001And. I would like to call this meeting of April 2nd to 2025 to order. And I'd like to thank our live simultaneous Spanish interpreters for joining us today. We're also live streaming our meeting. Roll call please. Kristen. It's Applegate here. Miss Kenworthy here. Miss Parker here. Miss Reed here. Doctor Barta here. Would you please stand and join us this afternoon in the Pledge of Allegiance? I, the United States of the Republic stands one nation under God, indivisible. Is there a motion to approve today's meeting agenda? I move to approve today's meeting agenda as presented in board docs. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? It has been moved and seconded to approve the agenda for today's meeting of April 2nd, 2025, as presented. Roll call please. Mr. Applegate? Yes. Miss Kenworthy. Yes. Miss Parker. Yes.
002Miss Reed. Yes. Doctor. Vada. Yes. The agenda is approved at our March 13th meeting. We studied the following topics. Second quarter 20 2425 financial report and Dialog with the Financial Advisory Committee. And we formalized our endorsement of several proposed legislative bills. We also met on March 28th for a training and Q&A that covered two important statutes that affect board service the Colorado Open Records Act and the Colorado Open Meeting Law. The public can watch the recordings to learn more about this content. You can also visit our board page on the Jeffco Public Schools website. There you'll find a host of information and links to both board docs and our live stream platforms. Now we'll proceed with today's study agenda and our first agenda item will follow. The board will allow the board the opportunity to
003review and discuss recent legislative activities of the 75th General Assembly. Should the board wish to formally endorse or support legislation, we may also discuss it during this time. Before I turn this over to Mr. Bowdich, where did Mr. Babish go? You in the back. Always in the back. Before I turn it over, to Mr. Bowdich from Bowdich and KSL Public Affairs. Is there anything you'd like to say, Superintendent Dawson? No. Thank you. I'm good. Welcome. Mr. Bowdich. Long time no talk. And church and everything else. Right? Good evening, everybody. Thank you for the invitation to come out to the board tonight. It's all budget, all the time down at the Capitol. A few other things going on, but the long bill has been introduced that contains all the funding for all the categorical programs along
004bill this year is as complex as I've ever seen it, because there are 60 to 70 other bills that travel along with the with the bill. Those are called orbital bills because they, keep pace with the long bill. The long bill can't change statute. It can only allocate funding. So if the legislator Joint Budget Committee is going to recommend any statutory changes this year, primarily to save money, they will need to introduce separate legislation to do that. So today the Senate is hearing on second reading right now. The long bill and the 60 to 70, the number kind of fluctuates of the orbital bills. As an example of one of the orbital bills, the modifications that the Legislative Joint Budget Committee is recommending to the Healthy school Meals for all program is done through an
005orbital bill. It gets a little more confusing because there's another bill out there by Representative Lorraine Garcia, whose district has part of Jefferson County, where she's also making other modifications to the Healthy School Meals for all program. So all these things need to fit together. Some of the I'm happy to jump right in and explain some of this. I hope that's okay. Some of the categorical program increase. So the categorical programs, special ed English language learner, there's a transportation program gifted and talented. These categorical programs have the they are the most protected program in the state budget and the agency they have to increase by the rate of inflation each year. There's no no negative factor can be applied to them. This year, the Legislative Joint Budget Committee, despite the tough year, increased them by
006slightly more than the rate of inflation. Each one doesn't have to increase, but as a group, they have to increase. As usual and as understandable. Special education is the the lion's share of the categorical. That's about three fourths of all of the categorical funding. And of the $17.7 million increase for categorical special ed is getting an increase of 13 million. That doesn't mean that districts won't have to pay for a portion of special ed. Special ed is a combination of federal, state, and district funds. But in the last few years, there has been a concerted effort to try and really increase the funding for special ed. The rest of the categorical is are much smaller. The legislative Joint Budget Committee is also recommending some program reductions. There was a program that had $7 million for
007at risk supplemental aid with the new School Finance Act passed and scheduled to come online on July 1st. This at risk supplemental aid is duplicative because the new act provides a greater focus on at risk students. So the Joint Budget Committee recommends zeroing that out, saving 7 million. It was a high impact tutoring program that was developed right after Covid, trying to help those kids who may have been very impacted by learning loss. This program was supposed to end after, fiscal year 2526, but there is a bill, one of the orbital bills that will go through and, zero that out this year, say $5 million, reduce the bullying prevention program by a million. Eliminating the career advisor training that saves a million, eliminating the computer science education grants. That's 500,000. And eliminating the Accelerated College
