffco leaves align with other

086policies like FMLA and family time. So, in conclusion, we would ask that you all commit to attending our next bargaining session, which is April 17th, and any future session. So that you can hear what our members are also hearing and understand why they are so upset. Ultimately, we had hoped for a more collaborative bargaining experience as we work on these problems, but so far we feel that we are hitting a lot of brick walls. My concern is that we will not be able to find common ground before the end of the school year, which could push negotiations into August. We ask that you support us in reaching an agreement, so we don't leave our educators and the community in limbo wondering about their workload, pay and perhaps lose educators to districts that are offering them

087something better. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. And do we have, some representatives from Jasper? All right. Come on up. Welcome. Please introduce yourselves. And you have ten minutes. All right. I'm Sandra Cashew, Jasper president. Hi, I'm Alex marron. I'm a health aide over at Roosevelt High School. Astrid Sanchez, facility manager. Darcey Hassler, Jasper, bargaining chair, paraprofessional. Sarah McClintock, JCR president. Jasper. Good evening, board members. Superintendent. Members of the community. Like I said, my name is Andrew Cashew. I'm the president of Jasper. I'm also a leader with Coloradans for the Common Good. We'll be speaking tonight about something that's deeply personal to all of us. And also deeply urgent health care, safety for workers, dignity of Jeffco workers, all of which we are negotiating currently. Let me be clear. Jeffco health care

088is outrageously expensive for many of us. It's not a benefit. It's a burden. It's a cost that ESPs are least able to absorb. I live with type one diabetes. I've had to ration insulin while working for this district. For anyone who doesn't know if I or anyone living with type one diabetes does not have insulin, we will die. Having to live my life being completely dependent on medication is in itself a monumental burden. I've suffered through several severe major depressive episodes and have had no choice but to rely on the health care system just to survive. The anger and sadness I feel because of my disease is not only the foundation upon which I've had to build my life, it's the fire that fuels my advocacy for coworkers. Because I don't live in isolation. This

089isn't unique. But this is about more than health care. It's about basic human dignity. Every time Jeffco refuses to act, it sends a message. Zander, your health doesn't matter. Zander, your safety isn't our concern. Zander. Your value ends when your shift ends. This is a profound moral failure. We have people driving busses, operating industrial kitchen equipment, supporting students in physical or emotional crisis, all while being all while quietly battling chronic illness, skipping medications, or ignoring symptoms because they can't afford treatment. It's not safe and it's not sustainable. This problem isn't new. For years, both Jasper, JSI, and JCA have brought health care to the bargaining table as a shared priority. The benefits advisory Committee has recommended action. This board has expressed support, but Jeffco leadership continues to refuse to act. Workers continue to suffer where

090lack of accountability becomes glaring. District leadership expects workers to sacrifice, adapt and endure while they remain insulated from the consequences of their decisions. There's no urgency for management because they don't feel the impact we do every day. This is about the broader cultural culture of dismissal and deflection. Safety concerns go ignored, reports of mistreatment are brushed off, workers are silenced or worse, retaliated against. As we'll soon hear for speaking up. Where's the accountability for that? We can't build safe, respectful schools if workers are afraid to speak and leadership refuses to listen. We're not asking for luxuries. We're asking for basic human rights. Jeffco can't claim to value staff while forcing them to choose between health care and housing. Jeffco can't claim to value students well, tolerating unsafe working conditions for the people who support them

091every day. In a minute, you're heal you. In a minute, you'll hear from my coworkers sharing experiences of being ignored, overwhelmed, and unsafe in their jobs. So I ask you, will you listen? Will you act? Will you choose respect and dignity? Good evening. As I stated, my name is Alex Marin. I'm the health technician at Ralston Valley High School and a proud member of Jasper. I'm here tonight because on September 19th, 2024, a student sustained a serious head injury in my school. Slurred speech, disorientation, a large contusion, and bleeding. As someone with over 30 years in the medical field, I recognized the need for an emergency response and asked to call 911 for the protocol of the principal, the one that she made up. Principal Bruning is not medically trained. She overruled the request and

092insisted we wait. The district R.N. agreed with my assessment and told the principal to call 911. Still, the principal refused, even after seeing the student in person and hearing the second recommendation to call, she delayed and delayed 911 was finally called only after the student began vomiting and began coughing up blood. I filed a complaint, but the investigation that followed, failed to include critical witnesses and overlooked the key facts it appeared to. Sorry. It appeared designed to protect Principal Bruning, not to uncover the truth. Since then, I have experienced seven months of retaliation. I've had responsibilities removed. I've been isolated. I've been undermined. I've had been the subject of intimidation. Simply for what was doing. What I was doing was right. I was advocating for my children's safety. My students. What happened was not a

093mistake. It was a failure in leadership and accountability. Principal Bruning continues to violate students rights to receive medical care. To this day, every day I have watched students be turned away for medical needs and care that they should have gotten. We have a culture where power and control are prioritized over student health and safety. I urge you to take appropriate steps to ensure this never happens again. I urge you to review the investigation and reach out to me. I urge you to side with professionals, like all of us, who stand up every day for student safety. Accountability should depend on your job title. I did the right thing. Now will you? Will you act? My name is Astrid Sanchez. I'm a facility manager. I'm a proud Jasper member. Not long ago, my school admin came

094to us and said that a bomb threat was reported. But instead of calling the police, they ordered us custodians to stay in the building to search for bombs while everyone else evacuated. We were specifically told to, quote, kick trash cans, unquote, to see if anything was in there. We could not use radios or phones for fear of setting them off prematurely, so we had to tie notes to string to raise and lower them between floors to communicate with each other. While everyone else was allowed to be safe, we were put in danger. I came to the realization that I may never get to go home, and I may never get to say goodbye to my family and friends, and that today may be the last day of my life. To this day, whenever I see

095an unattended bag on the ground at work, my anxiety and fear kick in, sending me back to that day. It was then that it became clear the district does not value me as an employee or as a human life. Do you have any idea what it feels like to have your life valued less than anyone else because of your job classification? After speaking to my coworkers, I learned that the lives of custodial staff have been put in danger for decades without acknowledgment or care by the district. If you cared about my life, you would not tell me to approach suspicious people or vehicles to go kick that trash can. See if it explodes, or go talk to that person behind the school. But leave your keys in the office so that if you get attacked,

096knocked out, or killed, they cannot take your keys and get into the building. When we are instructed to risk our lives, you are telling us that you value our lives less than everyone else's, that you value my life less than my kids, my life. All human lives are worth more than a handful of nickel and brass. Thank you. These stories are painful, but they're not rare. They're the lived reality of a lot of us. Most of us in Jeffco. We've been pushed to the limit. We still show up. You can't build safe, thriving schools on a foundation of neglect. We're demanding to be valued, to be seen. We feel like a can that's been kicked down the road for years. There's no more road. We're done. If that didn't move you, nothing will. Thank you

097to our association's. Now, we will have the public comment, in order of being signed up. And so you should have gotten, card of some sort. I will be calling number one, and then, anyone who is number two, heads up. You may step up to the podium as soon as the person in front of you finishes. So who has number one? Do we have public comment? Number one. Miss Harper, do you have a list? You know who we're looking for? You for Julia's list. Climate action sustainability plan with the mammoth. Is Julia Fleiss in the room? She may be in the overflow room. She was here. Okay, okay. Let's go for number two, and we'll find one. Who has number two? I think numbers one, two and three might be all together. Number. I think they

098are all together. Okay, Louise. Legal. Let's start with number four, then Caitlin Fitzpatrick, and we'll go read a fine. Good evening, Superintendent Dalton and esteemed board directors. My name is Caitlin Fitzpatrick, and I'm a proud member of engaged Jeffco, a group that we started where that demands equity and we're all students are seen safe and feel welcome. And in that vein, I'd like to present to you our Jefferson Saints. First Isaiah and Meadow. Good evening. My name is Meadow Mondragon, and I'm Isaiah Gallegos. We are both juniors at Jefferson Junior Senior High School and student athletes. Isaiah is a state champion champion wrestler, and Meadows a multisport, record breaking basketball player. When we first heard about the possibility of Jefferson closing, we were frustrated. And now, months later, the frustration continues to grow. The district

099continues to string us along and cause unnecessary stress to our school community. We love our school. It makes us feel safe and makes us feel heard, and it gives us a sense of community. We fight to overcome people's perception of us. And all this talk of closing Jefferson is only making it worse. As student athletes, we recognize when the district is playing games, and tonight we ask the Board of Education to join our team listens to the requests of those we stand with tonight. Keep Jefferson open, Jefferson open as a comprehensive high school, we also invite you to visit our school, sit with us in our classrooms, walk the halls, and see for yourself what it means to be a true Jefferson Saint. Hi, I would like to thank the board for providing me the

100opportunity to speak up for my articulation area and school community at Jefferson. Let me set the stage the lack of creativity and true community mindset we have seen regarding remarks made and presentations provided in our articulation area has been resoundingly felt. We are a tight knit family, but we felt after the first meeting that we had just been bamboozled into a timeshare sales pitch. So we got busy with real leadership and plans that involved humans, not numbers. We, the teachers, community and business stakeholders would like to see. Our community schools are following career pathways based on community service surveys and school resources. Auto shop with EV auto body, auto mechanic, wrap tent. Health care nursing with picked EMT, biotechnology, health and beauty with cosmetology and hair cut computer. It was cybersecurity, programing, AI, robotics, etc.

101construction with welding, etc. and culinary arts CTE pathways will increase equity in our community. Regarding logistics and priority for tech innovative courses, we would invite other articulation areas to attend our community schools to participate in these opportunities. Boost enrollment and ease wait lists for Warren Tech. We also recommend working with CDE to create a pathway for paraprofessionals to become educators. So many amazing parents and teachers that I have worked with, who are indeed fluent in Spanish and other languages certainly have the have the experience that, excuse me, certainly have the experience. This could help build community, be an innovative accomplishment for the district, and keep families and communities within the district. This is a creative approach to, to the shortage of dual language teachers. Budgets throughout the district should be increased through advertisements on busses,

102school websites, grants, energy efficiency through solar power, and so many more creative ideas. This all came from our community leadership, not the district. This alone has loudly demonstrated the lack of ownership and creativity on part of the district, in an area long neglected by the district as a whole, we we became simply demographics, enrollment numbers and those kids. A stigma remains throughout our district despite our growth. We were told at the end of a very hopeful and inspiring meeting that a dual language secondary school would be too difficult to staff where there is a will, there is a way the buck stops with leadership. Jeffco can't thrive if all the parts aren't accounted for or are deleted from the culture of Jeffco. Give us hope that collaboration and respect for our unique community will not

103be lost. We want a plan out allocation of resources to empower our school based on our agreed upon rebranding and pathway, we are demanding that the district, with the seal of approval from our school board, invoke trust by putting in writing that Jefferson will not be closed for 20 2526 and 2627 school years. We ask for a written commitment, or MOU, to ensure that the district will work with the community and campus leaders to forge a thriving Jefferson Neighborhood community junior Senior High with CTE and dual languages. Opportunities strengthen. We ask for a five year timeline timeline to implement the articulation plan. We ask that Edgewater and Lumberg elementary schools stay K through six dual language. We ask that Jefferson Junior Senior High will continue the vertical alignment as a middle school and high school

104dual language campus for our articulation area, we demand that district leadership follow through with their commitment and show creative and empowering leadership. We will not accept typical lip service from the district. We want to ensure that the district leadership does not try to change agreements after the school board election in November. We see you now. You need to see us on three, 1236. Hello, my name is Christian Lott. I'm a teacher. Jefferson Junior Senior High School. Since December 19th, the Jefferson community has been left in confusion. The community was quickly informed that Jefferson Junior senior would only have a year left and be replaced with something that someone outside of our community chose. After much uproar, that decision was slowly revoked, but not after damage had been done. Some families had to make decisions for

105their future that do not include the school they always thought they'd attend. Some staff had to make the difficult decision of looking for employment away from the community that they've grown to love. While that decision has been paused, it is not enough that a single communication be sent out that the ultimate decision would be put off. Not enough has been done to get the word out. In order for this community to actually be healed from the decisions made for us, we need the following guarantees in writing to ensure that we are given a fair chance. No closures for the 25, 26 and 2627 school year. Time to create a plan for the Jefferson Articulation Area in five years. To implement and prove the plan, a successful, repeated communication to the community that Jefferson will be

106here for the future. And these guarantees need to be made by August in order for families to make the decisions for their students, and that Jefferson staff be able to properly set itself up for the future and recruit the best staff to help our students thrive. We also request that you be part of this process and help us make the best decisions for the community. Come visit our community, talk to our families and see our classrooms. Be a part of these conversations with our Jefferson Steering Committee and help us get the resources we need to make the right decisions. There are a lot of great ideas we have, and we are already getting started on. Jefferson will become the Jeffco dual language area, with Jefferson Junior Senior expanding the pathway into our middle school classes

107with plans of expanding into the high school in the following years. We want to build our programs that the community helps decide on, such as expanding our auto, culinary, and health care pathways as well as adding beauty in IT pathways. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Ross Burns. I'm a teacher at, Jefferson teach social studies. I'm speaking on behalf. One of our seniors was supposed to be here tonight. She had to take care of her siblings. Has her mom had to work this evening? Pretty typical for a lot of our kids. You know, we often have single family, single parent families. Kids have a lot of responsibilities that they're dealing with. It's a unique community. But I'm going to speak on her behalf. Hi, I'm Ashley Avant Dano. I'm a senior at Jefferson Junior

108Senior High School. I want to share my story about my journey here. I attended Lakewood for my freshman to junior year. Even though Jefferson was my home school, I chose Lakewood because of the IB program, which Jefferson didn't offer. However, during my time there, I struggled to fit in as a Latina. My skin color, my language, and my culture weren't supported and often felt outcast. And I tried to change who I was, who I was to fit in. Buying numark Lululemon and dyeing my hair blond. But in doing so, I lost myself. This led me to a depressive state and ultimately, ultimately, an attempt on my life. That was when I realized I needed a change. And that's when Jefferson came into my life and changed everything for the better. From the moment I walked

109through those doors, I heard people speaking Spanish, which was something I rarely experienced at Lakewood outside of a Spanish class. I also found teachers like Mr. Burns, who take the time to ensure every student is is caught up and growing in their education. At Lakewood, the large class sizes meant many students, including myself, fell through the cracks without the personal attention we needed at Jefferson, I could be myself. Despite some dysfunction, everyone here feels like family. I worry about Latino students who might transfer to schools like Wheat Ridge or Lakewood, and end up feeling as lost as I did. I believe we should build on what's already here and make it better instead of closing or changing it. What we have at Jefferson is special and cannot be recreated at schools like Lakewood or Wheat

110Ridge. And as we say, once a saint, always a saint. Let's make our community even better together. Thank you very much. Thank you. And now, do we have number one? It's for me. No. Okay. I'm sorry. Welcome. Will you, please introduce yourselves? And you guys have ten minutes. Hi. My name is Aklan Armor, and I go to Evergreen High School. And we'll be talking about a sustainability policy. I want to start off by thanking each of you for everything you have done for our schools and sustainability in the district thus far. Thank you so much for volunteering your time to better our schools. We are so grateful that Jeffco has already taken steps towards a sustainable future with a sustainability Program manager, LED lighting, Hvac improvements, use of solar energy and progress on the climate

111seal of Biliteracy. As you know, we have had a 17% reduction in energy use intensity and a 37% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions since 2014. Learning what Jeffco has already been doing has given me so much hope. We are all here today because we care about the future of our planet. The people standing with me have done incredible things in our community to mitigate the effects of climate change. However, we won't be Jeffco students forever. We believe the school board should add an end to the board policy so that there are clear, overarching goals for our district. We want to ensure that sustainability and our schools will outlast our time here. Jeffco has already taken amazing measures, but with ends, there will be no question that Jeffco is taking the responsible and the right steps.

112Jeffco can be a leader for sustainability in Colorado. This will show the community that sustainability is a priority, and students will be given reason for hope. Climate change is the defining challenge of our time. It's time for Jeffco to be proactive and address the concerns of our generation by adding a sustainability and statement. These are the guidelines that we are formally requesting be incorporated into the NS policy. Jeffco Public Schools is committed to climate action and sustainability practices. Jeffco Public Schools one corporate responsible resource management and climate resiliency, and to relevant department policies so that sustainability is understood as a core value of the district and considered when making decisions. The district will take proactive measures and establish goals to conserve natural resources, reduce water use, reduce waste, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enhance energy efficiency

113and implement practical solutions. Then ensure long term environmental and financial stewardship of its operations and facilities. Students will be prepared for a change in climate through the incorporation of sustainability practices and environmental stewardship during their time at JP's curriculum will include evidence based instructional materials that reflects an evolving future, according to the US Department of Education, the US Energy Information Administration reports that the education sector at large, including both post-secondary institutions and K through 12 schools, annually spends $8 billion on energy and emits an estimated 72 million metric tons of carbon carbon dioxide, equivalent to 18 coal fired power plants. Jeffco has begun working toward sustainability. But we can do more. Schools cannot keep emitting this much carbon dioxide. Not only is this terrible for the environment, but it sets a bad example for students.

114If students are supposed to be the solution to this massive issue, they need to be shown what is being done. Now we need to know what is already happening so that we know we aren't starting from nothing, and we stand a chance. If students don't think anything is being done right now, they will feel hopeless and that they can't do anything either. We need to celebrate what is being done now, but always remember how much farther we have to go. As Pope Francis articulated, the time for seeking global solutions is running out. We can find suitable solutions only if we act together in an agreement. The time for individual, student and school action is ending. We need to be united as a district for the future of our planet. Thank you. Campus. Hi, my name

115is Lisa Deborah. I'm a junior at Ralston Valley High School. Today you're going to hear from elementary school students about their experiences with climate change and why they want this climate and sustainability policy to be passed. Quite frankly, their speeches should make you sob. I look at these kids and I admire their bravery, but I also wonder why they're here so young, yet so concerned about such an intimidating and scary issue. And then I remember that I was once one of those kids. I remember coming home when I was six years old from school and crying to my mom saying, my teacher told me that the earth is getting warmer and all the ice is melting, and that all the polar bears are going to die. Maybe a little extreme, but at the same time,

116kids should not be worried about the mass extinction of their favorite animals. Kids should not be writing cards to their seventh grade science teachers who lost their house and cat to a climate change fueled wild wildfire, and wondering if their home and their livelihoods are next. Kids should not be having funerals for monarch butterflies that died because of human activities, and missing school because of a flood made far worse by climate change. Yes, these are all real experiences that I've had even before my high school years, and I know I'm not the only one. Jeffco had 75,000 students. Think about how many of them see the mounds of food that their peers throw away, and wonder and worry about its impact on our food system and climate, and how many smell the exhaust coming from

117their school bus, and imagine its contribution to the greenhouse effect that's warming our planet. This should not be their problem. It should be yours. You should be considering the 145 schools in Jeffco, and the amount of emissions those large buildings produce. You should be building a curriculum that teaches all students about climate change in a way that doesn't spark anxiety in them, but rather empowerment and inspiration to make a difference when they grow up. Not now, not yet. One of our fearless leaders here, Sarah, counselor, said that advocating for this policy to be an ends is ambitious and crazy, and you all probably agree with her. But as I say, yes, I've already laid out to you the importance of the issue, and it's going to get proven to you over and over again tonight.