008Opportunity Exam grant program. That's almost $600,000. One of the things that we've talked about over the years is the growth in grant programs at CD. All well-meaning or almost all well-meaning, I suppose. But it takes money away from, from the district funding. And so I was not happy that these programs are being reduced, but I am happy that they're being reduced first before there are reductions and a reinstatement of the DSP. So I appreciate the focus, on the, of the Joint Budget Committee to try and keep the, the funding reductions away from the districts in the school Finance Act. I mentioned healthy school meals for all. The state strategy at this point is one I would very respectfully say, is hope. Hope is generally not a strategy, but the bill by Lorena Garcia, Representative Garcia,
009will place a ballot measure if passed places two ballot measures before the voters. One is a written measure allowing the state to retain all the revenues that were associated with the original ballot question. Because of work and how Tabor works, the state can't even retain all that revenue. So that's what people are saying is the easy one. The other is a raise measure. We need to raise more money, so that that program can fully be self-sufficient. The Joint Budget Committee discussed this repeatedly and finally came up with a solution that they weren't totally pleased with, but they have to spend. I think, $9 million out of the state education fund to fully fund, healthy school meals for all programs so that all students, any regardless of socioeconomic status, regardless, schools for the first semester. And
010then we hope the voters pass both the written and raise measures in November if the raise and retain measures, or if the raise measure passes the written measures that they know, the raise measures the big one, the raise measure really needs to pass. So that second semester we can continue this on and hopefully the program can continue in perpetuity if the raise measure doesn't pass, if we don't get more tax revenue for this program. The Joint Budget Committee bill says the healthy school Meals for all program will be targeted on those schools that qualify for the Community Eligibility program, so that at least you're targeting the, available state funds, to the lower income schools. There are a few other schools that they say are like, have similar demographics as community education programs, schools, but just
011aren't categorized that way. And they would also be included in this. Certainly this year, the year that we're in now, it was a very different funding environment last year when the Joint Budget Committee said we can appropriate additional money, understated funds to keep the program going for everybody. But that's not the case anymore. And really, it was Representative Shannon Byrd who was the big champion last year saying, we can't continue to use the state aid funding now. She eventually was okay with and supports, doing this for the first semester. But don't be surprised if the measures pass. The legislature are placed on the ballot, and then they'll be an effort to get everybody to support that. There were other provisions in the original Healthy School Meals for all program that had grant programs for food
012purchasing and stipends for people who were working in the food service industry because they were feeding so many more people those programs no one is really talking about. They've never been implemented. But if we can get the SMA back on track again, hope that all this stuff happens. I think a lot of people would be asked a question I just want to ask before we move on to other things. How does that impact our ability to budget and plan? For the fall, for our next budget year, if we don't know if there's going to be funding or not? Is that the movement's answer? That I can, answer that we make assumptions and we've shown you some of those assumptions. And Brennan's team has been quickly as she gets information from and, sort of revising those
013assumptions. So this Friday in your, in the board materials that will be posted for next week, the board will see those revised assumptions based on the latest drafts. And or information that, I'm not sure we've seen the draft yet. But the latest information that's been shared with Ed related to the speakers, what she, what she's working on in terms of a draft to, propose. So the long bill has to go through first, and then the School Finance Act will be presented after that. And so we have indication through Add what the speaker has said she, is working on in terms of a draft. And so you'll see those most recent assumptions next week during the department budget update. And I mean there's two real big variables right now. One is how is this going to
014impact our revenue? And the other is what are we going to, invest in compensation? Those two variables are still unknown. And as we go from April to May to June, they start to tighten up, given decisions at, the bargaining tables and decisions at, the legislature, based on the draft bills that are introduced and then worked and eventually adopted. I think I want to ask a follow up, just a follow up, that to that for clarity. Hoping that a ballot measure would pass to support school meals for all. I don't know how we plan for that in our budget. The second half of our budget, I don't I mean, it wouldn't be just us would be districts across the state wondering, do we set aside additional money in case that we would have to pick up
015a cost, or would we not implement the program? I, you know, it's a great question. I think all districts will be and this is hot off the press. And so all districts will be in a position where you'll see next week that we already, even with the current funding for healthy school meals for all and other funding that we receive into our food nutrition services budget, we are over, over. But we are over at expensed. And so we will be, proposing in your budget for next year a transfer into Food Nutrition Services with some programmatic changes that will hopefully help us be more efficient. So that's the good news. And you'll, you'll see that, proposal and, related to next year's budget in next week's presentation. If for some reason, the state does this, revenue increase