118So why make a wishy washy policy that could just be revoked if somebody doesn't like it anymore? Climate change is a huge problem that is going to increasingly affect every single one of us, likely for the rest of our lives. Which means that we need a huge and high up policy that will also last for the rest of our lives. If we want to make a difference and influence others to make a difference, too. And I know that you all want to make a difference. You know what to act on it. Thank you. My name is Ailsa Chang and I'm a junior at Ralston Valley High School. I'm part of a generation that will live through political upheaval drought, famine, wildfires, flooding, war and economic crisis. When your generation at our age was free to

119live out in relative peace. I know that at a local level, there's only so much that you can do. But at the very least, can you pass this sustainability policy? At the very least, can you follow through on what you've taught us? I've been taught in your classes about the absolute havoc unrestrained carbon emissions and pollution has caused and will wreak on our environment and health. I'd hate to know that I'm being educated by hypocrites and cowards who cannot enact the very same climate and sustainability policies I've been taught or needed to maintain the survival of our species in our entire planet at the very least, can you give us the absolute bare minimum? We aren't even asking for immediate radical change, though. We'll need that soon enough. We're asking you for a plan. A

120plan that almost every other district around us has already had. For years. Jeffco has made a front end for being the backward district by students, its teachers and its outsiders alike. For once, prove them wrong. Prove them wrong for the sake of the students who rely on you. Prove them wrong for the sake of the teachers who work for you, who should believe in you. Prove them wrong for the sake of maintaining Jeff Co's dignity. Prove them wrong for me. Someone's who stroke someone who's struggling to have any faith in a system that has continued to delay any very much needed progressive change while doing nothing to stop the rise of injustice and tyranny in our world. Thank you very much. Do we have number two? Yes. Welcome. Please introduce yourselves. And you have ten

121minutes. Good afternoon. School board. Thank you for letting us be here today. My name is Scott Major, and, I'm a school counselor, evergreen Middle School, and also one of the co-sponsors for our school's green team. We're here with three members of our green team. And we're here from, as I mentioned, Evergreen Middle School, and we're here to talk to you additionally about the sustainability policy. Awesome. Speaking on our behalf, our Tate, Annika and Olivia, who will introduce themselves, we would like, though, as well, to submit written formal statements from our other group members as well as myself, as we were under the impression that we only had three minutes. So we pivoted, which we do so well in schools right now, and we prepared something different. We want to honor what we're here for. We

122want to honor our voices and what we prepared for. So our three students are going to come up and we have statements ready for you. We look forward to further conversations. Thank you. Hello, members of the school Board. Thank you for your time this evening. My name is Tate Borgman and I am a sixth grade student at Evergreen Middle School and part of our school is Green Team. Hello, my name is Annika Berg Strand and I am a seventh grader at EMS. Hello, my name is Olivia Thomas and I'm seventh grade student at Evergreen Middle School. We know that you hear from many groups and individuals on many issues impacting our community. So we want to first say thank you for hearing about this important topic that we bring to you tonight. You will be

123hearing a request from other Jeffco students tonight to adopt a formal sustainability policy. We are here in support of this request and want to share why it is important to us. In short, we worry about our future. We worry the ongoing climate change will make it more difficult to live on our planet. We worry about the impacts of natural disasters like wildfires in our community. We worry about the impacts of climate change on wildlife and biodiversity. We worry that if we don't take action, our air quality will continue to get worse and our waterways will continue to be polluted with plastic. We worry about the potential for greater food insecurity is that are made worse by excessive food waste. Our green team has already made changes in our school. Every day. We sought out food

124waste and our recyclables from our trash to reduce some of waste going to landfill. And we work with local partners like Evergreen Sustainability Alliance to compost our food waste. Without the support of the district and without the proper systems in place, we know that our work will not be continued after we move on to high school and beyond. We are excited to share our work with other schools so that we can make a bigger impact on sustainability in Jeffco and beyond. As the second largest school district in the state, we want our schools to set a district example for others. We look forward to continuing this conversation with you, and we are excited to work with the board and district leadership to adopt a sustainability policy and put it into action. Thank you. Well. I

125have in my hands one, 234, five written statements, one by Isaac Andrews, sixth grader at Evergreen Middle School, one by Camille Richards, sixth grader at Evergreen Middle School. One by Emma Whitney, sixth grader at Evergreen Middle School. One by Jack Dominguez, also a sixth grader at Evergreen Middle School, as well as a statement of my own. We look forward to working with you to make Jeffco climate literate. Thank you. And do we have number three? Welcome. Please introduce yourselves. And you have ten minutes. Hello, members of the school Board. We are here today to speak for the sustainability policy. Good afternoon. Members of the school board. My name is Louise and I am a junior at Evergreen High School. I'm here today to speak in support of a climate action policy for our district. Over

126the past year, I have been learning more about sustainability and what it means to implement sustainable actions into my life. It all really began when I joined the Environmental club at school. I learned about different local organizations focus on sustainability, such as composting and refilling. Use plastic containers. Seeing these efforts around me inspired to think more deeply about my own lifestyle and what I could do to make a difference. Soon after, my family and I started composting our food scraps and refilling. Use plastic containers with soaps and lotions rather than buying new ones and contributing to waste. My family and I were very impressed by the considerable reduction in waste after we started implementing these actions into our own lives, my fellow club members and I felt empowered by the small changes we were making,

127knowing they were helping the planet in meaningful ways. Like a river that starts small but eventually reaches the ocean. Positive change begins in small steps and grows over time. I believe that's what's happening now. As our environmental club continues to grow, so does our ability to make a bigger impact on our community. However, I quickly realized that while these small actions are important and serve as a first step towards something greater, there are simply not enough. Sustainability shouldn't be something that only a few students focus on. It should be a priority for the entire school district. As students, we are very aware of the rapidly changing world around us and how quickly the planet's health is declining. We know that this damage planet is the one we will soon inherit, so we are keen to

128start making a change for the better. So we urge you to take action now and set an example so others will follow. We asked you to take the lead by making a commitment to integrate sustainability into everyday life. A comprehensive, district wide climate action policy is what we need to help us reduce our carbon footprint, improve energy efficiency and promote sustainable practices across all of our schools. I ask that you support a climate action policy that will make a real difference not just in our schools, but in our community and beyond. By taking action today, we can ensure that our future will be one in which sustainability is not just an idea, but a way of life. Thank you for your time. And hi, good afternoon. My name is Charlie Bonham Fleming, and I'm here

129to provide a few short words about the importance of passing a sustainability policy for all our our school district. Jeffco is the second largest school district in the state, meaning that the choices that we make today may have an influence on more than we might think. What I notice very often is a general feeling of dread. People will look at some climate change graph, and they'll see that one spike in temperature, that's spike, and after it sinks in a while, they'll think we are doomed. I cannot tell you how painful that feeling is. The feeling like you're in a crazy Armageddon movie. But this year, this chance. I think that that gives a lot of people hope and it takes people out of that feeling. I believe that people are well aware that passing a

130sustainability act would have a lot of benefits, like it would increase energy efficiency, meaning that we would transition to more clean sources and decrease district costs. It would reduce waste through encouraging recycling and reusing and it would, you know, lower transportation emissions. But they don't understand that ultimately it would give kids a future to look forward to. It would give them a chance to live their life fully, and it would give kids hope to pass. A sustainability policy would mean to work towards ensuring a future where people have true prosperity and well-being, where the next generation of our society doesn't have to see a world that has destroyed itself, doesn't have to see a world where people only cared when it was too late, but instead gets to see a world of beauty as every

131human being deserves. Every time that I go into nature, every time that I go camping or sledding or anything else, I notice the beauty of our world and our home, and I make a promise to protect it for humankind's many years to come. I hope that someday everybody will be able to make that promise themselves. And I know that that starts with us today. Let's beat that, spike. Thank you. Oh. My name is Avery Phipps, and I am a third grade student at Stephens Elementary School. I worry about climate change because the ice caps will melt and it will raise the sea levels. I think the district should pass a sustainability policy because I want my school to be part of fixing climate change. I have an idea on how many school can start using

132reusable on trays. If the trays are reusable, you don't have to throw chop down as many trees. These would throw away less trash, and the trees we saved would take more CO2 and produce more O2. If we work together with our ideas, we can find a way for our schools to be healthy and eco friendly. I'm asking the board to pass a sustainability policy for the sake of my future and the planet. Thank you for your time and consideration. What? I am a contractor and I am a student in first grade at Lucas Elementary. I feel we are not taking enough action on the climate crisis. And as she plenty of evidence on a daily basis. For example, if my family goes on a trip 20 minutes or longer, we see visible air pollution. I

133think the district should pass a sustainability policy because we are behind other districts, such as those already entered integrating electric busses and waste management programs. Comparatively, in my own school I see inefficient diesel diesel busses and immense amounts of waste, especially food waste from the cafe. I worry for my own future and for where I will have to deal with the global problem of climate change, responding to in researching the subject and be burdened by natural disasters, scarcity and many other problems associated with the climate crisis. I worry for the planet because if we don't take action, we will have an infinitesimally large climate crisis involving loss of rainforests, coral bleaching, rivers drying up and literal tons of trash being spilled. We need to reverse climate change, and the longer we wait, the worse situation

134we're in. In addition, jobs on the subject will be required for the new general fund, so we do need education on the subject. In conclusion, I am asking you to pass a sustainability for the sake of my future in the planet. Thank you for your time and consideration. I want to thank the students for being here tonight. I speak for myself and I think probably the rest of the board. This is very impressive. You guys did yourself proud. And we appreciate you being here. And I think now we're looking for number five. You want to have number five? Come on up. And welcome. Please introduce yourself to yourself and have three minutes. Good evening to the board. My name is Karen Marshall McKelvie. I'm at 6370 Depew Court. And I'd like to speak on supporting

135our transgender students. I am an. I'll keep it brief. My first. I'm an educator in Jefferson County, and I want to express my strong support for a transgender students and staff education in a safe, respectful environment is of paramount importance for all of our students. Transgender students often face disproportionate bullying, harassment, and hostility simply for being themselves. As a board. Please work to foster a welcoming environment for all students students, including those who are transgender and non-binary. Thank you. Do we have number six? Welcome. Please introduce yourself. And you have three minutes. Good evening. My name is Dan Senior and live in Golden, Colorado. And I'm here to talk about health care benefits for guest teachers. So I've been a long time Jeffco fan. My wife is a rich farmer. I have two kids who

136went all through K-12 and Jeffco, and when it comes Montessori, one at Lakewood High School. I myself have worked in the district for 30 years, and now guest teacher, when I was five of those years, we're here at the AD building, and my children are young enough at that time that I often bring them to work, and they knew their way around here, and they were very welcome. They knew where Cindy Stevenson's candy jar was. And, you know, so imagine my shock thinking that, oh, this is a great place that I got a letter a couple of weeks ago saying thank you for your service as a guest teacher, but we're canceling your health care benefits. Here are your options. You can do Cobra. You can go to Connect Health. You can get your spouse's

137or my wife is self-employed. So it was always on me, as I understand the Affordable Care Act, which is the reason given to me for this cancellation that Jeffco can or may extend access to health care benefits for a year after leaving the district. That's great. Thank you. We got an increase in pay. That was great. Thank you. But I don't know that Jeffco wants to be the minimum on this. Why not extend health care benefits for subs as long as they're here in the district helping out when, when I agreed to be a sub, I was told that there's a great shortage of substitute teachers. And, you know, we raised your pay rate. But this is also a, you know, kind of a poke in the eye, I think, to cancel health care benefits

138because, well, it's, you know, it's the minimum that we have to do, I don't know, the health care, issue backwards and forwards, but it seems to me Jeffco could continue to offer access to health care, through Kaiser, whatever group I choose to be with for the period, maybe until I'm 65, maybe until or as long as I sub. But really, at this point I have to wonder, is it worth it to sub when? Okay, I've got to go out and or maybe put it this way, is it worth it to work for Jeffco as a sub? Because I can probably go to other districts and get more days and so on. Anyway, I would urge you to consider extending health care access to health care about benefits for guest teachers. I know there's a bunch

139of us that are impacted by this. And I will yield the rest of my time and just say, I'll follow up with an email to the board and to the superintendent. Thank you. Do we have a number seven? Welcome. Please introduce yourself. And you have three minutes. So my name is Joel Newton. I'm a resident of Edgewater and the director of Edgewater Collective. And both our daughters attended Lumberg and Jefferson in that area. Tonight, I'm speaking about the process of community engagement around the future of Jefferson Junior Senior High School. Our community was given two options for Jefferson, and through community conversations, it has become clear that the two district options do not provide the Edgewater area with a comprehensive neighborhood. Junior senior high school that would fit a majority of our area students. We

140are thankful that the district has taken the closure for planning during the 2627 school year off the table. We're also thankful that the district has slowed the planning process. I'm making you all aware that our community steering team, made up of educators, parents and students, has created a Jefferson Area Planning Agreement that should guide the future planning for Jefferson. Without a signed agreement between our community and the district, our community does not trust that the district will follow through on its promises to listen to the community. You will receive a full planning agreement this weekend, but I wanted to point out two of the mutual agreements. First of all, Jeffco Public Schools will pause all planning to close, restructure or repurpose Jefferson Junior Senior High while the steering team works through the summer to fully

141develop our plans for the future of Jefferson. Secondly, based on the results of our work over the summer, we will present a complete Jefferson Community Plan to you all in August, which will include an MOU that will guide the five year implementation of the plan in our district. Most communities have had a chance over the last 30 years to create a school that fits their community. Most of them have been charter schools or option schools. Because of the lack of financial resources in our area, we have not had that ability. We do not want a charter school, we do not want an option school. We want a neighborhood school that fits our community, and we want our community to be part of planning that process. So together, let's create a thriving Jefferson for the next

142generation of saints. Thank you. Number eight. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. You have three minutes. Thank you Georgia Rising parent, Golden, Colorado I want to acknowledge the historical role that school boards have played in advancing civil rights and ensuring equitable access to education for all students. After watching how school boards are responding. To EOF, I want to applaud Jeffco School Board for holding firm on these commitments. Especially as legislation targets our most vulnerable, including immigrants, students of color and gender diverse youth. These kids are being attacked for who they are. To these students, I see you and so many are fighting for you. I'd like to read a few paragraphs written by Rob Rogers in his article Strategic Alarm How Fear Is Being Weaponized to Undermine Public Education. American politics has been awash in a flood

143of parental anxiety, driven not by organic concern but by design. From book bans to anti-trans legislation to parental rights bills. This isn't a grassroots groundswell. It's calculated feedback loop of fear repackaged as concern for children. None of this is about student outcome. It's about turnout, mechanics, fear, energize the base. If schools become collateral damage in the process, so be it. Civic trust, student well-being, and educator safety are expendable in a service of electoral margins. This is his plea which I make to you all. Don't match fear with fear. Recognize the pattern. Disarm the narrative. Respond with clarity, with systems thinking and with moral coherence. They keep doing it because it keeps working. We keep falling for it. We treat manufactured outrage like it's a misunderstanding to be clarified with evidence, with ethics, with science. But

144that only works if both sides are motivated, motivated by understanding. If both sides are operating in good faith, they're not. This is not a disagreement over data. It's a strategy built on disruption. And every time we respond as if it's a real debate, we reinforce the premise that this is an honest conflict between values is not so we. So we stop pretending we don't moralize or debate what was never about morality or truth in the first place. We name the manipulation, we reject the frame, and we defend public education as a democratic institution, not a battleground for someone else's culture. War optics. These campaigns were the language of concern, but they function as strategy and strategies can be exposed the faster we stop treating these panics as good faith discourse and start treating them as

145what they are political operations, the sooner we can get back to what actually support students and strengthens communities public education does it need more fear? It needs more courage. Thank you I am I am going to just ask that we do hold some applause, since we know we're going to be running really late in this. So, I appreciate the enthusiasm. Number nine. Please, introduce yourself, and you have three minutes. Hi. Good evening. Can you hear me? Okay. Hello. Hello. Good evening. My name is Kara noon and I live in Golden. My child attends Mitchell Elementary. Thank you to the board for allowing me to speak tonight about a parent's biggest fear. Safety in my child's kindergarten classroom. For seven months, our five and six year olds endured attacks and injuries in the classroom, on the

146playground, and on the bus. Our children watched their teacher get assaulted and saw their classroom destroyed on a regular basis during their first experiences in public school in January, Superintendent Dawson stated, educating students and providing a safe environment in which they can succeed and thrive is my life's work. These are powerful words, words that reflect the board's core values. But they're just words here. They're empty words. Top district leadership failed our kids. They failed our children's teacher, and they failed to uphold a safe and healthy learning environment for this kindergarten class. Instead of thriving, this class was surviving as they endured violence, chaos, and trauma. Escalations above the school to the district started as early as September. Yet in a March 3rd meeting, when asked if current safety measures are effective in preventing harm to

147students, the Deputy Superintendent answered in some cases yes. In other cases, the evidence clearly points to no. My child's classroom was evacuated for safety reasons at least 17 times during this school year, the deputy superintendent stated. Evacuations are only to be used when absolutely necessary. That means it was absolutely necessary 17 times to remove five and six year olds from danger. This crisis extends beyond physical safety. Our children were deprived of instructional time in their most formative year. They're suffering from emotional distress. They felt unsafe because they were unsafe. As parents will be helping our kids unpack fear and anxiety in therapy for years to come. As board members, you are responsible for ensuring every child has access to a safe and effective learning environment. Yet for seven months, an entire kindergarten classroom was deprived

148of both. With willful intent. District leadership kept our children in danger and led us to believe nothing else could be done to keep our kids safe. So I ask you, does allowing the youngest learners to be injured, evacuated, and deprived of learning reflect Jeffco values? Does delaying action while a classroom remained unsafe demonstrate strong leadership? Would you have sent your own child into this classroom? I urge you investigate the situation, review your policies and hold these leaders accountable. Not next year, not next month now. Thank you. Number ten. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. And you have three minutes. My name is Katie Pike. I'm from Golden, Colorado. Okay. Can you hear me? Okay. My name is Katie Pike. I'm from Golden, Colorado, and I'm here to discuss safety concerns at Mitchell Elementary. I'm here of of

149deep concern for the violence that occurred to my daughter, her classmates and the teachers in her kindergarten classroom. Since my daughter was physically attacked on the school bus in September, I have lived with daily worry, wondering whether she or someone else might be hurt by the end of the school day. In regards to teacher injuries, my daughter has come home saying things like, my teacher was crying today. I hope she's okay. My teacher was wearing a brace on her hand because she got hurt. My teacher got bit today. These are not isolated moments. They're part of a disturbing pattern of violence in her classroom that was going on for seven months. I'd like to share just a few documented incidences from my daughter's class, obtained through the core requests. A staff member was bitten on

150the forearm, leaving a deep end dent. A teacher was bitten three times. A staff member was bitten, scratched and hit in the face. A student headbutted a teacher. A student beat a staff member multiple times, kicked another and caused a back injury. A student threw a heavy object, hitting a staff member six feet away in the back. A student was swinging a PVC equipment at students and struck a staff member. This is just a very small sampling. I want to emphasize here that many of the incidences I specifically addressed tonight occurred in the fall, early in the year when the severity of these behaviors was first brought to the district's attention and then continued through mid-March. These events are not normal. They're not safe. Why were students and staff exposed to this risk for months

151with no meaningful action from the district? Thank you. Number 11. Welcome. Please give us your name and you have three minutes. My name is Rebecca Katz. I'm from Golden. I have two children at Mitchell Elementary, a fourth grader and a kindergartner in the class. That's the subject of discussion. You'll hear from others about our kids collective experience in my child's kinder classroom. Given the required brevity of this opportunity to speak. While I will not speak fully to the impact of this learning environment on my particular child, please know that the state of crisis was pervasive and has resulted in trauma induced anxiety for my child, involving a severe deterioration in trust, deterioration, and trust in the value of an education overall and school being a safe place for her and learning being a positive, lifelong

152engagement and lastly, and us and other adults in her life who for seven months continually placed her in chaos and calamity, all while telling her she was protected and cared for. What I want to emphasize in these remaining two minutes is how, after the school quickly exhausted all they could do following peony policy and their own local resources, and after six months of messages to the district being ignored, the district's response was to gaslight us and neglect responsibility for letting the situation continue for so long. I guess we annoy them enough by month seven that we got a response, and that response said that the district knows, quote, classroom evaluations can feel disruptive. Classroom value evacuations do not feel disruptive. They are disruptive. We were told classroom evacuations are only to be used when absolutely

153necessary to ensure the safety and prevent escalations. This implication in this community session was that evacuations were rare, and that's laughable. As you heard before, at minimum 17 times 17 times in a state with the shortest school year in the country, we were told evacuations, quote, ensure students remain engaged in learning while the situation was being resolved and, quote, these evacuations appropriated our children's instructional hours in addition to causing significant distress. We were told the district's goal in this particular situation was to, quote, ensure a safe, positive and structured learning environment for all students. I would hope I don't need to explain how this was not an environment anyone would classify as safe, positive or a structured and learning environment for all students. But if I do, I would beseech those folks to first become

154acquainted with the meaning of the words safe, positive, structured and all. I want to recognize that we know this was an unfortunate and complex situation, but these situations are part of these various superintendent's jobs to resolve. I lastly, want to call attention to the completely inadequate response the Deputy Superintendent had when asked, aside from general education, what happens in a situation like this when other legally binding IEPs and 504 is for kids in the classroom cannot be executed due to constant evacuations and violent manifestations of a class made also on an IEP 504. I know on the heels of telling us these types of situations manifestations are increasingly common. With a shrug, she told us, yeah, the situation as far as how to navigate between competing IEPs is hard. Full stop. No plan for how

155to resolve it. That answer is unacceptable and demonstrates that either current Jeffco administration are not qualified for the jobs they hold, or intentionally chose a position of negligence. Either way, we demand accountability and change. Thank you. Number 12. Welcome. Please introduce yourself and you have three minutes. Hello. Thank you, board, for the opportunity to speak. My name is Matt Landers. I'm here tonight as a parent of a kindergartner at Mitchell Elementary. My daughter experienced, repeated violence in her classroom throughout the school year. Violence that should, frankly, never have happened and be considered part of a normal school environment. Since August, one student physically attacked classmates, teachers, and multiple times. My daughter was among those, that was harmed. She's pulled off the monkey bars twice, landing on her head, hitting her head each time. Once she

156was kicked in the head after falling, and other times she was chased around the playground. While that student threatened to poker eye out with the chip. It's hard to describe the fear when that phone rings because she's at the nurse's office. And what happened? Did you break an arm? Is she unconscious? Did she get stabbed in the eye? And yet, despite these extreme and repeated incidents, the district never communicated with the rest of the parents. Some families in that classroom didn't even know it was happening. They didn't know why there were kids were coming home anxious, confused and scared. Many of us reached out email after email asking for clarity and support escalating, and were met with silence. It should never have to be this hard to be heard or to be acknowledged. Our children

157had to learn in the classroom that was destroyed more than a dozen times, watching their teacher get beaten week after week. They witnessed a peer act out of dangerous, act out dangerous behavior with little explanation or accountability. Even though this student has since been removed from the class. Our kids are left processing fear, confusion, and trauma. I can't speak for every child that was in that room, but I know mine has been deeply impacted. She's mimicked that aggressive behavior at home because she saw it was tolerated and allowed in her class. She asked my wife and I, would she be sent home or sent away if she did something bad? And at the same time, she misses the student, their friends, their five. Our kids are left. Excuse me. It's deeply confusing and traumatic for

158such a young developing minds. This isn't about punishment. It's about safety and transparency and accountability. Families. Families deserve to know when a classroom isn't safe. Teachers deserve a safe workplace. And students deserve stable, secure place to learn. We urge the board and the district to prioritize proactive communication and safety above all else. Violence should not be tolerated, no matter the circumstances, and there must be a line that cannot and will be crossed. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Number 13. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. You have three minutes. Good evening. Members of the board and Superintendent Marlin. My name is Kelly Dillon. I'm from Golden. My son began kindergarten at Mitchell Elementary as a happy, curious, easygoing little boy who was excited to meet friends and learn new things and be a part of a classroom

159community. What should have been a joyful start to his educational journey quickly turned into a nightmare. Instead of coming home talking about learning to read or sharing stories from the playground, our son began coming home with something very different. Stories about not being safe at school. He told us about his teacher being attacked, repeated safety evacuations, and about the classroom being destroyed again and again, and about his friends being hurt. As you've already heard in detail from other families, then came the call that we were dreading. Our son had started to be targeted. He stopped wanting to go to school. He began asking questions no five year olds should ever have to ask. Like, why was no one stopping the violence on why his teachers and classmates weren't being protected. His curiosity, his joy was

160replaced by anxiety. His curiosity, curiosity by fear. We eventually took him to a psychiatrist, who was stunned that this situation had been allowed to persist for so long and confirm that significant trauma on these child, these children, had endured. As you've heard tonight, he's not alone. This is not our child's story. It's the story of an entire classroom, a group of young learners forced to adapt to chaos, to accept violence as normal, and to witness their teachers and classmates suffer daily. Let me be clear. We are not blaming a child who is clearly struggling and should have never been placed in a classroom without the proper support. We are holding district leaders accountable, who had the power to intervene and chose not to. Teachers and administrators raised alarms and instead of being supported with the

161resources they desperately needed, they were blamed and ignored. Parents sent emails and were dismissed and meetings. We were told by a district leadership that our children were sometimes safe and sometimes not, and that nothing could be done to keep our kids safe unless this student brought in a gun or a knife to school. While they were working through the process as a graduate of Virginia Tech and a survivor of a shooting, I can tell you this attitude is completely unacceptable and I will not sit to let this mindset be normalized in the Jeffco community. It took seven months before our children were safe at school and to be able to start learning. And through it all, the silence from those in charge was deafening. That's why tonight we're asking this board to oversee the third

162party investigation into how this was handled. We need an independent, unbiased review, not just for our kids, but to make sure that no class in this district is ever put through this again. Please do the right thing. Look into what happened. Hold the district leadership responsible, and make it clear that violence in our schools is never acceptable, not inevitable, and never to be ignored. Thank you. And next we have number 14. And I would like for the record to mention that Director Kenworthy has joined us virtually. Now. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Hi. My name is Dustin Gonzalez. I'm in Lakewood, district two. I'm not a politician. I'm not a loud voice on social media. I'm a father, a quiet one. When he goes to work, tries to do right by his family and stay out

163of the spotlight. But now. Now you're going to remember my name. You remember it because I'm not just fighting for my daughter. I'm fighting to make sure that what happens to me, to my family, never happens to another parent in this district. My daughter changed her identity. Not after years of discussion or family dialog. Not for joint input from both of her parents. Know this happened quickly. Secretly encouraged my school appointed therapist in a system that never thought to include me and the school to inform me. They include me. They didn't even ask me. They replaced me. By the time I found out, I was already labeled the problem, my objections weren't serious concerns. They're treated as opposition. My voice was dismissed as hateful. My presence undermined the therapist, the school, and eventually the court

164appointed investigator. All decided that because I would affirm something I didn't deserve to parent my daughter equally anymore. They didn't accuse me of abuse. They didn't claim I caused harm. The only evidence against me was that I said, I'm not ready to affirm this yet. That's it. And now I'm at risk of losing parenting time of being erased from my daughter's life. Not because I failed as a father, but because I dared to ask questions. And it started in your schools. Your systems made it possible. And your silence made it permanent. You gave my ex all the tools she needed to take our daughter. For the tools that she couldn't have forged on her own. You gave her the therapist. You gave her the ideological support. And you never once thought. Shouldn't the father be

165involved too? I was supposed to have one opponent in this fight for my daughter. One voice with equals, say, one person across the table who I would battle for influence. And that person was supposed to be my ex. But you gave her reinforcements. You gave her a system that cut me out of the picture. You handed her the tools to eliminate me from my daughter's life. And with your help, she tried to raise me all together. You replaced my voice. You stole my seat at the table, and you made decisions about my daughter without me. Mary Parker, Paula Reid, Aaron Kenworthy, Danielle Varda, and Michelle Applegate. Your names are etched into my memory. Not for who you are before your inaction cost me. And I'll make sure my name is etched in yours, too. I

166don't care if you personally signed the policies child they passed or simply chose not to know. You are all responsible. Fathers like me will remember. You may keep your seats this cycle. You may be the next. But I won't quit until each of you is replaced. And, Paula Reid, you're in my district. I've heard you're not running again. If that's true. Good. But if you're planning something bigger, if you think higher office is your next move. Let me be crystal clear. I will be your opposition at every campaign. Stop on every ballot and every debate. You've lost the right to lead. And I'll make sure voters know why. Don't think you can take a man's child from him and not reap a whirlwind. You don't get to raise our children for us. And those who

167replace you as you have will replace them. You. So, parents of Jefferson County. Take your kids out of Jefferson County now. You don't know how far the swamp goes until it comes for you. And after you to speak out. Join me and take back with the right to raise our kids. Thank you. I'll see you in October. Thank you. Number 15. Okay. Please introduce yourselves. And you have ten minutes. I'm Lindsay Echo from Arvada. I'm Allison Browner from Arvada. Leah Flynn, Arvada. Heather McCormick from Littleton. Ashley Reynolds, Marietta. Melissa Wilcox from Littleton. Noelle Christianson from Arvada. Kral Christianson from Arvada. Elizabeth Armstrong from Arvada. Kerry Wallace, also from Arvada. Some years have passed since I sit over the hospital bed of a close friend of mine in Arvada West, graduate of 2000, suffering from cancer

168and agonizing pain. Her vertebrae shattered from the weight of her pregnancy as she fought for her own life and the life of her baby. I saw the resolve in her eyes to parent and protect, sacrificing herself before she recently succumbed to cancer. My friend exemplified the unmatched power of parental devotion. And I speak tonight in honor of her. National Child Abuse Prevention Month and of the parental and guardian instinct to protect with legal policy and investigative experts, aided by our network of district employees dedicated to child safety, we've documented documented 26 recent incidents of sexual abuse, misconduct, grooming and hiring and firing issues in Jeffco schools. Our findings, backed by open records and other documentation, also show a troubling pattern of unreported cases to the Colorado Department of Education, posing two critical questions for Jeffco

169leadership. One why is past egregious behavior overlooked? And two, why is unethical behavior or professional incompetence left unreported? Standing with me. Our parents of children who have fallen victim to a few of the incidents I will now outline. Last October, a Jefferson County mom received frantic messages from her husband about their son. She rushed home to find extensive evidence that their 14 year old son was sexually and emotionally assaulted and abused by his trusted adult and Jeffco school social worker. Shocked, they called the police. It was soon discovered that previous complaints had been made against the employee, highlighting the poor judgment and decision making. Official paperwork discloses that before this heinous crime, Jeffco schools had entered into a settlement agreement with a different family that was significantly affected by the professional incompetence of this trusted

170adult. Yet she remained employed by Jeffco Public Schools, enabling her to strike again. A Jeffco teacher faced 14 years of corrective actions, including suspensions for misconduct and defying rules against being alone with students. Student and parent complaints, along with safeties tell reports. Alleged sexual relationships with female students. He eventually resigned in 2024, barred by agreement from unsupervised contact with children in schools. Yet his resignation wasn't reported to the CDC for two months and his license has remained active. The Creighton Medical School family liaison had a criminal history of shoplifting, criminal mischief and trespassing. But an official district statement to media claim these misdemeanors did not bar his hiring. Open records reveal that a two year old outstanding arrest warrant was missed and finally led to his arrest, but only after allegations of molesting immigrant children

171in his office were made. This underscores significant flaws in the background check process and the decision making involved in hiring for this child facing role. An employee hired in October 24th with a criminal history of drug felonies, misdemeanors and probation violations was given access to kids at Jeffco schools. Despite a background check flagging these issues, though no longer employed. The district initially opted to hire this child facing worker with this concerning record. A former Jeffco schools employee was recently and sentenced to four years in prison for sexually assaulting a student, exposing him to fentanyl and discussing firearms with him named his trusted adult in the arrest affidavit. Her background had red flags the DEA said should have been obvious to the school. Reports indicate that staff, including principals, identified misconduct on her part, and employees

172indicate her contract wasn't renewed yet. She was rehired at Brady Exploration High School to work with At-Risk students. A Jeffco teacher resigned in lieu of termination following multiple allegations of inappropriate grooming behavior and boundary crossing with students. The teacher was subsequently hired at a neighboring school district. Adams, 12, was reportedly unaware of the allegations and the reason for his separation from Jeffco until our advocacy group alerted their leadership to the potential risks he posed to students. Why wasn't this teacher's behavior reported as unethical or identified as incompetent to the CTE? Allowing Adams 12 to make an informed hiring decision. At 10:30 p.m., a teacher sent unsolicited, bizarre, sexually suggestive texts to his young female middle school student. Students quickly ID'd him via Google search of the phone number. The next day, another teacher overheard and

173escorted the student to the principal. But we understand the investigation stalled there. The teacher then transferred to a Jeffco school for high risk students for a year. Chief of Legal Julie Tolleson recently indicated she was unaware of this incident. Several Jeffco schools employees have been linked to alarming online sexual behavior, including a teacher following pornographic accounts which were discovered by students on the school's official Instagram. Staff members have discussed explicit sexual acts and drug use on public podcasts, posted new name images on dating sites, maintained websites with pornographic content while teaching elementary art students, and written public blogs discovered by students about their own sexual arousal. Other employees who were investigated and allowed to resign now teach in other districts and either and even other countries. Two days before he was fired for alleged possession

174of child sexual assault material form, former chief of schools Dave Weiss sent an email showing he oversaw the district's sexual misconduct trainings. He also played a significant role leadership role in district investigations, and was present in investigative meetings as shown by his professional calendar. Add to all this what we have learned regarding Jeff Kelly's implementation of the federal Mckinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. A miner wrongly labeled an unaccompanied homeless youth moved in with a school speech pathologist and later out of state with her predatory teacher for seven torturous months. The parents, explicitly avoided and deceived by a counselor in district liaisons, didn't know if she was alive until she contacted them asking for help to move home. The victim's mother found the homeless document under her daughter's mattress while cleaning her room, and after five months

175of inaction by mandated reporters that parents took it upon themselves to notify the chief of legal of the situation. Years had passed during which the predatory teacher had full licensure to teach. Open records also reveal that despite evidence of grooming and an inappropriate relationship, the principal and title nine coordinator discussed the predatory teacher's return to the classroom. Post military deployment. We have become aware of other instances where teenagers facing family difficult were quickly classified as unaccompanied homeless youth and deceived and received funding without a thorough investigation into their circumstances. These cases appear to lack proper reporting of suspected neglect or abuse, parental contact and consideration of the safety of other children remaining in the home. One cited details of family conflict are being mediated by Jeffco Schools Community and Family Partnerships Department. The obtuse interference

176and wielding of power by Jeffco Schools, resulting in the immediate separation of families rather than seeking to reunify families, is a chilling and utterly terrifying reality for the community. The questions glare. Why aren't reports to CPS being consistently and immediately made when concerns are so dire that even minor children are deemed homeless? Why hasn't Jeffco schools adopted the same premise as CPS? To make every effort to reunify families when implementing the federal Mckinney-Vento Unaccompanied Homeless Youth Act? Public data shows Jeffco schools declare students unaccompanied at over double the rate of Denver Public Schools, despite Denver's 20,000 additional students and nearly double the free and reduced lunch rate given federal and state funding and the immense risk to families and long term futures of these children. Jeff Coe's Mckinney-Vento practices need auditing to ensure program integrity

177and family reunification. We ask the board for accountability, erring unquestionably on the side of child safety and fiercely prioritizing the innocence of Jeffco children. Jeffco must act swiftly to address these threats that deceive and divide families and endanger children, and Jeffco restore parental and guardian trust through adequate reporting and consistent, accountable solutions that strictly follow sound processes, policies and laws. And in honor of my friend who recently lost her life, and all parents and guardians in Jefferson County who live to protect their children, I end with a thought from Thomas Paine. The crisis. If there must be trouble, let it be in my day that my child may have peace. And this single reflection, well applied is sufficient to awaken every man to duty. Thank you. Thank you again. In the interest of time, I'd

178like to ask you to please refrain. Or we will. We will clear the room. If we can't get forward. Right. I'm sorry. I just wanted to say that if we, have too many outbursts and we are already over schedule with all these, comments that we will clear the room if we have to. So, number 16, please. Welcome. Please identify yourself. And you have ten minutes. Hi. My name is Van Davis. I teach business marketing at Green Mountain High School, and we are here to represent the CTE and CT teachers in Jeffco. Hi, I'm Adrian Green Holtz and I'm a business and marketing teacher at Chatfield Senior High School. Hi, I'm Lindsay Holtz, CTE and visual arts teacher at Arvada High School. I'm Anthony Milano, and I'm a business teacher at Arvada West High School. Thank

179you for listening to us tonight. This has been an ongoing problem in Jeffco for a long time. The problem is, is that our Jeffco CTE teachers and KSO advisors are not receiving compensation, as other districts are. This is making it very difficult to retain our great teachers and recruit new ones. Our duties stem from are very similar to coaches. We have to plan logistics. We do overnight conferences. I think I have about 20 days out of the system right now that have been with students. We have weekly meetings, fundraisers, mentorships, study sessions, exam prep. Many of us hold leaderships within our networks. We do recruitment. We have to recruit judges. We have charity events. We have community engagement, we're building partnerships. And we're really moving forward. The vision of high school reimagined and durable skills,

180because this is what we're doing. We're preparing students for the workforce, but we're not getting compensated for the time that we're putting in. Last year I logged my post contract hours and it was about 406 hours. And that the ones I remember to log, this year were I'm at 200 plus hours so far. And that doesn't include the time I lose that is grading. And all the things and planning that I have to do at home when I'm at, addressing our CTE and KSO duties at school. So what we have done so far to solve the problem last year, during bargaining session, it was brought to the table and it was stricken from the activity and sponsorship, pay schedule. So that pretty much lit my fire. Our fire. We reached out to the Union and

181met with them a couple times over summer. We ended up from there, meeting more time to strategize. How do we get this done? Looking from my own personal perspective, I'm year six. And I look at surrounding districts who pay. And why would I stay here if we're not going to pay? And I love my school. I love my students. That's not something I want to happen. So we formed a committee. We've met several times. We've drafted a plan that we hope will be listen and her to so we can stay and keep teacher retention and keep offering opportunities to students. One of the flags for this came up when I was at Deca state conferences. It's a three day conference. We take students on. It's very intense. Several of the the academic advisors, the Deca

182Leaders Business Club were discussing the stipends that they got from school. I began to Google and research. Jeffco is the only school district that does not pay for academic clubs. Cherry Creek gives $3,000. Littleton 6000. I could go on and on. We are not paid and we're putting in extra time for preps. This deal, I mean, I led 30 kids to state conferences for three days at a time, and they said we could have $100 per night. So it to me, it's running a whole other class. Every single other district in the state of Colorado offers money for academic coaches. We're paying e-sports. Why can't we pay academic coaches? So the current state of Jeffco, CT, so pay for our advisors is about $1,000 for program lead. The problem with that is that most schools

183have more than just one CTE and Ctsa advisor at their school. There's lots of CTE teachers, and with the direction of the agenda that the district is pushing for high school reimagined and these durable skills, that is what we do. CTE teachers and CSOs are durable skills and they are high school reimagined. What we're asking is some investment. We all know as business educators, nothing can flourish or prosper with zero investment. And we're not only asking about investment for pay. And when we talk about pay, we're not asking for every single CT teacher. There's two CTE teachers that are highly competitive. Each school that was part of our work. What is a highly competitive CTE program? What is a highly competitive Ctsa program? But the investment is how can we recruit better teachers? How can

184we keep our great teachers who not only run one of the best, if not the biggest, KSO in Jeffco, but one of the biggest CSOs in the state? Why would she stay in Jeffco? Why would she keep giving opportunities to our kids that they deserve when we aren't invested in? So here's what we're looking for is, again, we want we have a lane. We have all these things that we went through in our meetings on what is fair compensation. Again, we're not asking for the world. We want an investment in the future of this high school reimagined. We want an investment of these durable skills that keep being pushed our way, which we think are a phenomenal, by the way. But again, when a flag football coach, the assistant flag football coach who spends a

185couple months is paid far more than we are, and we put 12 months of work into our programs, weekends, seven days a week, travel away from our families. We could spend time and more time talking about all the personal money that we put into it, money out of our pockets to go into travel and expenses and mileage and hotel costs. But we do it for the kids, and that's what we're asking for you to invest in this high school, reimagine. Invest in this, or it's not going to thrive. It's not going to prosper. Okay. We also think that with more building support, we're going to encourage more CTE programs and more CSOs to do more. Why would a young teacher that comes in, why would they want to do anything extra when they're not getting

186paid or they're not invested in? That's something that in the real world, why would anybody do extra if they're not being invested in it? We also think that something that can happen within our buildings is that that could be a job requirement if you want to be part of our building. This is what you're expectations are to run a CTF. So and again these CSOs offer opportunities for kids with durable skills. And with high school reimagined. And if that's what this district is going to push and our agenda is we want this investment in our futures. We also again, it's these opportunities for teachers, it's opportunities for buildings. A lot of the building leaders don't even know what goes on. I'm pretty sure that most of you sitting up there have never attended a Deca

187conference, never attended a FBLa conference. Right. Those are, pretty amazing things, aren't they? But if there isn't any investment, why are we keep doing it? We've met as a group of business teachers, and we said, why do we do this? Why are we still running these conferences? Why are we spending time away from our families? Why are we spending money out of our own pockets to do this? And the answer is for the kids. And it's not about us as pay. It's about investing in the district in the direction that you want to go. With this. I also want to add in for our building support piece. At this point in time, we learned through these meetings that our subs actually should be paid for when before they were coming out of our program costs

188any kind of transportation, any time. Like van and I are going to Orlando in a couple of weeks and kids have to pay for our flights, our hotel, our registration. None of that is covered as well. So it becomes an equity issue because really, the kids who can do it are the kids who can afford it. And that flourishes in, in our south area that doesn't flourish in other areas. So that doesn't feel right. So not only bringing pay to us, but also bringing support to our buildings, will help with, student I mean, it's going to be amazing for students. We provide opportunities for, concurrent enrollment. I think we're all concurrent enrollment teachers, certifications. I just had 20 kids get certified yesterday in project management. So we're providing all of these opportunities that we just