016measure and or retention measure and one or both don't do not, pass in November, I think we will have to have a conversation, like all districts around reverting back to fees. So we used to pay for lunch. I mean, I used to pay for lunch. That was actually going to be my next question is do we, as a board, as a district, have the ability to go back to free or reduced lunch forms and fees? Yeah, I mean, free or reduced lunch forms still exist and direct certification is actually the best way for us to identify students who qualify for free or reduced lunch. I don't think districts will have a choice but to revert back to fees for lunch. In communities that don't qualify for the community program that Ed was mentioning, which is
017where we have schools that are identified as, like school wide title one. And then those students, regardless of your status as an individual student, have access to free meals. And then it sounds like the state would also maybe have some room to include some additional schools in the, Healthy School Meals for all program, which would be great. And we might not have to charge in those schools, given what the is able to support us with. But if if they don't have the money and aren't providing it to us, we will have to revisit fees. Okay. Can I just get some clarity? I thought that the voters passed legislation or, you know, passed. I think it was a constitutional amendment. And now statutory. So so what happens then? I mean, do we aren't we required because
018of the voter initiative or. I don't understand. You are raising an excellent question. And that's exactly what in the JBC talked about this maybe six times over the last month. What did we do? And the point was made. This program passed with a funding source. That funding source turned out to be the underestimated student demand, and they overestimated the revenues through this tax policy change. So we ended up with this gap. But still, the voters passed something with a funding source. I don't mean any disrespect to law enforcement, but the law enforcement measure that passed this year just said you shall appropriate $350 million. And one of the JBC members said, why are we going to short the healthy meals, school meals for all program when they at least had a funding source now? I
019mean that very respectfully to both of those measures. At this point, the plan is just as described that if things don't pass in November, I think every district will have to have have to make choices. And it's a very tough thing to say to the voters. You you voted for free lunch for all, but we can't provide it. Yeah. So by law, we are. We could decide not to go with a voter supported state statute by. Yes, this legislature can change the statute that passed by the voters. If if it had been a constitutional amendment, they couldn't have. But that you would the legislature have to change that for us to be able to make that decision? I think I need to research that, but I think that's the intent that the bills passed this
020spring. And best case scenario, they both passed in the fall. Other scenario, then each district will have to decide what to do. And I have to imagine many, if not all, will have to go back to charging. But I don't. Okay. I guess you can go on. Moving on to school finance from healthy school meals to school finance. Oh, a couple of other things just before we get there. The Joint Budget Committee did discuss sponsoring legislation to eliminate the social studies assessment. They voted to do it, and then they backed off. The best grant program will be funded at 157 million. It will be capped again to try and save some money in there. And there will be separate legislation yet to be introduced modifying the ascent program. And that's a big program that a
021lot of districts use and a lot of students in the districts use. So we'll wait to see what what comes with that. A lot of the cuts that they talked about this year, such as the aforementioned elimination of the social studies assessment, if it wasn't taken this year, I have to believe there will be a long list of cuts that will be the first ones taken, because they there's no way the legislature can balance $1.1 billion shortfall in one year. They have to push some of it off to next year. And so there's already a list of cuts that I believe will have to be offered up when they start meeting again in November as well. Budget. School finance. There's been a lot of debate all session about this at this point yesterday, I think
022it was the speaker sent out a summary. I think I sent that on to the board. One page summary that just talks about what she wants to do. Her School finance Act will be carried by speaker McCluskey, representative Megan Lukens, chair of the Education Committee, Senator Bridges, chair, the Budget Committee, and minority leader Paul Lundeen. It extends the implementation of the 1448 New School Finance Act from six years to seven years. We kind of knew that was coming. That saves money. The $500 million of new money can be allocated over seven years, rather than six. The implementation of the new formula, 15% of the new funding formula will occur on July 1st. 30% July 1st, 2026, and then it goes up to 45%. That's slightly each year, 3% less than what the new formula had