189want to see be supported. And that's all we're looking for. In conclusion, we just want to partner with you to ensure that this high school reimagined is a great thing, that these durable skills are given to these kids so they can go and be success in the world. And that's what we're asking for. We're asking for you to invest in these programs, invest in these kids. Thank you. Oh. I'm sorry. No no no no. In addition to conclusion, we just want to say that Ctsa advisors, we go above and beyond, we provide mentorship, professional experiences, and career readiness for students. Surrounding districts recognize the work with appropriate stipend. Jeffco does not. We must do the same to remain competitive and retain quality educators. We urge the district to support this proposal by implementing a fair

190stipend structure that acknowledges, acknowledges, sorry, the vital work of Ctsa advisors. Thank you. I'm going to call number 17 now, and I'll let you know that we had 36 people and groups sign up. So we will take a short break after 18. So. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. And you have three minutes. Thanks for letting me talk tonight. My name is Wendy McCord. I have to excuse me a minute to. Could we please have some quiet? Thank you. I'm Wendy McCord. I have two Evergreen High School alumni and a current sophomore at IHS. I want to talk about the importance of performing arts in providing the educational experience Jeffco students need and deserve. As you discussed during your study session, board NS 1.4 provides that every student will develop the skills they need to succeed in

191life after graduation, Jeffcoat continued. Neglect and dismantling of performing arts programs in our schools is preventing many of our students from finding success. However they define it. The district measures its achievements only by metrics chosen to make the district and individual schools appear successful. You so focused on improving the data that you've lost sight of the human beings whose lives you are shaping. AP test scores and Stem certifications can be valuable for some students, but they're not an indication of whether our students are learning the skills they need to become confident adults. The S.A.T. can't measure character, resilience, or creativity. These are the traits that our students need to be successful. As you've seen from the many students speaking so eloquently tonight, choir and theater give students space to take risks, collaborate, and express themselves

192in powerful ways. Which shapes our kids into compassionate, confident, and thoughtful people. Many of these students rely on choir or theater for belonging and motivation. Often it is the only place they feel safe in their school. Jeffco thrives right on here. It outlines the district's vision and mission to provide a world class education and create an environment where all students achieve their biggest dreams. High School Reimagined is intended to invest students in their education and engage and excite them about coming to school. To do that, it is critical that you recognize these performing arts programs as the vital part of our students education that they are. When we cut the arts, we don't just lose electives, we lose opportunities for our students to grow into their authentic, full selves. And that is the true measure

193of success. Thank you. Number 18, please. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. And you have three minutes. Thank you. My name is Charles Grant Walker. People call me Grant. My middle name. I have a granddaughter at Ridge High School, and I have a grandson at North Arvada Middle School. I am here tonight, to thank you and to encourage you and to support you in general. But more specifically, yeah, I am here to, thank you and encourage you and support you in your actions with the Sustainability Climate Action Plan that was, presented by groups one, two and three earlier tonight. I believe in public education. I believe in the public schools. Sustainability. Climate action is critical for all of us and certainly should be part of the education of our children. That's why I'm here. And I thank

194you again. Thank you. So with that, we will take a five minute break. Thank you. And. Okay. And we are back from our break. And we are going to continue with our public comment. And we are number 19 now. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. And you have three minutes. Hi, everyone. My name is Oscar Hathaway. I live in Denver. I studied at mines and now I work, here in Golden. I'm speaking today in support of trans kids. Let me start by saying thank you for the policies regarding gender identity you already have in place. Please continue to defend the rights of your students. Unfortunately, when it comes to these sorts of student rights, I wasn't lucky enough to go to a Jeffco public school. I went to a rural Wisconsin school that had far less welcoming

195policy than Jeffco. So I speak from experience when I say that it's a lot harder to learn when you're being bullied and a lot harder to learn when you don't feel respected and safe. Everyone of every age deserves to feel respected and safe, and everyone of every age deserves privacy as they navigate their lives. And our kids especially deserve privacy, respect and dignity because that is how we create an environment where they can do their best and learn. We find ourselves in, let's call it a volatile time. And right now, as Coloradans, we need to support one another at every level. A community that protects its neighbors is a stronger community, and likewise, a school that protects trans kids can better protect all kids. I want every student everywhere to have a better time, more

196welcoming time, and a safer time in K-12 than I did. And when it comes to gender identity, I see the seeds of that progress growing in Jeffco. So I ask you, please continue that progress. Fight even harder for the rights of your students, and please protect trans kids. Thank you. And do we have number 20? Welcome. Please introduce yourself. And you have three minutes. My name is Heather Williams and I have two daughters, one that goes to West Jeff Middle and one that goes to Conifer High. And the spring of 2023, my daughter that is currently at conifer High was contacted by one of her teachers late at night with bizarre, weird texts. My daughter had no idea who was texting her, and during the class next day, some of the older children figured out

197through Google who this teacher was his. His name is Frank Reed. There have been rumors about this teacher and his inappropriate behavior with students for years. Another teacher, neither the principal or any of the counselors at the school ever contacted me about this. Another teacher sent my daughter to the principal to discuss this and no one contacted me. My daughter had to come home from school to tell me about this. I contacted the school and got no response. I waited 24 hours and then I contacted Jefferson County Sheriff's Department. They were appalled by the behavior of Kim Holland, dad. She neglected to inform anyone of this inappropriate behavior. The teacher was moved on from my daughter's school. It was the last week of school. He was let go for the week and then moved on

198to a high risk school. High school? In your district? My child that is currently at West Jeff Middle School has no faith in the system. She understands that if anything happens at the school, nothing will be done and parents will not be notified. How can you let a teacher who is contacting under-age girls be allowed to teach in your district? How can you allow a principal to overlook this and be allowed to stay in the district? Your children no longer matter to you. Does their safety mean nothing to you? How can you make the children in our school safe from predatory teachers and unreliable administration? How can you? Oh. Thank you. Number 21, please. Number 21. Okay. We'll go to number 22. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. You have three minutes. Thank you. Good evening. My

199name is Jessica Veering. I live up in evergreen. And I'm the proud parent of two kids who are in Jeffco public schools. My youngest child is my transgender daughter. Being a teen in today's world can be tough. Pre-teens and teenagers often struggle in this phase of life, trying to discover who they are, what they believe in, how to fit in the world. Transgender kids and teens have an added layer of difficulty in navigating a world that has traditionally been designed to acknowledge gender in a binary form only. This is a group of fellow humans who are vulnerable and are being singled out as an easy target by those who refuse to understand them and choose not to show compassion toward them. They simply want what everyone wants to be left alone, to live their lives

200in peace as they see fit. Without unnecessary criticism, targeting and vilification from others. Real children and their lived experiences must take precedence over hypothetical situations. The board has a responsibility to keep all Jeffco Public School students safe. To safeguard the civil rights of all students and to protect the health and well-being of all students. I appreciate your efforts in this matter. To date and I hope you keep up the good work. Thank you so much for your time and attention. Thank you. And that brings us to number 23. Welcome. Please introduce yourselves. And you have ten minutes. Hi. My name is Roland. I live in Golden, and I'm a PhD candidate in the Department of Physics at the Colorado School of Mines. Hello. My name is Emily, and I'm a third year undergraduate student at

201Colorado School of Mines. Hello. My name is Robert. I'm a sophomore, undergraduate at the Colorado School of Mines. I'm Liam. I am also a second year at Colorado School of Mines. My name is Brier. I use they them pronouns, and I'm a master's student at the Colorado School of Mines. Hello. My name is Finn. I'm a PhD candidate at the School of Mines, and I'm also non-binary. I'm going to start us off here. I bring up that qualification because I want to talk to you a little bit about bad science. The Cass Review is a body of work that came out of the UK in 2024, and I've heard it used to argue against social and medical transitioning at the Colorado House, hearing where the Kelly Loving Act was passed, which is a big victory.

202One of the dissenting speakers claimed to be a researcher who had personally dove into the topic and quoted the heavy air quotes here sound science of the Cass Review for their point that social transitioning was dangerous and invalid. Well, I actually have the qualification to write and review peer reviewed scientific literature. So let's talk about that. The Cass Review is a non peer reviewed scientific review article from 2024 that does not even directly condemn social transitioning. It does, however, make incorrect claims about the exponential growth of trans identifying youth. By the way, the graph they use in the paper is not exponential growth. Huge revelation. The cash review claims to be concerned with rising numbers of transitioning people. And yet, if you actually read the language, the Cass review is actually concerned with a rise

203in referrals to the UK gender identity service. Guys, these are two different metrics. All right. It was clear that the review claims that there is a rise in trans identification and transitioning processes due to social acceptance. This is demonstrably false. As a peer reviewed Yale paper discusses, the review doesn't even consider the most likely explanation for why most youth who receive early supportive interventions continue on to gender affirming therapy. It's that they are indeed transgender. It's not a social transition and puberty. Pausing medications that drive transgender identity. It's the opposite, obviously. Now if you discount these scientific claims, then what are we left with? We are left with a camp of descent. Excuse me? We left with two other camps of dissent for this bill. The first, was about religious beliefs. I don't really care

204where you stand on religion because this is a public matter in a country with the separation of church and state. Let's leave it at that. Second off, if you're worried that the state is here to take your kids, you're worried about the wrong thing. If you are not supporting your child through an identity crisis, then you are the problem. I'm sorry, and you've already lost your kids. The minute you stop supporting them. I don't care if somebody doesn't take them away from you. As soon as they have the autonomy to leave, they're gone. And that's not the state's fault. I also want to say that my pronouns are she. They. Thank you. So, I believe and every person should believe that children are human beings because that's what they are and deserve to explore who

205they are, not who they should be, with the safety and support of the adults around them who are responsible for their well-being. Standing here today in front of you in support of the Kelly Loving Act, I would like to mention a key aspect that underlines how these two fundamental principles depend on one another for children's safety and rights to exist, even at all. During child custody decisions, a court should quote, shall consider deed naming, misgendering, or threatening to publish material related to an individual's gender affirming health care services as types of coercive control. Coercive control and the legal definition is an act, or is an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation, or other abuse that is used to harm, punish or frighten the victim. Essentially, the difference between making

206an appropriate decision on behalf of a child and coercive control is that the latter are decisions that become rules that, when broken, lead to consequence. According to the College of Policy authorized Professional Practice on Domestic abuse, the consequences of this form, of course, of control outlined in the Killing Loving act are evident both quantitatively and qualitatively and the scientific literature. Unfortunately, in our world today, these consequences are life threatening and are essential for children and to maintain their human rights and safety beyond the legal and scientific definitions. Though I was a child once, as we are, as we were all once children, we were figuring ourselves out, and we are still to this day, in every day of our lives. And when I was a kid, I was called homophobic and transphobic slurs for the

207masculine way I dressed and the way I cut my hair, and that has caused me pain and shame around my identity for a very long time. At the other, at the same time I was, angry at other kids. But, even then I knew that no one was born hateful, and it was taught by the authorities and influence in their lives. And so I became a forgiving person. So now I'm learning to accept myself, all of me, and re redirect my hurt as righteous fuel to implore you, the ones who have the authority and influence to demonstrably worsen or improve children's lives, that you support all children's welfare and safety and acknowledge that this cannot exist without including trans and gender non-conforming children. We are not an addition, but simply a part and have always been.

208Thank you. I'm Roland, I see him pronouns. I forgot to say that, earlier on this meeting, before the public comment. There's a lot of talk about minds and some programs, and it really highlighted that the respect that this community has for our school. If you want to prepare your kids to succeed at mines or any other university, teach them to be open minded, empathetic, and value science and transness is valid. I don't know. I do not know what it is like to be trans. I have no idea what that feels like. When I was a teenager, I was very ignorant about it. By the end of high school, a couple of brave transcript kids at my school had come out, and while I was mostly respectful in my mind and in the minds of most

209of the kids at my school, these kids were in other. I am not proud to say that it wasn't until I got a little older I went to college and I met and I got to know more trans kids that I started to see it as normal. I feel guilty both for making these, friends do though do the work of normalizing transmit transness for me, as well as grateful not only because it is something that I need to learn, but also grateful just to meet friends who are just as awesome as all of my other friends. I still don't fully understand transness. I have no idea what it would feel it feel like to feel such a disconnect with one's own body. But there are many things about myself and about my own body that

210I do understand very well. When someone tells me that they're trans, I know that this person knows vastly more about themselves than I know about that. How would I feel? And for those in the room that are straight and cis, how would you feel if someone else told you over and over again, asserting that they know more about you than you know about yourself? That is ridiculous. Listen to trans people. They're valid. As I'm sorry, I was a master's student first year to an engaged community member at the Colorado School of Mines. I understand the desire to protect you. The youth I've worked with trans kids of many ages, and I myself have been the trans kid, bullied, bullied into hating themself. I want to hold my trans kids close, shield them from the world

211that tells them that they're wrong, tells them that there's a correct way for their body to be, and tells them that the world determines who they are, not themselves. The issue is stigmatizing, and policing trans people doesn't teach us that any of those things are wrong. It teaches us that our existence is worthy of vitriol and that we don't deserve to exist, forcing us into the clothes you want to see us and to refer to, to be referred to by the words you want to refer to us by, and forcing our bodies to be the way you want them to be. Forcing, sorry. Forcing us to be the people that you want your world to have. These things only drive trans kids to experience violence not only at the hands of ourselves, but at those

212who are determined to police and hate us. Children are still people, and protection comes first and foremost from respect and autonomy that stands especially even with and especially for trans students who don't deserve to be beat into an ideological box just because people who don't yet understand us don't want us to be us. Supporting the loving Kelly Act and trans students I have confused myself, supports every single child, but it especially supports kids who need it the most. Without the support of educators throughout my childhood and into my adulthood, I would not be alive to pursue my masters, to work with the kids that I work with or to speak at this comment, but I would still be trans in the following months. I urge you to support the Kelly Loving act and trans students,

213so that they have not only have the opportunity to experience the moments of kindness that I did that as heard tonight, we are so not so often afforded at home, but also the opportunity to pursue a better future for everyone like I do now. Thank you. And again, I'm going to ask you, please, to hold the applause. We are now on number 24. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Hi there. I'm Ann Hampton. I'm a parent in the Chatfield area. I have two kids currently in Jeffco schools, and, a student I graduated last year that is transgender. This is one of my students. She is up here for moral support. Thank you for allowing me to speak and address the board today. When I heard that members of the community might be coming out tonight to speak

214hateful rhetoric about our trans community and trans kids in particular, I knew I needed to be here to show those same kids that there are people right now there standing up for them and their rights. I want to thank you, board members, for standing up for the rights of trans kids and the policies that Jeffco has, and ask that you continue and are unwavering in that support of this very, very special community. We know that supporting and affirming trans kids leads to happier and healthier kids overall, who are more confident, who are overall joyful, and most importantly, who survive to adulthood right? Trans people are being attacked from all directions right now, so we need to be working harder to create a safer environment where trans kids feel safe at school. Because we know that

215when trans kids are safer at school, all kids are safer at school. We also know that a trans child or an LGBTQ child having one affirming adult in their school, in their lives increases their chances of survival. Right? And isn't that really more than anything? We just want to see our kids happy and thriving and alive. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you. And do you have number 25? Number 25? Going once. Going twice 25. Okay. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. And you have three minutes. All right. My name is Tracy Self and I am in Lakewood. And I would like to talk about supporting our, trans and gender expansive youth. If I could read my notes. First of all, thank you so much for letting me, have this opportunity, to speak with

216you tonight. And thank you for doing the work. It's not for the faint of heart, and it's never ending. Always fielding questions. Even if the answers are out there with, from credible sources, having to listen to everyone's opinion, rooted in truth or not, the same thing happens for trans kids and their families. At this point in my life, I have a lot of privilege wrapped in various identities and most of the spaces that I inhabit at home and in school. A significant part of that is because I'm an adult. As adults, we've spent so many years learning these lessons and various skills and accumulating all of this knowledge and experience that sometimes we lose sight of the idea of being a lifelong learner, that we still have as much to learn as we do to

217share or to teach, that even we have things, ideas, concepts that we might need to unlearn for us to really grasp what and more importantly, who is in front of us to recognize and learn the lessons that are meant for us now. Many of those lessons will involve our precious young ones that we have a responsibility of loving, no matter our shortcomings. And as in the years pass, our students will continue to come to us with all manners. Excuse me all manner of needs, wishes and opinions, many of which will conflict with our own and challenge us to our core. But with all that comes the opportunity for us to grow along with our teens. In doing so, we need to make sure that we include and center their voices to really hear what they

218have to say and to see who they authentically are. Because when we ask the questions, we need to be ready for their answers. And when they feel brave enough and safe enough to share something that is deeply personal to them, that we need to just listen and learn. I am cisgender, my pronouns are she her. My name is changed over the years. Marital status? No. And that's and I right. And that should be the same for everyone else. I support the Kelly loving act, and I'm so proud that our state has passed that we all want our children to be safe. But the sad fact is that not all homes are safe and not all parents are safe, even when they claim to be. Most often, trans and non-binary students have a long, quiet journey

219of wondering if they're safe, if they trust the adult in their home to share this truth. Some parents are safe and some are not. 45% of unhoused teens have been kicked out of their homes because they've shared their LGBTQ, plus identity with their adults. It is never a quick decision. Can you trust someone? When does a person's identity become their own and so decided by others? The truth is, is that using someone's name is correct name and pronouns is suicide prevention. Do you know that 50% of trans students attempt suicide because of the way they're treated in this world, in our schools and their homes? 80% of those attempts are before the age of 25. Who in this room wants those odds for their kid? Not me. I will do whatever I can to protect

220children, no matter their identity and no matter what home they come from. But I want to know if you are going to do the same thing. Many folks who here are not in school anymore and their voices. How are the voices of your trans and non-binary students being heard? Do you talk to them or their families? Do you ask them what it's like to have a teacher deny their existence? What is it like? May I please just finish this paragraph? What is it like to navigate the scary prospect of asking for others to use your correct pronouns, or a name that actually fits you to be bullied passively or actively by kids and adults alike who don't know better and have no interest to learn. That includes schools in one's own home. How are you

221supporting Jeffco employees who are blessed with having trans and non-binary children? How does the health insurance you offer your employees help support their family? And lastly, what does it say when the district only has one person who works as a diversity and equity specialist for such a huge and diverse district? Thank you. Thank you. Number 26. Is that 26? Come in. No. Number 27. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. And you have three minutes. Good evening. I'm honored to be here. My name is Stephanie Turner. My pronouns are she, her, and I live in Lakewood district two. I would like to use my brief three minutes speaking to the board to make a plea to our common humanity. Each and every one of us has unique causes and conditions that lead us to this exact moment. Those

222experiences make each of us unique. No two individuals have the same exact experiences in life. My causes and conditions led me down a long journey of deprogramming ideology that was beaten into me as a child. The simple act of eagerly seeking out those different from me and listening in order to understand their experiences. If by chance I had been born in place of anyone in this room who thinks that I should not exist, and I had been born with their biology and had their lived experiences, I undoubtedly would be where they are now. Thinking the way they're thinking and acting the way they are acting. In fact, there are past versions of me that have come in from confronted in the present moment. Would likely not be here advocating for kindness and compassion. I would

223also bet that if anyone in this room who thinks that I should not exist had been born in my place with my biology, had had my exact lived experiences, they would be here now talking to this audience as a confident transgender woman, as well. So it is with this understanding, I plead to this board and to my community to consider the following going forward. First, if this board decides to change policies around trans, non-binary and gender diverse students, please include individuals from those communities in the decision making process. You have a golden opportunity to ask questions in good faith to gain understanding of something that cisgendered individuals can never fully understand. Your existing policies already provide wonderful protection for trans students, so I urge you to protect these policies and continue enhancing them where possible

224to ensure the kind equal treatment of all students. Trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming people cannot be left out of the conversations around trans students rights and their futures, because we are the ones that can understand the experience of trans students the most. Second, when considering policies, please do not give sorry. Please do not ignore the effects on transgender students. Their well-being is just as important as cisgendered students. Please pursue evidence based policies and treat all students equally. And don't limit a child's ability to be themselves. And flourish just becomes. Because some people are uncomfortable with trans people. And finally, and most importantly, and this doesn't just go for the board, but everybody who can hear my voice. Remember that kindness is always an option. I hold the belief that the world is what we make

225of it. If I want a kind of world, a more compassionate world, the only thing that I can control is my speech and my actions and ensuring that they align with these values. Employing hate, lies, discrimination, and othering only breeds more of the same. Similarly, kindness, empathy, understanding, compassion breeds kindness, empathy, understanding, and compassion. Not only is kindness free, but is the only way to a kinder society, especially when we teach it to our children. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Number 28. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. And you have three minutes. Chris. Thank you. Board members, my name is. And right. My pronouns are they them. And I was born and raised in Arvada. I am also a product of the Jefferson County school system. Not only that, both my brothers and my mom

226were products of the Jefferson County School system, and I'm here today to talk about supporting transgender students in this district. I'm also not here to speak about me, but my friend Todd, Todd is kind silly. He could read at a college reading level in seventh grade. He was my orchestra partner for six years, and he just so happened to be trans. If it wasn't for the teachers and the staff at Northrop at a high school and Arvada High School, he would not be here today because I know that his guardians did not affirm his gender. My mom even boarded Todd for most of high school because he would have been on the street if you hadn't been. Todd, however, was the not. Todd, however, was far from the only person in my high school that

227was transgender or gender nonconforming. My mom has spoken about the bullying that her queer friends experienced in the late 80s and early 90s going to, Golden High School. Not only that, she talked about the suicidal thoughts and ideologies that they would express with her because they were not affirmed in their gender or in their sexuality. When I was allowed to come out to my mom, she was relieved that I was allowed to go to school with the acceptance that she didn't have, and that my friends were not subjected to the same kind of horrible treatments that she had been. I am glad that the stand the board stands up for trans kids because without them, there would be a lot less kids in your schools. I'm glad that the Kelly Loving Act has passed. It's

228been long overdue, and I know that there are people here tonight who may not see the same way and may not see the same things that I do, but when I think of this issue, I think of Todd, and I think of what would have happened if I had lost my best friend or even myself. So I hope you consider this when you, go to decide about transgender students and, include them in your thoughts and in your prayers. Thank you. Do we have number 29? Welcome. Please introduce yourself. You have three minutes. Hi. Can I get these pictures up to you? Thanks. They're all the same. So. Thank you for your service. And for giving those of us here the maximum amount of time to speak. I supported your campaign, and I'm pleased with the

229job you've done. Hi, I'm Brynn Brody. She her pronouns from Lakewood. And I'm here to talk about the intersection of school environment and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. I have four children who have graduated from or are currently enrolled in Jeffco schools. I also worked with Michelle Gonzalez to implement Jeffco Suicide Prevention trainings. I'm speaking in my role as a mother and as a suicide prevention expert. This photo that you have was taken at a drag storytime event in Wadsworth, Ohio, a few years ago. An event an event where a parasol patrol, an organization I volunteer with, was violently attacked by an armed anti-trans militant man standing just outside the frame of that photo. In the photo, a woman holds a sign that says turn from your sin to Jesus. Acts 1631. Behind her stands a

230line of men in red and black uniforms, faces covered, holding a Nazi flag. Those are members of the violent white supremacist paramilitary group Blood Tribe. They've called for the literal extermination of all queer people, no matter how well-meaning or earnest the beliefs are. When a person's beliefs align with literal Nazis, those beliefs are wrong. This is more than just a picture and a news story for me. I became a suicide prevention trainer because my oldest child, who loves bunny rabbits and theater and studying in fact loves studying so much that they graduated from an IB program. My first baby grew up in the district during a time when that district was not friendly toward queer people. They went to high school when the school board had several members who use their positions to promote ultra

231conservative, unscientific policies. It was a time of enormous hate directed at the most vulnerable of our children, at a time when other students felt emboldened to tell my child that they ought to kill themselves because of their gender and sexual identity. A message those children heard from their parents, who likewise told me that it would be better if my child had never been born. Can you imagine the pain they must have felt? To think that the world would be better without them. It was a pain so extreme, a despair so complete. It drove them to attempt suicide. Unfortunately, my child is not alone in their despair. But unlike my child who survived. Many of our children will not. I'm not speaking, but because I think I can convince those who are here to stand against

232trans children. I'm here because I believe you. The school board know and stand with science, you know, and stand with the American Academy of Pediatrics. You know the value of every member of our community. And you know that it's only by creating safe environments for everyone that our children thrive. I'm here today to beg you to reject the hate and keep all of our children safer by continuing to stand firmly on the side of medicine, science and trans students. Thank you. Thank you. Number 30. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. You have three minutes. There. You hear me? Okay. My name is Sandy Ashley and I live in evergreen. I am speaking about the bill. HB 25 Dash 1312. I believe we all strive to do what is best for our children, which is why we are

233here today. I have two children in Jeffco schools and one who graduated from Evergreen High School. Ashley, who is high functioning autistic, had a great experience there. I have concerns about the HB 25 1312 bill due to a traumatic experience in my childhood that led to a difficult adulthood. My perspective is bi partizan, not religious and not judgmental. I share my story with no personal gain. Growing up in Oklahoma, I faced emotional trauma and abandonment. As a 14 year old, I was pressured into a breast reduction surgery by my stepmother and a surgeon, which led to further bullying at school, one of the reasons she pushed for the surgery. This decision at 14 impacted my ability to breastfeed my children, causing significant emotional distress and oppression and depression. Can you up? Can you believe having

234a surgery that we thought would fix an issue haunted me into adulthood? I share this because I was not equipped to make such a life altering decision as a child. When I read about this bill allowing children to alter their genetic makeup, I felt compelled to share my story. A genetic change can have irreversible consequences, including the potential loss of fertility. If any child wanted to undergo gender altering surgery, or if my child wanted to undergo a gender altering surgery, I would seek counseling to assure they felt emotionally supported and to encourage them to wait until adulthood. Under this bill, I could lose custody for trying to protect my child as I wish someone had protected me. I urge you to speak out against this bill and push for no gender ideology in schools. Children

235need to be children and parents should support them without fear of losing custody. Surgical alterations should wait until they are 18. What is the rush in making such a life altering decision before then? Can you imagine making this life altering decision and later deciding to marry and have biological children, but no longer have the ability to do so? I would be distressed. Don't you think they would be too? Can you put yourself in their shoes? I can and only impacted the ability to breastfeed. I was able to have children, but they would not have that ability. I can't imagine life without my sweet five children. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Do we have number 31? Welcome. Please introduce yourself. You have three minutes. Hello. My name is Ellie Smith, and I'm a senior

236at Evergreen High School. And I'm very Jones, and I'm a junior at Evergreen High School. We are honored to be here. And we appreciate the time you have given us to speak. We are going to talk about the cuts to the performing arts at Evergreen High School and Middle School and other schools across the district. Both of us chose evergreen because of its excellent reputation for performing arts at the time. If not for this, both of us who would have chosen different schools in different districts? Since we started at DHS. Our choir and theater programs have constantly been cut down disproportionately to others at our school. I've seen three choir teachers and two theater teachers be forced to leave next year. Both of their extremely different jobs will be combined into one part time position,

237with three classes total. Additionally, the feeder programs from Evergreen Middle School are being cut completely. The excuse we've consistently heard from our administration is the lack of enrollment at our school. But have we considered the fact that this could be a result of our programs being cut? We've seen our peers leave for schools that care about the arts, and now we wish we'd done so ourselves. Performing arts are as important to education as math or English. Colorado academic standards include music and theater. Both of us are pursuing performing arts as a career, and our passions have boosted us in the form of scholarships, awards and more. By taking away these opportunities, schools directly harm students and their futures. We need our schools to give the arts the support they need, giving us time and funding

238to build our programs. I've been in Jeffco for literally half of my life, participating in choir classes and afterschool theater programs. This has inspired me to proceed with a major in acting. If my middle school did not have choir classes or theater opportunities, I would not be in them today. Cutting a feeder kills a program completely, and that is being done purposefully for a cheaper evergreen high school. Without the support I received in these programs, I would not be here today fighting for them. An alumni letter in support says taking this away does not just limit creative expression. It removes a critical source of report of support and belonging for students who need it the most. When I lost my dad to a heart attack and when my mom was battling breast cancer, performing arts

239kept me going. Sometimes they were all I came to school for because I was part of something, and they needed me as much as I needed them. They have given me confidence and a community I never thought I could have. As someone who has always, always struggled with fitting in, this year I'm graduating as a top student at my school and attending one of the best conservatories in California to study music education. Performing arts lifted me out of my darkest time and helped and helped me find my passion. However, I have seen the way that my teachers have been treated and that makes me afraid to be one myself. These cuts are harming not only us, but future generations of students and educators. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have number 32? Welcome.

240Please introduce yourself. And you have three minutes. Thanks. Thank you. And thank you for the three minutes. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Don Fritz, and for once, I'm only representing myself. So I want to talk to you about three things tonight. First, I know there's a lot of noise right now in this room at the state and at the federal levels. I want to assure you that the parent communities that I'm a part of support you in your creation and enforcement of policies that respect and protect our trans students, educators, parents and community members. Please continue to fight against discrimination and misinformation. Please support and protect our teachers and staff as they create safe and inclusive environments for our students. Please protect and fight for our LGBTQ plus educators

241who are under direct attack right now. We will fight alongside you. Everyone deserves to be seen and affirmed for who they are. Second, I just want to thank you for including the resolution supporting equitable and adequate funding on the agenda tonight. Some of y'all know I'm part of the Get It Done campaign, and, it's incredibly important and imperative that our legislature creates a plan to implement one of the adequacy studies. Please let our legislators know where Jeffco stands on this and supports the recently introduced Senate Joint Resolution 21 on fair and full and fair funding of public schools. Finally, thank you for including an endorsement of Senate Bill 200 tonight, the dyslexia screening bill on tonight's agenda. This bill has been a long time coming, and I'm so pleased that there's real momentum this year

242to pass the bill that will support so many of our students. I have heard from many of our parents and kids about the importance of dyslexia screening to both academics and self-esteem. Thank you, and I appreciate you all up there. I know you're volunteers and so thank you for this long night. Thank you. Do we have number 33? Welcome. Please tell us your name. And you have three minutes. My name is Laurel Rocksteady, and I am an instructional coach at Coronado Elementary. And, I am here to speak, on behalf of myself and also a colleague, who is a parent and an educator. And we are both allies, for our lgtbq LGBTQ plus community and just are most disenfranchized students. And so the first thing we want to say is, to those students, you belong. You

243have always belonged. We see you. We value you, and we are better off for having you as a part of our community. You may at times feel alone. I am certain there are times that you are not treated with the dignity you deserve. But please know you have people who are in your corner. People who will fight for you. Stand up for you. Stand in the way to protect you. You are not alone. And I am proud to be an educator who can offer that support to our students. That's the most important part of my job. Crystal, my colleague and I ask that in this climate where the very existence of trans and non-binary people is under attack, and many of our other disenfranchized communities as well. Are under attack on the national stage. We

244ask that the district's, take a loud, clear and unwavering stand in support of our LGBTQ plus community. Our district's vision, for, thrive 2025 includes cultivating, a sense of belonging. And so if we're going to be true to that, that means all students belong and are safe and protected and deserve a quality education in Jeffco. Kids are not controversies. They are vulnerable people. We are charged with protecting. Please, please do everything you can to protect them. Thank you. Do we have number 34? Number 34. Nope. Number 35. Welcome. Please, introduce yourself. And you have three minutes. Thanks. Hi. My name is Brad Bruce. I'm a resident of Lakewood. I would just want to thank the Jeffco School board for listening to all this public comment. I am here to express my strong support for our transgender

245students and staff. Every child deserves to feel safe and respected in school. Students require a safe and welcoming environment to effectively learn and grow. Faculty deserve a safe and welcoming environment as a bare minimum, especially when they are paid so poorly. I encourage this body to please encourage fostering a welcoming environment for all students, including those who are transgender or non-binary. All students belong. I also want to express my gratitude for the steps this board has taken to pass a resolution affirming support for our immigrant students and their families as well. Thank you so much. Thank you. And do we have number 36? Welcome, Senator. Would you please introduce yourself? And you have three minutes. Thank you. Board members. I believe I'm number 36. Someone else signed up for me, so I appreciate that. Very

246much. So. And my name is Mark Baisley, and I am, proud and honored to serve as Colorado state senator. I represent the south half of Jefferson County, along with seven other counties across the state. So you and I, board members, we share some constituents, at least some of us do. And some of those constituents have, expressed concerns to me and asked me to come and speak. And, of course, I also see the news. So I find some of the some of the things that have happened here in Jefferson County and the schools, to be disconcerting. And I'm, I trust that you do as well. You know, I ask you myself what might be useful and constructive and appropriate for someone from the state legislature to come address another elected body, such as yourself. And, so

247I brought what we work on all day. I brought one volume, volume 13 of the Colorado Revised Statute. And specifically, this is, out of the courts and court procedure, but it's it has some very relevant words that, I'd like to, to share. So, it is, for anyone listening, it is, volume 13, section 22 and paragraph 107 says the General Assembly. And for everybody listening, General Assembly is the both the state Senate and the state House together. The general Assembly hereby finds, determines and declares that it is the public policy of the state that parents have a fundamental right and responsibility to make decisions concerning concerning the care, custody and control of their children. The law has long presumed that parents act in the best interest of their children. Parents make conscious choices every day on

248behalf of their children, concerning the risks and benefits of participating in activities that may involve risk. So this addresses sports and so on in this area. This section, these are proper parental choices on behalf of children that should not be ignored. So long as the decision is voluntary and informed, the decision should be given the same dignity as decisions regarding schooling, medical treatment and religious education. And it is the intent of the General Assembly to encourage the affordability and availability of youth activities in this state by permitting a parent of a child to release a negligence claim, and so on. So that's the relevant part. I just wanted to share the emphasis that, the state legislature has put into the sovereignty of the parents in all of these decisions that that are that you all

249are facing. Those parents have that sovereignty over their children that they birthed, that they are raising, that they are feeding, that they're paying for this immense authority that you are given that that we are given also, comes from those people we call constituents because we work for them. And I appreciate all that you do. Thank you for listening. Good night. Thank you. I have been told that there is a number 37. Is that correct? We'd be looking for 36. Oh. Well, anybody that signed up and has a number and we haven't called you, it looks like they didn't stay. So I think that's the end. Okay. Well, thank you very much, everybody, for coming out here. It was a long time to sit through. And I appreciate your, patience. And I'm glad that we were

250able to get everybody the full time that they wanted. So thank you. And that will bring us in now to our leadership reports. So if you are, if you're exiting the room, if you could do so quietly, please. I think I know I have. I mean, I. Superintendent Dr. Darland, have you want to say when you feel that you have the floor? Yeah, I think. I'm just going to. I'm going to start. I want to, I do want to say that it's, The division in our community was pretty evident tonight in public comment, and I think that's really hard. And I think, I feel disappointed and emotional about it at times. I, I want to I want to say thank you to the people who showed up and said to our transgender and non-binary students,

251we see you. You belong. We support you. I want to thank people who said that tonight, with a direct message to our students who oftentimes our most vulnerable students. And I also just want to say, once again, as we say so many times, I guess in my opinion, this is not a zero sum game that multiple things can be true at once. That we are here for all students and that we have practices where everybody belongs and we embrace every student who walks through our doors every day with care and concern for their well-being and their academic success. And we do that in partnership with families. We have been working very closely with our, school leaders and our staff on how to do that in a way that is meaningful for everyone involved. And we

252all know it takes a village, right? It I as a mom, I know it takes a village. You know, and my students come home and tell me that they had a hard day and Mr. So-and-so or Miss So-and-so took a minute to talk to them. I'm grateful that when I couldn't be there with them physically, somebody in their school who they trust was. And so I guess I would just say, tonight was difficult through a long period of public comment. We talk often as leaders in Jeffco about the importance of leaning in to listen and learn, give the board a lot of credit for waiving your policy tonight. You didn't have to do that. But I think it was a great example of our board showing leadership around leaning in to listen and learn. A

253lot of people telling you tonight that they wanted to be heard, and you took the time to do that. And so I commend you as a board for doing so. And I am walking away from this evening with a lot to think about in terms of how to be a sense maker for our system, for our community. Given the divide that we heard, the divide that we've experienced in this building this evening, and the fact that I actually don't believe that divide is as wide as it may seem. And as leaders in Jeffco, I feel strongly that it's our responsibility to serve as bridge builders and people who lean in to listen and learn across the political spectrum, across the belief spectrum, because we serve everyone's kids, no matter their religious beliefs, their political affiliations.

254And that's that's the role and responsibility, in my opinion, that we have for every student who attends a Jeffco public school. So I just had to reflect a little bit after, leaning in to listen and learn for a few hours tonight with all of you. I do want to also highlight that we last night had our very first Jeffco Safety Summit. And it was wonderful to be there. I want to remind people that we, have a website that, talks about all of the measures that we are taking to communicate about our current measures to keep kids safe, as well as future plans that we have to keep kids safe in Jeffco, in partnership with our community, I attended the Jeffco Safe Student Summit at Wheat Ridge High School last night. 300 families registered, 20 safety

255experts and community partners hosted resource tables or led breakout sessions. I want to highlight a few of those. We had child abuse prevention training with Ralston House. We had cyber safety for parents and caregivers. Many of the parents I talked to who were having dinner prior to the sessions talked to me about how grateful they were to have an opportunity to learn more about how to keep kids safe online, right? We all know about social media and the challenges that we as parents have with keeping our kids safe in that environment. So thank you to the Colorado Office of School Safety for providing the cyber safety training. We had the Porchlight, a family justice center who ran a session on supporting victims and strengthening communities. I had the opportunity, about a year and a half

256ago, to attend a fundraiser in support of Porch Light. Learn more about that community. I just want to highlight that organization in our community as a really special organization, and I want to thank them, for being there with us last night. I also want to highlight the Taming the Anxious Mind session by the Jefferson Center for Mental Health for Mental Health. Jcmr has been an incredible partner with Jeffco Public Schools, as we all take time and intention to care about the mental health and well-being of our students. And I, I just want to say that especially post-pandemic, having been in public education for 25 years in positions that were working directly with students and or positions that support policies and practices at a systems level to support students with mental health, that it has been

257a much more of a challenge after the pandemic. And so thank you to Jefferson Center for Mental Health for being there, with us last night, to support families, many of whom said to me they were grateful to be able to go to sessions to understand better the anxiety their students were feeling or some depression that they felt their child was having. And so I appreciate I appreciate them being there. And then we had also the Blue Bench, which was a group that came and presented on talking to kids about consent, boundaries and healthy relationships. And director Reed, you very early on, in, in some of the challenges that we've recently had, have said to me how do we also train our students to be their own self advocates in situations with other adults? And I

258know that, the Blue Bench had a session about that last night. So I appreciate being able for families to be able to learn about that so that they can take it upon themselves to talk directly with their own children about how to be their own self advocate. All right. That was a great event. Mary, I saw you there. I'm not sure if others were able to join, because I didn't see anybody else, but if you work great, and I think we've got a lot of feedback to come through, but I anticipate that it's mostly positive and will be doing, a session like that again in the future. On March 31st, we had our fourth meeting with the Jefferson Junior Senior community, where we shared that we will continue to work with the community on the

259proposal they submitted, called Jefferson, Redesigned. There is an agenda setting meeting for the April 30th meeting being held in partnership with the Edgewater Collective on April 15th at 4 p.m. at 2497 Fenton Street. Folks have expressed interest in doing some of the agenda planning with us, and so that is something that we're going to be communicating to the community. And then I wanted to make that announcement this this evening. Anyone is welcome to come to help set that agenda. We have heard clearly from the community they do not want the school to closed for any period of time to plan, and that there is strong interest in the building continuing to serve students in grades 7 to 12. And we have made that commitment to the community. As of the last community meeting, we also

260hear an interest in a dual language program and have committed to the strategic plan, around dual language and Jeffco. So we will be doing much more robust systemic plan around dual language in general and Jeffco Public Schools in particular. We need more exploration of what effective dual language programing looks like at the secondary level. We have very little of it in Jeffco at the six through 12th grade level, and we need to explore what that means and what that looks like when school districts do it successfully. I also know we've heard a sense of urgency to move toward a dual language model in quick fashion. In fact, I heard the deadline of August this evening in public comment. But I do want to remind everyone that district policy requires that the chief academic officer study

261and document the anticipated impact to an articulation area and surrounding schools, including, but not limited to, enrollment and financial sustainability when considering school based programmatic decisions. And so this review, for around dual language will be conducted as part of some work over the course of the next school year. And I am hoping that that gives us some clarity about if we want to do something around dual language programing at Jefferson Junior-Senior, what's the best way to do it in a way that is sustainable and aligned to the, district policy? FP over the past month, I've had the opportunity to spend quality time with many of our amazing Jeffco High School students. I toured our new safety dispatch center with our Jeffco Student Leadership Board, and participated in an annual lunch that they have with our