023originally proposed, the averaging. And this has shifted around a lot over the last few weeks. Her School Finance Act maintains the four year averaging for 2526 moves to three year averaging in 2627. Only if we reach that 30% threshold of the new school financing. Next year's a long ways off, but there were a lot of questions when she floated much of this concept a month ago, and people said, who's to say we're going to be arguing we can't make 30 next year? We can only make 22.7% next year. So this has a trigger in it to say we're not going to roll back the scheduled, averaging from four years to three years, unless we reach the 30% of the 1448. And then she has another three year averaging after that and each year thereafter. But
024some other things, such as the so-called smoothing factor, there's still a lot of concerns with this. I think what the speaker has proposed has improved a lot in the last month, for example, maintaining the averaging time triggers to the averaging instead of having a 10% implementation of 1448. We have a 15% implementation. Fortunately, there are a number of things that have happened that have been very positive. There's still a lot left to kind of work on this. And in discussions with other lobbyists at the Capitol, they want more specificity about what the hold harmless will look like. Does that mean districts are flat funded? 1448 said everyone was supposed to get a 0.5% increase at a minimum. And we go back to that. The smoothing factor, which I think is a very helpful alternative way
025of moving us beyond the, enrollment averaging debate. If the state insists on doing that, the smoothing factor needs much more definition before it can be used as a trigger, because we're not really, certain you could read that and interpret that in a lot of different ways. This was supposed to be introduced last night. I don't believe it's been introduced yet, but, that is the speaker School Finance Act. To make things even more interesting, I guess Senator Corker, whose district is South Jeffco and a bunch of Arapahoe County Senator Coker and Senator Kirk Meyer are going to introduce a school finance act that is, changing. Originally, I believe it was supposed to keep the current School Finance Act and not transition to the new School Finance Act, but I haven't seen the draft yet and don't
026know if that's still the intent. But as chairman of the Senate Education Committee and Senator Kirk Meyer, as a member of the Budget Committee, they want to introduce their own School Finance Act. So we'll see. To have one in the House and one in the Senate finance. Do you have any indication what's included in that Alternative School Finance Act? A few weeks ago, it was keeping the enrollment averaging at five years. So keeping it where it is this year, not transitioning to four years, but I'm not sure that still, in the end, and it was keeping the current School Finance Act not transitioning at all to 1448, but again, I haven't seen I just know both of these are coming. I have a question about they hold harmless again when I was trying to read
027it and understand it, it seemed to me that if we had declining enrollment, we would still get declining funds as opposed to guaranteed funding on the pre 1448, School Financing Act. I mean, I mean, ideally, I'd love it if we knew exactly what we're going to get, but what is to you what is hold harmless mean to me? Hold harmless as a dollar figure that your you can't receive one less dollar from one year to the next. But I but right. So so yeah. So I guess the question is whether it's per student funding, you know, per pupil or if it's the total. Yeah. It so 1448 is the bill that was passed last year that was to be implemented this year related to student weighted factors. It it ends up increasing the amount of
028funding being invested in K-12 as a state. And it's beneficial to Jeffco because we have then a wait, for example, on our special education students that we didn't get previously. So what she's proposing now is a yes and yes implement 1448 out of 15% investment and hold harmless meaning, any district will not get less money in revenue than they did this year, which is also beneficial to us because even with the additional investment that comes in, 14 from 1448 are declining, enrollment would still mean, as you've seen in some of the information we've presented, that we would have less revenue this year even with that additional funding. So what's going on is this in every district right now is these calculations of what does 1448 mean to us with additional funding? And then what happens
029when we consider our declining enrollment? And what does that mean when it looks like at a four year? What does that mean when it looks like at a three year? And then to complicate it even further, what does that look like if we're just on this current, model where we don't change to, 1448 and we keep five year averaging and it's sort of takes the scales and sometimes one district will end up better, or one district one the person you know. So everybody's kind of playing that game right now. What she's proposed, my understanding based on conversations with Ed is that she's proposing both the implementation of 1448 at 15%, which is beneficial to us because of the waits and a hold harmless. So it, it creates, in a positive for us, given that we're
030not having to take into account our declining enrollment and and keeping our revenue at its current rate. So the hold harmless is very beneficial for districts that have declining enrollment. And depending upon your student demographics, 1448 can also be very beneficial. So that's what's happening. So any other questions on the school financing options that have been. Is there any indication when Senator Corker is planning on coming to the table with that bill, or we're just going to wait until it happens? He has sent some communications out to some of the K-12 lobbyists, but it's been dated, so I just don't know what he's thinking. I haven't talked to this week, and especially now that this other one is likely to be introduced. I don't know if there's trouble. I was at a town hall over