262cabinet members. Thank you to our cabinet team for spending time with that group. I also went on a tour of general with the Youth Leadership, Jeffco and the students who participate in that program. This program is a result of a great partnership between our district, the Economic Development Council and West Metro Chamber of Commerce. So thank you to those partners for supporting our students. And a group of Bear Creek Field Studies students visited me here at the Ed Center to learn more about what I do as the superintendent and community leader. And we had a productive discussion about relevant learning experiences and high school. I also got to share the amazing student artwork that is all around this building. They kept asking me about the artwork, and I kept saying to them, this is artwork

263that the district collects over the years from our students, and they were fascinated and wanted to just sit around looking at the artwork from their peers. They also really enjoyed sitting in your seats at the board table when I came. Brought them up to the board room. And then finally Mary and I were able to attend the summer awards. It was really special to go to that with you. And we're the Warren tech graphic design students had their snowboard designs on full display. I want to personally thank never summer as a company in our community, their commitment to providing an extraordinary experience for our graphic design students is a perfect example of high school reimagined and a relevant and engaging learning experience for students. And finally, Mary, Erin and I visited the capital last Friday

264to advocate for funding for Jeffco. I want to take a moment to thank our legislators, who are working very hard right now to navigate a $1.2 billion budget shortfall and prioritize Colorado students and K-12 funding in the process. So thank you, Mary and Erin, for your partnership last Friday. And doing that. I think, your board colleagues should be proud of the way that you represented the board, during that time with our state legislators. And, those are my updates. Thank you. I guess we'll just go around this way. So, Director Applegate. Perfect. Thank you, president Parker. I just want to say thanks to all that came and shared their lived experiences with us tonight. And I appreciate the board's support and hearing them. I think it was, powerful for me. I'm so impressed with our students

265are college students. Our parents are educators, are supporters of theater and education as a whole. I agree a lot to think about. Superintendent Dawn. I got to visit schools, and one of the schools I got to visit was the our campus Montessori schools. And I just want to lift up their amazing support for Michelle Gonzalez and her team. For those of you who don't know, they lost a they lost a teacher in a in an avalanche. And, what I've heard is nothing but just praise for Michelle and her team that they swooped in and were incredibly supportive and provided teachers and the principals and executive directors. They're just all the tools. So I. I hope she's not of this late listening, but, I just to the cabinet and to you, superintendent drill and I just

266want to lift up her praises. Sung by the community. And I'm just going to end there. Okay. Thank you. I wanted to say that I've been, able to get out into the district, outside of my own little southern district. So I did go to the engage Arvada, meeting that they had on the 24th. Also, I've been watching the JCA and the Jasper negotiations. There have been several of them in the last month. And I also listened to what they had to say here tonight. And I want to reiterate, these are some things that I have been asking the district, and I'll continue to ask, more about them. And that's health care benefits. My husband and I have an HR consulting company, so, we know what it's like out there in the, in the corporate world

267for benefits. And honestly, I'm going to say it over and over. This is a an American problem. This is a national problem. But at the very least, I want to make sure that we are, competitive with our other school districts around us. And, so I will continue to ask, who is success full and, and, keeping the, premiums down. And for instance, also, I've been asking about the percentage using the percentage based versus, the dollar base that we have right now. Also, I'm very concerned about the safety. I, one of the other things I did this this month was go to a meeting at, Mitchell Elementary School to discuss their concerns about, safe, classrooms. I've mentioned all of a lot of times that I have two daughters who are teachers. And, I hear the stories of

268disruption, with a single student causing the classrooms to evacuate. And I'm very interested in finding out what can we do to address that, because the safety of all students is important. I also got to be part of the, student leadership board and their, day that they came out here, and it was always great to talk to them. And as, as Stalin said, doing the art walks. We've gone to see the, elementary schools and the middle school art and, selected a few that will be coming our way. And the never summer program. I want to say that the people who came and talked today about the choral, the choir and the, and the, performing arts, the theater, thank you. Is very near to my heart as well. Every time I go to the art shows or

269I go to a choral performance or an orchestral performance, I am reminded that those are things that keep kids going to school. And, we've got to do everything we can to, save them. I also, I did attend a Columbine High School little presentation, a celebration of their excellent, graduation rate. So I got interviewed. I wasn't expecting it by their, school media group. I haven't seen it. I don't think I really want to see it, but anyway, it was fun. And then, of course, the same student, seminar that we had yesterday. That was excellent. I'm so thankful that we have such great partners. And, in Jeffco to help us, navigate the system. As Superintendent Dalton said, it was difficult tonight. I'm glad that we were able to hear from everybody, but, it does give us a

270lot to think about. And I think I've written a lot of notes down here. Will be following up on that. And I think that's it for me. Knowing that we had a lot of public comment, I just didn't prepare anything. I just figured I would skip right through. But I do appreciate all of the people who came to speak to us tonight. Okay. I just also wanted to say thank you. I'm so grateful that people come and talk to us and tell us how they're, feeling about things. I just, I, I think what I heard is we all agree that we want to keep our kids safe and protected. And I think that was a common theme across every single speaker. I think it's good to review policies all the time. Look at what we're

271doing and how we're doing it. So I felt a little moved by that tonight as a board. Maybe we can work a little bit on some of the policies we heard tonight. But our focus on prevention, which I think our district already does well, is where we need to focus our resources and energies. Glad, that we have safe summits and we have work going on. And then just really inspired by people saying they want to be heard. Believed. Feel safe. I appreciate it. I believe it was, Stephanie said. Meaning kindness. Empathy. Compassion. And so I again, I think we all agree these are all the things that, make kids feel belonging in schools. And we know that that increases their thriving and success. So, despite the differences, I do feel like there were pretty common

272themes about what we want for our kids. So glad to hear that. I don't really have a lot to report. I was thinking I went to a lot of the things a few of the things President Parker went to. So she reminded me, but, you know, coming up, our continuations, I know our our schools are in class right now. I have lots of kids celebrating the end of task. Teachers. We got I got a note from my daughter's fifth grade teacher that they're they got a pom pom party tomorrow, so they're having Pilates day. My daughter loves to Lottie's, and her teacher has brought this into her life. So I just so grateful for our staff getting through, CMAs and supporting our kids. And that way. And also just a big celebration on our recent

273legislation. I was very proud of our legislators for the work that they've done to bring more, or just to prioritize K-12 and all the work they are doing. Hopefully it stays strong as the session. And so thank you for all the time we got to spend a night listening to people. I appreciate that. Okay. Thanks. Are we ready to keep barreling through? Let's do it. All right. So we will now move into our study session agenda. On April 2nd, 2025, the board held a study session that included the following topics A legislative update, discussion on school age enrichment, and finally sustainability efforts, which we also got to hear about tonight. I encourage you to watch the recording of the study session to learn more about these subjects. You can also visit our board page on

274the Jeffco Public Schools website. There you'll find a host of information and links to both board docs and our live stream platforms. So our, topic of study now, we've already rearranged the, the agenda. So we, have had something already at 4:00, and now we are going to have the, update on the district budget development, including trends in financial activity, and have identified changes and other factors impacting the FY 26 budget. At the March 5th study session, district staff presented preliminary information on the FY 26 budget development, including information on estimated revenue, current school budgeting, and FTE changes. Tonight, staff will provide an update on budget development, highlighting information on departmental and district wide investments. Before I turn this over to Miss Copeland, superintendent darling, is there something you would like to say? Thank you, President

275Parker. I do want to frame this presentation by sharing that we will once again be bringing the board a deficit budget for consideration this year. And that means we are anticipating two years of one time fund balance use for ongoing expenses of the 25 fiscal year, as well as next fiscal year. There will not be an estimate, or a sort of bottom line budget that is presented this evening, because we're going to need some guidance from board members between this presentation and the May proposed budget presentation. And I'll talk about that in just a second. But I just want to come out of the gate and say, I anticipate us bringing you another deficit budget to to approve this year. And I want to channel the feedback to the board from the Financial Advisory Committee,

276which has asked the district to conduct a benchmarking of expenditures by category, at least large categories of investments, and benchmark those against other districts. Because they they have indicated as an AVC and I'm going to say that I agree with them, that we need to shift fairly quickly after the fiscal year 26 budget is approved into a conversation and process to determine how to reduce expenditures, otherwise known as budget cuts. We are beginning to see neighboring districts go through the difficult process of reducing expenditures, and we need to understand and be frank about the fact that we are headed in that direction as we prepare for the fiscal year 27 budget. I appreciate the partnership from which already mentioned in my comments, Erin and Mary, last Friday at the Capitol, where we spent time with

277our Jeffco legislators and at at Bowdich to explain the urgency and importance for K-12 funding in the state of Colorado. We need all the help we can get and at some point, Colorado will need to decide if, as a state, we want to continue to be at the bottom of the states in regard to investment in K-12. And that's just the reality that we all have to accept right now. And until somebody in the state, whether it's the broad electorate passing a statewide ballot measure or the legislators prioritizing funding for K-12 more than we have already, it is the reality that we are living in. And so finally, as you hear the presentations tonight and you ask questions, I want board members to think about the following frame. We are going to ask you for

278your input over the next month prior to the draft budget presentation, in May in preparation for June and related to the following, we need board guidance on these items in order to prepare a draft budget as close as possible to the budget. We we will propose for adoption in June. So the three things we're going to need guidance on can be somewhat tonight or over the course of conversations that I have with you between now and the May presentation. One we need to build in compensation, increase assumptions. We have had one executive session on negotiations. And we will be having further conversations about that soon. But we're going to need to build in a compensation increase. Assumption. We need guidance from the board on that. We need guidance from you while you're going to study

279tonight, the Cap reserve, which is the one time funding for ongoing needs for capital investment. We need some guidance for you on the fiscal year 26 capital investment target spend and the general fund transfer for that spend for capital, as you know, annually it's ranged, but approximately $30 million has been transitioned from the general fund into the Cap reserve for investment in our facilities. We are now at the end of the $800 million bond from 2018. And so if we make any revisions to that cap transfer, that then means there's less money in the Cap reserve to spend on one time. Capital means we don't have to. We can make the full transfer amount, we can do something less than 30, or we can not. We can suspend it. We're going to study a little

280bit about what that might look like over the course of this budget cycle. Tonight with Mr. Rosario, he's done some great work to show us that. And so you'll hear more about that, but we're going to need some guidance from you on that. We also are going to show you some of the assumptions on the sale of properties and the revenue from those properties going in to the fund balance, for example. So there'll be a bit more of a detail for that of that for you tonight. Finally, we need some direction on contingent AC assumptions for some unknowns. We all know things are a little bit volatile right now with tariffs and the economy and inflation. And so we are a bit concerned. And we want to be honest with you that given the tariffs

281and or the ups and downs that are so unclear right now, possibly grant reductions at the state or federal level, I do not have any indication that there's a large federal education grants like title one or title seven, that are or Ada that are possibly being impacted at this time. But we do think that there could be other grant implications at the state or federal level that we might have to all of a sudden decide we're throwing some general fund money at programing in order to sustain it. So we we have some recommendation that the board think about, a contingency built in to the appropriation and the budget this year so that if all of a sudden we see huge raising rate increases on Chromebooks, for example, vehicles, those kinds of things that we have

282a contingency fund that we can pull from, and we're not caught off guard having to come back to you all the time for increased funding on these budgets that might not meet, the, the budget that we've set for those specific funds. Okay. So I'm gonna say the three things one more time. We're going to have to make decisions about how much compensation increase, assumptions we're going to build in as we continue to have conversations with our associations at the bargaining table, how much cap transfer, how much do you want to spend, and how much do you want us to transfer out of the general fund into Cap, reserve and direction on contingency? So the assumptions for any unknowns, given the volatility of the economy right now. Thank you, Miss Copeland, Mr. Rosario and Mr. Salmons

283for all the work you've done putting into this presentation. And Miss Copeland, I'll let you get started. Great. Thank you. Good evening. Board members. So here we are in our timeline. Starting back in February, we brought our first revenue forecast March. We had some legislative updates and some and discussion about our school budgets. Now we are talking about departments and district wide investments. We're going to provide an updated revenue estimate next month is our proposed budget. We'll have additional economic and revenue updates as available. And then in June we present in a study session what's called the adopted budget. Just a quick note. The nomenclature is specified in statute. We don't make it up. It actually has to be called the adopted budget, even though you haven't approved it yet. And then you do vote

284on it in your regular meeting in June. Our goals for today, talking about and we're coming at this from the lens of adjustments. We'll spend a little bit of time at a higher altitude where we just summarize some facts and figures, but then most of our time will be spent talking about adjustments. What are the necessary adjustments on a year over year basis to our departmental budgets? Those adjustments are based on trending actuals changes and requirements and inflation. And also the superintendent, Dr. Dorian, previewed we're going to want to talk about some unknowns as well. We're going to spend a good bit of time on capital budgeting and planning, doing a 15 year historical review to provide you information on what it costs, on average, to maintain our physical plan. We're going to also provide

285a revised revenue forecast. And then you can see on the right what we will do in May. And just a note, we are not presenting a summary financial estimate of all revenue and expense because we don't have solid assumptions yet. In order to do that. This is a slide that the board has seen on more than one occasion that talks about what is the timeline in which we can contemplate, significant change in a budget. And so I know you've also heard in public comment, particularly last month, from some of our families and staff who are interested in ensuring we have notice on any changes we're going to make in programing. And so I know you share a commitment, to providing that notice and the approximate November timeframe for board decisions. It's not randomly chosen, right.

286We're trying to get in front of and roll Jeffco in front of decisions families have to make about where their kids are going to go, what services might be offered at that school, such as before and after care as a etc.? So all those types of commitments and decisions are being made in the November December timeframe. So that's why it's so important for the school district, if possible, to signal any changes in advance of that, to get to a November board decision. We need to start today, in really thoughtful and concerted planning, prioritization, analysis, and dialog, given all that, spoiler. We are not contemplating any significant changes for next year because obviously this timeline has already passed in terms of impacting this coming year's budget. This is a reminder about our budgeting methodology. I've had

287a couple colleagues, CFOs, reach out and say I've never seen anything like that. And I've told them for the right fee, they can use this. Yeah. This tries to summarize the direction we've taken for the current year and future years, which is the budget is truly an estimate of what we will actually spend. So the budget as approved in your resolution, the figures we talk about is an estimate of spending, the total allocation. So if you just sum up our school allocations or departmental allocations, you know, each granular budget, if you just added them all up, you're going to get a number bigger than the number we share with you as the budget. And the difference there is largely relating to things like anticipated vacancy, anticipated turnover, savings, anticipated underspend. We spend a tremendous amount

288of time carefully analyze exactly what it costs to provide compensation increases. And I think, as is evident by the fact that we are spending our full budget this year and we have for the past two years, our cost estimates are very good and our budget reflects turnover, savings, vacancy, savings, etc. we are not leaving money on the table. We are spending every dollar and then some. As you know, at the at our revised budget for the current year, expenses only went up. We did not overestimate anything. We probably underestimated some things. So I want to be really clear. And then lastly, that gray circle is the total appropriation which approved, which includes any assigned reserves. Our schools by policy are allowed to spend something called carry forward. Carry forward is a reserve. It shows up

289as part of our sometimes referred to as 200 million and reserves. Carry forward is in there. It's money that wasn't spent in a previous year, and that we are authorizing schools to spend because on an accounting basis, we've somehow tracked it to their specific school. That only exists as a category insofar as it as the dollars exist themselves. There are other types of reserves we have to carry and that are unspent able. And so as we spend down all of our collective reserves, you know, it's a question of, hey, when, when do we start to nudge up against each of these designations, reserves available towards a deficit, reserves available towards schools to spend on carry forward, reserves available to spend on future years, etc., etc.. Can I jump in really quick about something, emphasize something

290you said and address it. Address some of what we heard this evening as well when I first got here, I think the assumption of a step for just one association JCA was in the 12 to $13 million category ish. This was before Brenna was here. We we have since, I think, brought that way down. And it doesn't mean we're spending less. It means we are assuming the salary savings from higher salary teachers retiring, lower salary teachers coming in. We're making that assumption. We're also making the assumption of, vacancy savings across all of the budgets. Right. Which are many with teachers, especially our largest, group of employees. And so we are assuming it costs us and it is all salary for all employee groups. We are making smaller assumptions on cost. But to say that when

291we give a step or 2.5 on average percent, 2.7 with Layne's increase to our employees, it does cost us money. I want to be really clear. We are making an assumption that it costs us less than the assumption we were making. Five years ago. Four years ago, when I started, because we have tightened up our assumptions on the budget, which is exactly what this graphic shows. And so I just want to clarify that for the board to make sure, you know, when we give a step and lanes to our employees and associations. It does cost the district money. We're making a tighter assumption on that cost, which is helping the overall budget. But it's still cost money. Great. Thank you. All right. This next section again is going to focus on departments. It will not

292include the capital piece. We'll do a transition before we get into capital. With that I'm going to hand it off to Mister Sammons. Thank you, Miss Copeland. Good evening everyone. Okay, so we would like to start off this part of the presentation by showing a breakdown of the current revised budget for departments as a percent of the whole, general fund budget. The majority of this evening's presentation will cover approximately 45% of this general fund budget. Departments make up just under 40%, $399 million, of the general fund, while the transfers account for around 5%. And then schools account for just over, 55% of this. All right. So department budgets include many staff and resources deployed directly in schools. We have discussed this with the board several times. Our team is unable to distinguish these resources located

293at schools due to the limitations with our current account code system. To help guide today's conversations, we provided the departmental budgets coded by program type and highlighted a few of the larger expenses included in each of the roll up instruction support program consist of general instruction, instruction support, and special education programs. This totals $222 million, or just under 50% of the current departmental budgets. This includes school learning specialists, speech therapist, ESL teachers and coaches. Operation and maintenance and transportation account for around 225 million. With some of the larger expenses, including the utilities for the district, custodial department and bus drivers. General ministration is approximately 12% or $53 million and includes the entire ID department, school leadership, air and finance. What is. So if I look at instructional support on the left, I see 222,000,049%. But

294when I look on the right, I see 84 and 19%. What's the difference? So the one on the left is adding and general instruction, instructional support and special education instruction. So we're kind of making that all one bucket to kind of summarize on the left, because that's all of the instructional supports together. Can can I jump in really quick to you. Can you go back to slide seven. So when Brian showed me this slide I said, you know what board members are going to ask? Why do I spend 40% in central services? Isn't that a lot? And the answer is we that that 3399 million, 4,039% is mostly in schools. And so this graphic can be very deceiving. And I know oftentimes what board members hear, what we all hear is we're central office heavy

295right? I just didn't want for this, and I knew you would. You guys would ask that question because you always asked me that question. So I wanted to make sure because of our account codes, it's very difficult, impossible for us to break that out completely. So I ask these guys if there's a way that we can show how much of that 39% is actually situate it in schools, and not just sitting around at the Ed Center or Quayle or 581 conference place doing central office work. Much of it is in schools doing direct work with students. And so this next slide, and by the way, when we shift to the state chart of accounts and, and embrace and employ a new ERP, it's going to be easier for us, much easier for us to get

296the answer to how much of that for 39% is in schools? This is the best we can do right now. I wanted to make sure we did this because I anticipated that question from you all. And you can see, you know, a lot of that, 49, 49% of that, 39% is, I guess, a safe. It's a safe statement to say that those people are a direct service to students and assigned to schools. So that's at least a start, right? We also know custodial bus drivers and utilities are funds that greatly support work in schools. So that's that's the, reason that we broke it out this way was to try to help you all understand, even though it's, it's, departmental budgets. It is still funding many allocations that are going directly in the schools and working

297in schools on a daily basis with students. And I have a question on the slide to the transfers of 51 million. Can you tell us where they're transferring into one of the other funds? Like, what does that encompass? So 30 million of that, is going to the Cap reserve fund. And then we also have through, through service, fund and then, the risk our, our risk manager fund. That's a majority of the three. Now, since we've had the consolidation. And, the transfers are a lot less. Thank you. Okay, so in FY 23, the district implemented the stop start continue Budgeting request framework, where departments categorize their budget request into three categories. The start, the stops and the continues improving strategic resource allocation was was the goal of this implementation department explained budget decisions in line with

298the district's long term vision. This provided clear reasoning for year over year budget changes. For FY 26, the Budget office paused the stop start continuing budgeting request process due to limited limited revenue growth and identified the year over year adjustments necessary to respond to the training, actuals and changes in operations. So, to sustain our current operations next year, we must increase budgeted expenses to account for training actuals and replace one time expense offsets. Currently, student success is projected to go over budget by around $11 million, resulting in a net add of around 3.7 million. After shifting some under Underspent. Some other areas help offset this need for nutrition services. We'll need an additional $1 million to help maintain adequate fund balance. Additionally, we will need to move back expenses and budget of 3.25 million into

299the general fund that was moved to Esser net FY 25 to close out the grant. I have a question on this one too, and this is something that I don't need an answer for right now, but, I, was wondering, we have Fletcher Miller that has what I consider the most impacted students that we have. And so for student success, I know there are different tiers. Now, if we do enact the new school funding, act. It's a little bit better in how we get paid for the, at risk in the special ed. But I'm just wondering, do we ever get what it costs for Fletcher Miller? Is there a category that high that we get funded for that? The answer is no. We apply for the high cost reimbursement every year to CD. We do not

300get that money. That money is often allocated out to rural school districts to serve their most vulnerable and most complex students with special needs. Okay. So in in FY 2425, students, excess expenditures above budget are in support of the important students and needs primarily represent cost outside the control of in success. An average of 300 additional students or identified in each of the past four years. Compensation increases have reduced vacancies, and rising costs of the external vendors and service providers have contributed to the overspend to help address these overspend. The division will receive an additional 3.7 million in budget. Deployed short term grant funding and of some identified underspend to help offset some of these cost. I just want to, highlight the work that's been done to get to this 3.7 when we're currently looking

301at an $11 million overage. So Matt and his team have done an incredible amount of work to take these action step to figure out these action steps to take to get that 11 million down to the 3.7 million. I also want to make it very clear that we have not changed our staffing allocations in order to do that. Matt, I'm looking at you to make sure that you're keeping me honest here. We have not changed our staffing allocation model, to which is based on student need. Lots of different factors in student need is included. Complicated nature of IEPs, number of IEPs, number of initials. All kinds of things go into this formula that match team uses for allocations. We have not changed our allocation model nor watered it down in any way to increase caseloads

302for special education teachers in order to get this 11 million down to 3.7. So that's number one. The other thing I want to say is the allocation model. Oftentimes, spits out a 0.2 or a 1.2 FTE. We always round up to a 1.5 and go into half increments, because schools cannot be expected to find a 0.2 teacher that will come in and partner with a 1.0. And so I know there are, lots of, frustrated emails being sent to you, and there's some public comment coming our way around special education caseload and workload. I just want to make it really clear to the board that we have not reduced allocations and increased ratios for learning specialists. I will say that the reality of the workload is true. Again, two things can be true at the same

303time. We've not reduced the ratios we have. A bigger workload. We have high kid needs going on in our community right now. And so we Matt is actively working and at the bargaining table. We are actively working, and we've got to get our principals in a way, to work with their learning specialists to figure out how to help manage their time and their workload. So that is something that is happening, but I want to make it really clear that this reduction from $11 million overage to the 3.7 million that we're going to have to increase his budget to, is not because we have increased ratios, for learning specialists. What is it? Where is it coming from? You say what? What is how did we get from an $11 million overage to now? Just figuring out

304that we can do it within 3.7 for now, because it's not forever either. Without no pers, without personnel changes to learning specialist ratios. Thank you. Bullets two, three and four are the core reasons. So first, we're using some short term grant funding. There is, set aside provision around Ada, right. For disproportionate proportionality, I call it that. That we are now going to, we've talked to CDE and we're now able to use that set aside towards, programing that we are currently doing that we think meets the purpose and intent of the set aside. So again, taking an activity that maybe wasn't going to be covered by the grant, but was going to happen is now going to be covered by the grant. Secondly, we have built up, an excess balance of Medicaid, funding, and we need

305to spend it down. Happy to discuss that more. If there are questions. Thirdly, we have parts of the budget. Remember, we keep talking about budget as an estimate. We made some other estimates in other areas. So for example utilities, general contracting contingency etc. that we didn't spend or we don't seem on track to spend. And so we're moving those budgeted amounts over to cover this budget, which is to say we're reducing another budget and and increasing this budget. So we are covering the full 11 through a variety of means, and doing so by only doing a net ad to the district of 3.7. So continuing the full 11 and the then add to the district's district wide budget is only 3.7. Through using the grant funds, shifting budgets from other areas, etc. does that help?

306So we're still spending the 11 million for it in a different way. Are those two, things, the grant funding and then the excess Medicaid dollars one time funding? Will we have to do this again next year or find enough not cover the not quite one. I'm going to call one two time funding and one three time funding, but we just second one. Sorry. The second one was Medicaid. Medicaid will stretch over about three years. The the idea set aside will be about a two year gig ish. But, your conceptual question is, will we need to search for funds again in the future? The the short answer is yes. It will it be as soon as 26, 27? Probably. We can limp through the next two years. But that's presuming that costs don't continue to climb.

307I think, costs have been escalating extremely rapidly. I have spoken to other CFOs in other districts who are similarly just honestly flabbergasted by the costs of our out of district placements. So we speak to the costs of Fletcher Miller, which are high on a per student basis or out of district placements are high on a per student basis. And so, it's a head scratcher just looking at the amount of cost increase for some of these services. And they are direct student services. This is not, fluff or administrative. It's 100% student service. It is. And Matt, can you talk about the ad of district placement? Yeah, I think it's over time to put that into perspective. Since 2017, the cost on average per student served out, a district has gone up 195%. So in 2017, it

308cost around $21,000 to serve a student. Today it cost almost $58,000 per student. And that's if they don't need additional services like occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, things that facility schools don't often have on site that districts end up paying in addition to, like an excess cost, or they send their own people to provide those services. We actually have reduced the number of students over time who have been placed out of district. We've gone from 200 to I think it was or 235 to 162 students today. So you can see that we have less kids out of district, but the costs have multiplied significantly. And the other question that the board, I think has been getting and we've been getting a little bit too, is like, why don't you just expand subsidy then, you

309know, Sobieski is these these the students who are served in out of district placement and at locations like Sobieski, Fletcher Miller have very specific and unique needs. That's right. And so it's not as simple as putting them all in one building to meet all of their needs. And oftentimes they are best suited in environments where there is a smaller student population and not an expanded student population. Would you add to that, Matt. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right. So each one of these facilities have kind of a specialty. And, a student, they provide certain services to, tailored to specific student needs. Right. So we brought in the Austin Centers for Exceptional Students because they have specialties and areas that Sebastian and Fletcher Miller don't. Then you have other day treatment type facilities that are more

310clinically and therapeutically focused, like a Tennyson Center for children. There's a wide range of services that are needed to serve the very diverse population of learners we have in Jeffco. So it's not a one size fits all. So Barsky would not be beneficial to serve every kid who needs an out of district placement. I have a question about Medicaid. How does the, district get Medicaid dollars for what specific purposes? I'm used to Medicaid. Yeah, and I'm used to it for health care and dental care and therapy. Let's let Matt kind of give a quick summary speaking to make it not so complex. There are some providers, who Medicaid allows them to bill for their services, and then there's a reimbursement rate for those services. So for example, a para educator or an occupational therapist, some

311of those folks can, complete these things called random moments in time, which accounts for the time that they're providing health related services to kids. And then there's a reimbursement rate where you receive some dollars for that. Does it have to go through the parents for their Medicaid? Okay, no, it does not. I want to keep us moving. I'm happy to chat more. But yes, Medicaid has been funding public education services for 20 years, at least for 20 years. I've been involved. Brian. Awesome. Thanks, everybody. Okay, so we're gonna go in a little bit deeper. Dive administrative services. The district is working to establish the optimum level of meal service to determine whether we can operate within the state and federal reimbursements that are available, or whether we will need to sustain, support for the from

312the general fund for our 526 food service. We need additional, $1 million above the 3 million that was approved and an FY 25 revised budget, and a transfer from the general fund to maintain the fund balance in FY 26. I did want to just mention, because I heard, some great public comment this evening from some of our students who, did mention some of the food waste that is listed on this slide. I do think that, Jeff and Beth Wallace, Jeff Gatlin and Beth Wallace are both very committed to making changes in how we do our food service. To address concerns around food waste. It just so happens that it might cost less to buy less food, which makes CFO a little bit happy. But I think the students raise a really important point. And so

313I think we are trying to be responsive to that feedback. Okay. Sorry. Excuse me. So now to the observable shifts and some new items. So due to the various external forces, such as, you know, enrollment declines, new requirements and inflation, we see a mix of decreases in increases to next year's expenses. So due to declining enrollment, there's around a $5.4 million reduction in schools budgets, that have been added on by currently. Additionally, municipalities are requiring Jeffco to fund 50% of the school resource officers, and that is a new requirement. And we have identified 1.5 million, in budgetary needs to address inflation. Okay. So as mentioned in the previous slide, we are now required to fund 50% of the school resource officers, which equates to around 2.2 million for selling overtime. But this does exclude the

314benefits that are offered to those officers. Additionally, the district is evaluating a potential budget adjustment to align budget with current actual trends that we're seeing within the Department. Each year, the district makes annual inflationary adjustments to the budget that rotate through departments, and in FY 24, the inflationary budget investments for focus on the utilities to rightsize that budget. In FY 25, the majority of the inflationary increases went to it and a little bit into utilities again, to keep right sizing. And as the utility prices increased for FY 26, operational needs have been identified for the inflationary budget increases. As you can see, the inflationary adjustments have been declining over the last few years as inflation has been declining. Okay. Head back to Reinert to wrap up this section. Great. So I know the board, received

315an extensive presentation and study session around, ACP. And I know you've also had, members of the community come and speak to you from a budgetary perspective. We instituted at the revised budget a $1.5 million transfer into SC because we realized sort of mid-year that it was spending at an unexpected rate. From a budgetary perspective, making no comment as to programing. We are not going to continue that transfer next year. Currently. So again, it does effectively, when you think about the current year's budget as a base of sorts, that we're adding and subtracting to remember that that's the theme for tonight. What are some of the shifts? We're we are not planning to continue that 1.5 million transfer. Some of it ultimately probably the actual overspend is not that high. Okay. So it's not it's it

316does not mean that we are scaling back 1.5 million in services. It does mean we implemented a transfer in a moment when it was our last chance to change the budget, basically. And we picked a number and that's the number we picked. I don't think they're going to end up needing the full, amount. And yet it was the right thing to do at that moment in time. But there are some shifts contemplated. You've already heard a great deal about those. I don't think our team can shed any additional light on that, but we wanted to make sure from a budgetary lens to note the, savings to the general fund, if you will. Can I ask about the, tuition increase? What tuition is charged at our, City schools? So it's basically by the hour, by the

317day, and it's, it's not a huge increase. That's, that's contemplated. But it's one of several different adjustments, I guess I'm asking really do do the students do the parents have to pay a tuition for those schools? They do not for the school. That's for the before or after care. So it's just before and after. Okay. Yes. It's not for the school. Oh, I'm sorry I got to. It's late. I was thinking of the alternative education. Got my I got my letters mixed up. Yeah, yeah. No, I do remember them saying it was a $1 tuition increase. It's per hour for next year. Correct. Parents pay. Not huge, but I don't want to. I'm not exactly sure, but, I'll go with that. Yeah. Thank you. So lastly, and the the umbrella of water shifts, we have

318a slide of unknown shifts. Again, we've mentioned this a few times. Compensation really is a primary driver of, year over year changes in the budget. And so we need to come up with, some assumptions. I will also say transparently and honestly, each year Brian and I both very carefully read state statute to make sure we are conducting a budget process that matches the state statute. Brian very cleverly found, provision that honestly, neither of us had seen before. That said, if we change the budget from the proposed to the adopted, if we increase expense from proposed to adopted, we have to increase revenue. I'll be honest, I don't know if that's new or old and but it is fair. And so what that means is in your proposed budget, we need to have enough proposed expense

319that we don't anticipate increasing expense from the May to the June, unless we're going to also increase revenue. It seems very strange to me. That is the look I had when I read it. And nonetheless, that's what I read. I will also say I'm going to look at Julie on this one, that given the complicated nature and late breaking decisions by our state legislature around K-12 funding in the School Finance Act and layered into that the importance of our negotiations process with our associations, that I highly doubt that the CDC or Colorado state Legislature police will come around here and, I don't know, march us out of here if there is an adjustment made, before our adopt between our proposed and our adopted, would you agree with me from a legal perspective? I would absolutely

320agree with you that the last time we saw that really down in crisis mode was in 2020. Some of you may have remembered that with an imminent statutory deadline for adoption of a budget and huge uncertainty from the General Assembly. Yeah. I do think we want to do it right when we can, but if there are extenuating circumstances, I think the state always puts us in this place of having to adopt a budget where we're not a 150% certain on the revenue side. So. In terms of grants, we've been closely following some of what has come through JBC as a no. Eight, the CDC budget for grants is not part of the School Finance Act. It's part of the budget for CTE. And so trying to get clarity on, what a cut to their budget

321means in terms of grants for us is very, very difficult. It's not the same as the School Finance Act, where, the team can run a whole lot of different computations relatively quickly and assess the impacts of lots of different things. And this we're just scratching our head at the moment. So we anticipate that between 2 and 4 million and grant revenue to Jeffco might be at risk. But that's very much like this because they have not said which specific grants might be impacted. And it's still just a target. So it's very opaque for us at the moment. So again, trying to think about if we're funding something through a grant, do we continue to do it? If we are, we're bringing that in to the general fund as an expense. And it's becoming effectively an

322ad that's uncovered by revenue capital renewal. We're going to talk about that in the next section. So I won't spend a ton of time on that. And then other external factors. You guys have read the same news we have. I want to say this one is the hardest. When we published the slide, it seemed reasonable to ballpark 25 to 50%, as you well know, yesterday or the day before, 104% was introduced on, imports from China. I want to be clear that every single one of these, it's effectively an import from China. If the cost of every single computer goes up 104%, that is going to be very, very difficult for this district. To sustain our investment in technology. Now, we were able to pre purchase quite a few of our student laptops, but that does

323not apply for staff laptops. And we do have quite a few staff members, with technology that they use every day and they need our vendor recently reached out to us and suggested that they were going to already start charging us 104% more. And you can imagine I thought that was a lot. All right. And so I pointed out that our vendor does not pay the tariff, the government pays the tariff. And so until such time as they can evidence a product that actually costs more, they can either not assess that or we can take our business elsewhere. Now, I say that and Miss Rebecca is not here. I know she is not fond of the idea that all of a sudden we would start buying different, laptops and trying to support them. So I shouldn't

324be so cavalier. But I want to be clear. We are both fighting to protect the district's resources, and there are tremendous unknowns. And so whether it's raw materials used in capital renewal, trees and lumber from Canada or you name it, food from Mexico that we use in our food and nutrition services, this is a massive, massive unknown. Can I ask you? And you said the vendor doesn't pay the tariff, but the government does. The federal government, I mean, who who's our vendor? China pays the tariff is on the country. Well, that's what Donald Trump says, right? But no, it's true. Well, I've heard from manufacturers who say they are the ones writing the check for the tariff, but it you know, the country decides what they do and who knows what's happening. But I'm just

325saying our vendor cannot point to a thing that they are having to pay, that they are passing through to us. Like many producers, let's think about the eggs for a minute. People sometimes adjust costs because the market assumes they're going to adjust costs. There's not something that you could point to at the moment that shows that they are already having to pay that much more, because of the way the trickle down effect takes. I believe that, and even we don't know from day to day what the tariff amount is going to be so correct. Okay. On that cheery note, let's go to Capital Budgeting. I want to just frame quickly. We often talk about the capital transfer as if that's a capital budget. It is not. And I really think that the way we're presenting

326the information in this section, we are trying to give you context for 15 years worth of spending on capital renewal and investment and what that has averaged from all sources, because I think we need to think about the resources of the district writ large. What's the total amount we have from any source? Doesn't matter if it's a bond or a cash transfer or a sale proceeds or an existing fund, balance doesn't matter. How much are we typically spending? Just to maintain our capital defined properly. And so that's what Mr. Rosario is going to present an analysis around. Please know this is not intended to be a proposed budget. And I'm going to chime in towards the end to make sure we reiterate this is not intended to be a proposed budget. It's just illustrative of

327what prior year data shows us about how much it costs to maintain our district facilities, and therefore what we might imagine on average, we should plan for in the future and what that might or might not look like given today's dollars. So with that, Mr. Rosario, thank you. All right. So, yes, as Mr. Copeland said, this budget development, we're really taking an approach to focus on a dollar amount to support capital renewal and investment. And it's all going to be based on historical trends that I'll, preview for you. Thinking about capital, we have sources of funds that we have historically been, given for it, for our capital investments, our primary sources are debt issuance. So that is our debt that's approved by the voters on a bond ballot measure. We also have our annual transfers

328from other funds, which primarily has been the general fund. Third source is certificate of participation. So this is a financing arrangement where we, have existing capital that we offer up as collateral for that debt. And then we pay the lease payments, over this over a period of time. We also have alternate sources, which is sales of any of our properties, of our surplus properties. We have fees and lose that we receive from our developers. And then we have investment income, such as interest rates based on, market conditions. Liquor. This diagram is looking at the prior year's capital, sources from 2012 up through 2024. Our primary source, well over 13 years, it's been 1.3 billion or 100 million annually. If you average it across that time frame, the primary source was bond funds. So you can

329see those large, orange bars. Those are the years that we had bond issuances and then the others that are below the dotted line. Those are primarily the transfers from the general fund. We do have a copy issuance in 2016 that's represented by the gray and but historically over this time frame, it has averaged $100 million annually as a source for capital renewal and investment. Thinking about how we use the capital funds across the district, we have a couple categories here. We have facilities improvements. Those are projects to enhance or modify our existing facilities. So this really does extend the life of our current assets. And and make sure that those, facilities are being used as efficiently as possible for the purpose that they have. We also have facility construction. So this is going to be

330any new schools that we build or in addition that we, add on to any of our existing facilities. We have vehicles across the district that we typically refer to as our White fleet vehicles. So these are not our school busses, but these are other vehicles that are being used by facilities, transportation, IT and other operating departments across our district. Those have been purchased within the Cap reserve fund. Historically. Technology our funds that are going to be used utilized for major I.T related expenses. This could include new conference room equipment, phones, wireless access points across the district that are a major, investment in it for the district. And then we also have principal and interest payments that are made to reduce the original amount of borrowed. And then within this slide, specifically within Cap reserve fund,

331the principal and interest that we pay is related to our copy's, principal and interest related to bonds is paid from those specific bond funds. So we'll adjust this slide to make sure that that's clear that within the capital reserve fund, the principal and interest payments are related to the scope that we have, issued previously. Here's our uses of capital funds, as a, as a bar graph. So over the 13 years, we've invested 1.2 billion or 92 million. So, really we can see that they're very in total over the same time frame. These total sources and uses are, a similar amount. The primary use of the capital funds has been facility improvements. And reminder on the previous slide, that's really investment in our current, facilities and making sure that we extend the life of the asset

332and use the asset, for the benefit of our students. The average spend, for facility improvements has been 59 million per year over this time frame. The secondary use is facility construction. And that's the really where we talk about adding on to an existing building or building a new school. The interesting part to focus on in this graphic is looking at the first 6 or 7 years, 2012 to 2018. You can see that what we spent is below the average over that time frame of 92 million. And so, you know, we talk about that is deferring capital renewal and capital investment. And then you have to get to this period, which is what we've been in. And the 2018 CIP program, where then we're, spending more than the average over, into there to make up for

333the capital that we deferred over those first 6 or 7 years. And that's what we've been living in in the last few years. This is just a graphic to show you the sources and uses, for each year. So the blue or the purple bars are the sources year by year, and the green is the uses. So you can see year over year, we do not necessarily use the funds in the same year that we are receiving the funds, and they generally don't match up as the same height in the in any year. We obviously have to get the funds from bonds ahead of time and then spend the money after we get the funds from bonds. In the subsequent years after those. So this is just giving you a graphic of those for the, prior

334years. And then thinking about all of this, if we think about that, we had money that we spent in 2012. And then there's been inflation over that period of time. We need to think about what's the value of what we spent in 2012 in 20 $24. So this graphic is over the same time frame showing you year over year the inflation factor. Over this time frame the average was 2.6%. So if we look back at the spend year by year and apply the inflationary impact, the 92 million that I showed you a couple slides ago is our average spend over the 13 years that would now be valued at 105 million today. So that looks at saying that really, if we wanted to continue to spend at the same average rate per year going forward,