031the weekend and, Representative Rebecca Stewart said that the late bills being introduced seem to have, not a lot of hope right now, especially given, appropriations is a place where all bills go today. And so I'm just curious about introducing legislation this late in the game. Is that is there is it more to force a conversation rather than actually have, legislative action? That's an excellent question. And I have no. Okay. But to your point, House seems to be moving very slowly getting through their calendars this year, and there was just a resolution introduced yesterday that requires two thirds in each chamber that would direct the state to file a lawsuit that Tabor is a violation of the U.S. Constitution. This was a lawsuit that was filed about ten years ago, was kicked out for lack of
032standing, I shouldn't say kicked out. What would the lawyers say if I just said kick? That it was dismissed? Yes. Thank you. Dismissed for lack of standing. So you get into a debate like that and suddenly your calendar moves very slowly. So you're right. There's there's a major bill yet to show up on immigration that everyone keeps hearing about, but that hasn't been introduced. And after today, there are 34 days left. So. I might just also add related to, what? You know, Ed, across K12 and sort of where different districts are in their perspective of what's going on around 1448, averaging, you and I had a conversation with the executive, the incoming executive director of Case, the Association of School Executives. And they've been doing, I think, a nice job of trying to pull K-12
033lobbyists together, as well as districts who don't necessarily aren't like Jeffco and have the luxury of having their own lobbyist. They had a Legislative Council meeting recently, is what we've heard. So can you share a little bit about what we learned from case, which I do think has, a good pulse on what districts across the state are feeling about what's happening, including small rurales who often have different needs than us. And so we pay attention to the needs of districts across the state through case. Can you share a little bit about that? And I think with, what Melissa Gibson indicated was that there's an overwhelming desire to start the implementation of 1448, that districts across the state are pretty unified in that, you know, it does provide more money to all districts, especially the really
034small, remote rural districts, the small districts across the state and those districts that have a higher population of, at risk students, they're all going to, the rewarded financially more through the provisions of 1448, but everybody will get more money. The, the next thing that that was made clear with the case group is that four year enrollment averaging has to stay in place until we reach the 30% of 1448. So that aligns with with what's in the speaker's proposal. But that needs to be very clear. There's no movement off the four year average. And the hold harmless needs to be, better specified. We want to make sure that districts will be held harmless for multiple years. I think, again, without seeing the language and just seeing the summary sheet, that's her stated intent, but that will
035be a key provision. If the legislature can't fund 15% in four years, then at 30% in three years. We need to track that whether it's called a negative factor, a base factor or something else, we need to track the amount that is owed to education. It sounds like the, you know, the a lot of this, the speaker is opening up to more conversations about the smoothing factor and maybe the most important thing right now is to not link smoothing factor to some trigger in statute, but set up a working group to come back to the legislature in January and make a recommendation, because we want to make sure that any sort of smoothing factor or something similar to that works for as many districts as it can. Okay. Any other questions on the financing, or
036is there anything in, Mr. Babbage's, legislative list of, bills that you want to talk about? Yeah, I, I was just hoping, while you were here, and if we could talk as a team, all of us, about, how, we are communicating with the legislature on some of these things, and I know we can talk about in our time later, but I don't think Ed wants to wait till our last agenda item. And I think it would be helpful if you were here. I just I just want to reflect for a minute from, from my perspective, from from what I've seen. So I don't know if it's everyone else's perspective, what has has happened. And so, and I have a big question. I love to figure out how we want to do this together as a team,
037meaning the superintendent and Ed and the board. So my from my experience last year, and years prior when something came that the board would set a legislative agenda, I remember doing that for three, three years now. I don't remember doing the first year, I don't remember. And then, sometimes we would discuss a position and sometimes it's a list of individual bills. Last year and we would we don't vote. We do. I was trying to think about it, a thumbs up or thumbs down. And I specifically remember that because last year I'm just going to say this when, 1448 was on the table, Jeffco opposed. And we did a thumbs up, thumbs down. And I did not give a thumbs up on opposing. And the reason I'm bringing that up is because I remember it wasn't
038a vote. So so that happened last year. But we nothing went to the legislature without the board knowing that it was going to go there. So this year, this is my experience, is that all of a sudden we got a letter. We heard that a letter had been sent from the superintendent and the ad sent it, and the board didn't know about it. And we were given a notice that it was sent. I am going to note that it was unsigned, which confused as me. I don't understand the unsigned part of it. And it suggested that we were supporting a three year averaging possibility so that that's a very confusing to me. But then it sounds like that confused others as well. So a second letter went out, and I also don't remember the board
039having any input on this letter except being told that it went again unsigned. So again, supporting three or averaging. So that's when I personally started hearing a lot of questions from people and community. The union legislators like what's Jeffco doing? And I'm like, I don't know, because the board hasn't had any input on that. So then the board at the last board meeting discussed what we wanted to think about and say publicly, and we all agreed that we did not agree with any compromises averaging. We wanted to push forward, take it from the roads. That whole discussion, and then we said, we'll put a letter together. We got a letter, I believe, on a Friday. I was trying to remember all of these. Told to quickly review it. It had to go out very quickly
040in a couple of days. I tried to quickly give my feedback on it. I think, director Reed also did, I know that, Director Kenworthy contributed to writing the letter. I don't know who else did. And then before I knew it, the letter went out. I my signatures on it, and I never even saw the final version. And I don't think anyone did. And I also notice that changes were made, based on some of my comments, some of Director Reed's comments and other. I don't know where the other comments came from, but I noticed that it also introduced, again, an idea of compromising, as an option, which I don't believe was the board's position. So I was pretty confused again. And then, oh my goodness, lots more questions from people. Including calls I've had from representative
041asking also, why is Jeffco putting out things that is different from larger coalitions or other groups? So and now we've heard that the superintendent and President Parker are going on Friday to speak to the Jeffco legislate, delegation. And I don't remember when the board was asked if that was a good idea. So I think it's a decision made singularly by the board president without consulting with anyone else on the board, which is not how I think our board is supposed to work. So I'd like to know how we plan to go forward and this legislative, more importantly for the future of our board and our relationship, which is great. And with within, in a way that we can, I don't know, do we need a policy? Do we need a resolution? Do we just need
042an agreement on how we are going to communicate with our legislation? Our legislators? I don't really know how all the other districts do it, but I, I'm feeling like the questions I'm getting, the phone calls I'm getting tell me that people think we look pretty disorganized and that we're not representing even one voice. I'd like to represent a singular voice. I like the board to be a part of that voice. I'd like to be asked about a final version of a letter with my signature on it, and things like that. So, this. I like to study this for a minute and discuss it and get your advice, and, you know, what would be the best thing for us to do to to be really, represented so that we can represent ourselves well together, and not
043really have this happen again. And anyone else who has a comment. Yeah. Before you answer to I have asked Mr. Bowdich, a little bit about the historical, experience he has with, communications from school districts, whether it comes from the superintendent or from the board or joint and so forth. I do, just want to add that I have asked some other districts how they do it. I'll give you the example of Adams 12. I talked to their, president who says all communications go through their superintendent, everything. Their board does not, give any separate input on legislation. However, it's true that we take up and down votes. And so Mr. Bowdich knows, does a board support, a bill or oppose it? So we do that at our board meetings? Things that happen outside the board meetings or
044how we, work together in the interim is something what we will be discussing later on our other, agenda item. But I would be happy to have Mr. Bowdich give us his experience and his understanding of how our districts give their feedback to the legislators. Thank you. And and thank you for the the questions. Just a few observations about Jeffco. I think we have done lots of different things over the years, trying to make sure that the board and the district staff and the superintendent and the legislators have a lot of opportunity for communication. I think our breakfast out at Warren Tech has been very positive. The post-election breakfast, we've gotten very good turnout on that. A number of years ago, we used to have the board come down to the Capitol. We'd reserve a room,
045we'd have the full board there. It would be an official open public board meeting. And we'd try and get as many Jeffco legislators as we can. As you can imagine, people have kid duty and people have other commitments. We'd get anywhere from 6 to 7 board members for those 6 or 7 legislators from Jeffco for those meetings. So it wasn't perfect, but we we tried doing that just as another way to have these discussions. In terms of other districts, my understanding is it's all over the map and there's no consistency. And it gets back to what the superintendent said earlier as well. Some districts don't have lobbyists. And so there's more communication going from the board or the superintendent to their local legislators. I always try and preface my comments to the Capitol by saying