335that would be $105 million annually. Now I get to hand it back to Brenna. Yes. Go right ahead, please. I am struggling with the average, and I'm kind of wondering where we're going with it. Because of the range and the numbers being so, like having these outliers that are skewing the average really high. It like if, if, because the spend came in and like a, it's almost like that's because when the bond came you know what I mean. And so if the, if the same amount of money was spread more evenly over years, the average would go way down, right? It's the it's the large spikes that are bringing the average up. I think making it hard to I think one thing we, we tried to do here was use, 15 years. So had we

336just gone back the past 5 or 6 years, you're right. The average would have been much higher because it would have been in the years where we were doing catch up. But because we went 15 years, we actually were trying to adjust for the fact that the bond spent so much recently. If we had just said, you know, since 2018, the average was 150 annually, which it kind of was. That's a much higher number. But because we went back the full 15, we're trying to get to an average, over a large enough period of time. But we still have to adjust. We have to bring everything into today's dollars. Right. Because 2012 is so different. That was the inflation. But, but but, we could keep going. We could do another 15 years. And then also

337inflation adjust that. I do actually think we'd land in a similar spot. And there's a, there's a couple reasons why. The first is there's a rough metric, that you can sort of find if you Google it or talk to folks who work in the industry of like, how much of the replacement cost of a set of facilities or facilities and fields should you expect to spend on capital renewal each year? And it's approximately 2%, 2 to 2.5%. And if you look at the replacement cost of all of our buildings in the district today, it is actually very close to 100 million, this 2% metric. And so and we know that replacement cost because we debate it every single year with our insurers, etc.. So so we're triangulating to a figure that both, is factually true

338over a 15 year period and represents an approximate metric that the industry uses as what it takes. And so that gives me some level of confidence. But if you do want us to continue our retrospective, we can keep going further. There's there's going to be some peaks and valleys that we see that pattern repeat a little bit. There was a 2004 and 2006 bond issuance, and so you got a little bit of a peak then and then a little, you know, but it kind of seems to happen in 4 to 6 year increments. This sort of ebb and flow does that. How that helps a lot. I'm glad that you've thought that through when you said it's the model or the whatever. The formula is 2%, 2% of what, 2% of the replacement cost of

339the total physical plant and capital. So capital for us includes both furniture, fixtures, equipment, buildings, fields, etc. anything with a durable life beyond a year. Okay. And then one other question on the is there any way that we look at capital investments? I mean, I would never say like a school wouldn't appreciate all of the improvements, but some might be nice to have and some are absolute have to have. Do we look at our spending through that lens like we had a bond so we were able to improve, you know, the esthetics of a school versus we had to do hail damage, you know, and replace facilities and things like that. Do we look at our so as we're thinking about what's the cost of our of what what what Superintendent Dalton asked us to

340do, think about the future costs of the transfer. You know, should we because this includes some nice to have that we were lucky to be able to provide to our schools because we got a bond. But going forward, we might not want to consider those kinds of things in our budget because we are very under-resourced right now. So maybe it's a way we could at maybe I'm asking, like, maybe if it made sense to you all to look at it that way in the future for us to help us understand where we should be, prioritizing or thinking about what those numbers are. I mean, I would just actually begin with the left side of this slide, which talks about the primary use and secondary use of the average. Right. And so it talks about facility

341improvements. I mean, we want students to come into buildings that are healthy, right? I mean, even if it's not like the most esthetically pleasing place to be, we want facility improvements that maintain air quality and roofing and no leaks. And, you know, and so that was on average per year, 59 million. I mean, I think that that's a place to start. But I think Daniel's question is a good one. I think this is going to also be part of what Jeff's team begins to support and work on as we work with Perkins Eastman on the new strategic capital plan, getting getting us district leadership and our board to a place where we understand great. We just spent $800 million in our schools over the last 5 to 6 years, so they must be in pretty

342darn good condition, right? I mean, the answer to that question is yes. And with any facility, there's always things that are going to come up, but we just have a boiler situation go on at Alameda High School that we're, we're addressing because we have the funds to do it. And so there are the knowns there, the unknowns and there than the assumptions we can make. And I think that the Capital Strategic Capital Plan will help us with some of those prioritization that you're talking about. In the meantime, I do think it's important to note that on average over the last 15 years, we've spent 60 million a year in just facility improvements, not necessarily the most expensive things, like new new construction, Fletcher Miller or Prospect Valley kind of stuff. Great. So, this is the

343first slide where in addition to showing the past, we're showing the future. But I want to reiterate this is not a proposed budget or proposed. It's just an illustration. So we're just trying to say, okay, if we take this 105 million and we hold it up against most recently, what have we spent? So total uses in 22, 23 and 24. And then our current budget year projection of 81. You know you're seeing the tapering of investment. If we imagine they're usually not the proposed budget. Just put that 105 out against a couple of things. One being what's our fund balance in the Cap reserve to being let's assume some amount of transfer. And three being let's assume some amount of sales. And I'm going to show a little more numbers on the next slide. How

344much could we afford against that 105 over the next three years. And so you see the crosshatch part is we couldn't afford it all the way. And so this is just one version. Again, just to illustrate how much balance do we have? How much is our transfer in contributing? How much are potential sales. But let me go ahead and jump into the next slide because it's more numbers and might further illustrate a hypothetical, not a proposed budget, that matches the slide you just saw, which is to say these are round numbers. Let's imagine we start next year with approximately 100 million in the Cap reserve fund. We do know that we let's imagine that we do some type of transfer. Maybe it's not the full 30. So right here you're saying 15. That's not a

345proposal. That's just an illustration. We've worked with Jeff to try to come up with an estimate of what sales of property might, on average, bring in over a three year period. There may be a little bit of a spike or a little bit of a dip. But again, we think approximately 10 or 11 over three years is the right on average. Other interest fees in lieu is just, are we earning anything on a balance if we have a balance, obviously, you know, in the third year where we don't actually have a beginning fund balance, we probably aren't going to get 5 million in other interest and fees in lieu, but we might still get some fees in lieu. We do get those annually. So these are very approximate. So imagine we're sourcing a proximately 30

346million a year of new funds into capital reserve. We started with a 100 million balance. We add we subtract. We have a couple very specific current projects that we are that we know we have. Right. We sort of don't want to lose sight of those. But then beyond that, we've plugged a number to then get to an annual of 105. And so that number would be 85 and 25, 26, 95 and 26, 27 and 105 and 20. And again, all we're doing is just saying, let's use the average of 105 a year, and let's figure out how long does our incoming and our starting balance fund us towards that goal. It doesn't go very far. It goes approximately one year, and then in the second year we aren't able to reach our goal, to the

347tune of about 48 million. And in the third year, we aren't able to reach our goal to the tune of 75. I know you're going to ask me a question. I'll just stop. I just want to be really clear when we say we're deferring and we're not reaching our goal, that means we're going to have to make a decision not to spend money in schools that may need it. Yes. On average. And again, yes, I know this is totally theoretical. Yes, that's what that means. Yes. And so this is just an illustration. You know, so given this on, I'd like us to think on a multi-year horizon when it comes to capital, even though you're approving a single year budget. And my suggestion is to think in general. Okay. If we know that 105 is

348a reasonable average over 15 years, but we may not be able to hit it. Okay. Well, how far down are we going to go? Because the other dynamic that I think is important to note, and I, I'm not an expert, but I certainly have seen it from my seat. When you defer, sometimes the expense itself gets more costly. Which is a small thing becomes a bigger thing. And so what would have been a $1 million repair is now a $3 million repair simply because you deferred it. And it escalated or got worse. Yes. Yeah. I just want to add, I think this is the this is a highlight this as well as sort of the graph that Danielle was talking about around like this is an average. And so it's inflated. But these other years

349we didn't spend as much. This up and down I think is a reason why several of our neighboring districts have taken advantage of a revenue measure, a local revenue measure, in the interest of ongoing annual capital investment, where we're not taking out debt, repaying for the debt over time, having these big spikes in investment followed by these big drops up drop offs and lack of investment, but more of a steady eddy. Invest ment in maintaining our facilities and doing so where the dollars we receive today goes into the dollar, we invest in a building instead of paying $0.50 or $0.80 into the building and $0.20 in interest or payback, whatever we call it. So that that's why this is, I think, highlighting also to connect to your, retreat study session around revenue, possibilities. This is

350why some districts have decided to increase the levy overrides for the investment in capital. It evens that out a little bit over time and allows you to invest at all in your buildings instead of in debt. And I, I mean, I think a really conservative like way to approach this is just to say, what is our bare minimum budget? And then anything above that we have to fundraise. You know, like we we obviously have to service our schools at a minimum. And it's hard to see what that number is. Maybe it was 59 million. You know, if we went by that budget. But it's hard to tell. And then and plus going forward. So I don't know for as a board I'm I'm thinking this is really hard because do we want to shoot for

351the stars when we, you know, budget for this or are we being like really, really tight and, you know, directing or advising the district to budget around something far less than what we actually hope for or tell the story? Like this is all we can do unless we do a local initiative. So, yeah. And this this table has about 105 in the annual investment, which is the average. And you you noted rightly so that when we don't have bond funds to spend, we go way below that. So this is like a to run a point. This is just illustration. We could decide that next year in 2526 we're not going to invest 105. We're going to invest 59 or 55. Yeah. And so then it looks better. It gets the runway gets a little longer.

352But also then your deferred maintenance probably gets built up. And to Brennan's point, something that cost $1 million today, my cousin $2 million tomorrow. So it's just a catch 22 and there's really no great answers. But we are going to need some guidance from the board going into this school year. I know we have been talking, for quite a bit, and, you guys have had a long night. This is our revenue section. Just want to do a quick check and keep going. I think it's as important, but I also respect. Okay. We're good. Excellent. Okay. Brian and I are going to tag team just a little bit. So House Bill 25 1320 this slide summarizes a whole lot. And it really is just our way of saying the forecast we're about to present assumes that

353this is the thing. There's some other things circulating, however, we're assuming that this is the thing. It does include for the new school finance formula portion of our funding for year averaging and 26 three year averaging and 27 three year averaging in 28 if and only if the state aid fund is over 200 million. Otherwise, to your average. We're going to show you what all these things are worth so that you have information about the relative value of averaging versus 14, 48 versus other things, etc. I keep going, for example, this side, which is a new one you've never seen before. Fund account dynamics and the value of the new school finance formula. I was trying to get to an illustration of how much is 1448 worth to us over time, compared to how much

354our different amounts of averaging worth to us over time next year? A 15% implementation as of 1448 is worth approximately. These are all rounded $5 million for year averaging is worth approximately 16,000,003 million three year averaging 9 million. Two year averaging 4 million. There's no one who's saying there's going to be 3 or 2 year averaging. This is just illustrative, okay. By the time we get to full implementation of 1448, which is now and 3132, it's worth $34 million. And if we assume the district continues to lose 800 students a year now, I do not necessarily think that the district will continue to lose 800 students a year. However, for you to be able to understand in a hypothetical and let's call that hypothetical maybe a worst case scenario, because I really don't want our

355enrollment to continue to drop 800 kids a year for that long. But if it did, and averaging was therefore still somewhat valuable to us, then in that final year, averaging four year averaging versus three year averaging versus two year averaging, you can see the relative values versus 1448. So hopefully you see that the additional investment over time is worth more than fund account averaging. And that is why insofar as legislators are asking about trade offs or do one or do the other or whatever, there is math. This is the math. Okay. Brianna. Yes. If this is additional funding, then we're implying that we're not losing any money. This is additional to what we got in 24, 25. So yes. Okay. So our fear of possibly, you know, being in the hole 21 million oh is

356not shown here. It we don't think that's correct. So sorry I will get to the full thing I appreciate that. That that's correct. This is additional to what we would otherwise get just through regular funding, which is to say if no averaging existed, we would get like a base amount. And because averaging exists, we get an additional. This or because 1448 is rolling out, we get an additional this. And these are the amounts. So to your point, does any of this mean that we have a revenue increase next year. The answer is no. We do not. None of this is additional to a prior forecast. It's additional in comparison to what we would otherwise get if it didn't exist. Now, they did talk about holding harmless some districts. So if we would not, I mean

357not hold you back any further, we're going to jump right over the numbers. Just one more frame. We we gave you scenarios one, two and three in February. Rather than try and modify those. Those are now they're they're never going to change. We now have four and five. These are actually both scenarios contemplated in the existing proposal one single proposal, two scenarios coming out of that proposal. And in the scenarios, all we're trying to do is demonstrate different potential outcomes based on a number of different things. Scenario four is going to talk about, both of these share the same fund account and then and assumed enrollment. They both assume a declining at risk percentage. We've already talked that hasn't changed from our February. And they both assume 15% or 1448 in next year. But then

358they start to diverge a little bit and both of them follow her. The proposal the School Finance Act proposal. So it's a little bit confusing. So four is formula funding per the bill language scenario five is if we get the hold harmless, how much is that worth? And then Brian is going to take over. Okay. So you've seen this slide from the previous three scenarios that we've shown. There's a difference in the funding counts in all three scenarios. And two of the scenarios, here, as we were showing and previously that the both of the scenarios are at for year averaging. So they're going to be the exact same fund account, an actual account we're really here showing is that the hold harmless provision that's in the proposed bill, is a function of the total program

359dollar. So it doesn't change our funded pupil counts. It actually changes the total dollar amount that we would receive if the provision for the hold harmless is triggered. Okay. So in scenario for the total revenue decreases $1 million or 0.1%, from the 2425 revised budget. In scenario five, the total revenue decreases by 2 million, or 0.2%, in the 2425 revised budget. We know there's not much of a difference between the two scenarios, but what we're doing is showing trying to illustrate the hold harmless scenario in case the district experienced an unforeseen large drop in enrollment, which may trigger something like this. We're not really seeing that in our projections, but we're showing what would happen if the whole time was, actually provision was triggered. Okay, so this table outlines the decisions. Yeah. We need some

360clarification. I'm hearing you guys like you. So a hold harmless results in a decrease. Awesome. No no no no. So 727, 727 is our total program. Yes. 255 is everything else. Mill levy overrides, categorical interest, income, etc., etc. there is no world in which 255 is 255. Next year, and we have another slide that explains that that's the same as what we told you in February 27th, in the seven 2010, the 727 is the only thing that hold harmless ever applies to total program, total programs, only 75% of our revenue. The rest is actually gone. No worries. Thank you. That's a great question here. This is where I try to show a little bit of the detail behind it. And yes, there's a lot going on, a lot of movement in these pieces that we

361have. And so I'm not I spend a lot of time on the tables, but what we do is we try to be as transparent as possible and updating any assumptions that have changed from our scenario. One four year averaging, that risk count decreasing, like we said, sped count did increase. We talked with this previously that we were going to increasing it. Brian I'm sorry, can you go back to 32 I think what Michelle just said is accurate. So what in the green in this scenario five for your averaging withhold harmless. The total program is 727. In scenario four, with just the four year averaging with the as proposed, it's 728. That's correct. So holding harmless is not beneficial to the tune of $1 million. I mean, it's 6 or 1 half dozen of the other,

362but it is a million bucks, correct. Why is that? I think that's what Michelle is asking. I mean, we all we all understand the all of the revenue is not tied to total program. And what is happening down at the state House. Yeah. So what what is the hold. Why is the hold harmless not benefiting us more or why is it actually harming us by $1 million. So it's sound like hold harmless to me. It's not like it's it's holding harmless from the 24, 25. Touch it. Right. There's two ways to answer this question. There's a lot of complicated moving pieces in the formula. CDC released their runs last Wednesday. It's only when they do that that we ever know what full set of assumptions anyone was ever using. Okay. When they released, and we

363pulled through every bit of detail and we saw how they were. So the way this whole thing works, first you run the old formula. The old formula is no. 1448. You run it on a funded account, that fund account. Up until last Wednesday, we thought was a four year average. It's not it's a five year average. Okay. Five year average old formula. Then you run a four year average new formula and you compare it to what you would have gotten in the old formula. And you say, what incremental amount of money do you get through the full implementation of 1448? You multiply that incremental addition by 15% and you add the 15% of your full incremental add, which is 15% of an add, and you add it to your base, and your base is old

364formula. So that that if you read it really carefully, that's what the statute describes. Run the old formula, then give each district the greater of and it becomes overrun on sentence. That or they're same as the whole time last 2425 or this plus this. Okay, so that this plus this, all we're adding is 15% of what we would otherwise get through the full incremental add of 1448. We're basically getting five year averaging. Yep. We're still going to come out better if we if they don't include the hold harmless. No, no. We hold harmless as an if then you get the greater of we get the greater of these two. We're only showing you what hold harmless hypothetically would be, because the only way we would be triggered into that is if, instead of we loss,

365instead of losing 800 kiddos, we might lose a thousand kiddos or 1100 kiddos or 1200 kiddos. At which point we actually come out better through hold harmless. That's the only scenario at this point is a significant drop. So the the mechanics that were revealed last week midweek changed the calculus. So up until last week we had thought, okay, the hold harmless is our best possible outcome, but that's because we thought we were using a single fund account. In both formulas. We are not. We're using two different fund accounts, which makes zero sense. Yeah, this is why it gets so complicated when they pull us in the conversations around what do you really think about all this? Right. Because you got so many things. Go on. You got 14, 48 going on. You've got averaging going

366on. You've got this hold of harmless thing going on. And at the end of the day, every single one of us is saying we don't fund us enough, period. Regardless of all those things. Right. And so we're all trying. It's we're all trying to keep up. And these guys are the ones running the numbers and it just gets really complicated. So thank you. That's helpful. For me I don't okay. Let's jump ahead just a little. That's finding that that it is it is really complicated. Okay. So to help answer this Applegate's question, here's a detail of the other. The 255. The 253. Also in the right. Right. So if you add those up at equals, the 253, the detail at the bottom. And then we highlighted the changes that we had from our previous, average

367station. Okay. So we have now projected the two scenarios out three years, aligning with the proposed school finance language. That includes the conditions that determine the funding counts and percentage of the House bill. 1448 increase. As you can see, if I 27 shows an increase of between 15 million or 17 million for FY 26. And if I 28 shows an increase of 9 million to 11 million by 27, this is around a 1% per year increase from FY 27. FY 28. We just introduced calculus when you guys were still on algebra. So, and it's late. The the summary point I want you to take here is compared to the revenue forecast from February next year, looks better than it did before, which is not to say we're going to have more revenue. It just means

368it's flatter and less dropping, less that, FY 27, actually, if you go back to our previous multi-year from last year, which was actually pretty spot on, honestly, for FY 26, despite all the noise, FY 27 does demonstrably look better than it did over a year ago. So our out year has improved. Wonderful. And still over a three year period, even though next year's flat over a three year period, we're averaging a 1% increase in revenue per year. That is substantially less than the increases we have appreciated over the past 3 to 5 years. That is a lot less new money than we have appreciated over the last 3 to 5 years. I'm going to just say that over and over again. Yeah. And I think this slide in the next slide also, articulate the purple

369versus the green. Purple is increasing. Right. The purple is assuming for your averaging next year with the 981, it's assuming a three year averaging in the next year, 2627 and a 2 or 3 year in the next. So it's showing you the value of 1448 versus averaging in terms of Jeffco, based on the types of students that we serve. Yeah. So magenta. Magenta purple. Yeah. 2627 three year and 30%. It's a better revenue outcome than for year and 15. That's what we're trying to show you. Okay. Done. We're done. As a reminder for budget development, we would like your input. And I believe Superintendent Dorion summarized this the beginnings. I don't need to say it again. Our plan to discuss this further with you all is for Brenna and Brian to join me at some

370update meetings that are that were occurring currently scheduled and coming up. So in your next update meeting, I'll have some friends with me because these are going to be really important, conversations and giving some guidance at all. Then share back with Mary and we'll communicate back to the board. As we head into the proposed budget in May. Okay. Any questions? Director Kenworthy, you have a question? Nope. Nice to see you. Okay. Thank you very much for that presentation. And, we'll keep trying to make it not the last thing that we listen to, you know, maybe was it was circumstances beyond our control. Okay, that means we are not going into action item 901 or deferred for that. And so I think we're on to the consent agenda. Items 10.01 through 10.21 are presented in board

371docs as a proposed consent agenda. As a reminder to our listening public, the board received a preview of these items at our April 2nd study session. Do I have a motion regarding the approval of the consent agenda as presented in board docs? I move to approve items 10.01 through 10.21 on the consent agenda as published in board docs. Is there a second second? Any comments? It has been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda. Roll call please. Miss Harper, miss Applegate. Yes, miss Kenworthy? She said yes, Miss Parker. Yes, miss Reed? Yes, doctor. Vada. Yes. And the consent agenda is approved. So that brings us to the end of today's agenda. We will stand adjourned. Our next meeting is a board study session scheduled at 3:30 p.m. on May 7th at the Edison Charter.

372Good night, and good luck.