046this is an official board position. If the board has voted on it in a public meeting over a lot of other things, I tell them I can provide feedback from the district, and that's termed unofficial. But at least people get a sense of what it is. And oftentimes the feedback can be in line with, the overall legislative priorities. But sometimes it's a really technical issue on a literacy bill or something like that. We need to know, I'm voting on this tomorrow and will I be okay with my Jeffco? You know, folks, if I vote yes on this. And so it's very specific feedback like that. But I don't think those are the ones that cause any kind of, you know, questions. So it's really what what you want to do. Now there is the, the
047challenge of trying to get an official board position within the, you know, and respecting the open public meetings and open, you know, open records and all of that, versus me trying to get a sense of the district on some sort of a, spreadsheet calculation. We're looking at A and B, what do we think? So we run into a lot of timing challenges. Any other comments from board members? Yeah. I'll just echo some of the frustration that director Radu shared. I also got phone calls and outrage from board members and other districts, and also from, lobbyists, from other school districts with some concern and some confusion. And it was I would just register here and I know we will talk about it later, but I also felt incredibly frustrated, to feel that something was going on
048that I was not aware of, or that I hadn't been involved or engaged in in any way. Always with a grain of salt. When I hear from other people outside of our district, understanding that the capital is a great place for people to spend stories, but also knowing that I wouldn't be receiving outreach if something wasn't going on from different from different districts. And so, you know, I'm carrying that kernel with me, and it has made me incredibly frustrated and uncomfortable. And so I'm looking forward to having, conversations about clarity. I think the process around the letter that the board attempted to release was not great, but we also didn't have something established. And so we will continue to refine that process, with reflection on what did not work well for us this time. And
049I think we can manage that feedback, but I will say that I have had some frustration personally around hearing, confusion from other partners across the state or around how Jeffco is participating at the statehouse. And one final thing. I'm sorry that I'd say with reference to that very first communication that I think was in early February. That was something that I had raised with the superintendent when a Jeffco legislator told me that he was hearing that the superintendent was okay with eliminating all the enrollment averaging, that her position was aligned with Governor Polis budget request. And we felt it was important to get something in writing back to the speaker on a pretty quick basis to try and stop that for exactly what you said, just to try and stop that now. When I sent
050it over, I think in the email I may have said, this is from the superintendent, but the letter may not have said that. And so that is certainly something that I can make sure I don't do again, so that if the letter goes out in the community, it's clear who it's from. And that's on me. But that's the context of what we were trying to address with that critical issue, because we knew that that was not at all what she thought and what you had voted on in your legislative priorities. Okay. So I do think this is something we'll talk about in our, current topics, agenda item, clarifying that some more. And I'm just going to bring up some of the, bills that are on here to see if anybody else wants to ask Mr.
051Bowdich about them. And so the first one is HB 25 1178 band student seclusion. Is that kind of the one of the bills that you said might be superseded? Or there's another one about, discipline. Yes. The House Bill. 1248, the protect students from restraint and seclusion is the one that I think has gotten a lot more feedback from districts, and that looks to be the one that we're already supporting of, and it looks to be the one that is moving forward. House Bill 1178 still hasn't even had its first hearing yet. And I think there's a lot of questions about that one. Okay. And then also in HB 25 1278, I know there was a recent article and chalk bait about that. When I first looked at it and it was pretty extensive, pretty big.
052I personally felt like there will be amendments and I my personal feeling was, I'll wait a little bit to see how it, you know, is progressing. Can you give us any update on that where you think that stands? That did pass out of education and is pending the House Appropriations Committee. It has a very hefty price tag. I know that some of the amendments were done to try and rein that in, but I don't know if it has any cost at all. That's going to be tough to get through. And I thought had great support, though. But the cost could do it. Yeah. Okay. And then, SB 25 153 the public school financial reporting requirements. Do you see any concerns about that for our school district? Boy, that one I don't think I've looked at
053since January, but if I remember correctly, case really tried to coordinate a lot of amendments to that one. To really try and make it much more workable. When it was first introduced, it was pretty, grandiose in terms of what it required. But I think it's been kind of reined in a bit to make it more workable, but it still may have a cost as well. Okay. And then last one for me is the, SB 25 200, the dyslexia screening. That's something that I'm very interested in. And I would really like Colorado to, increase its dyslexia screening. So it's something that I'm interested in the district possibly the board taking a position on. Can you give us, state of that bill? That bill passed out of its first committee, Senate education, Senator Coker, the education chair,
054and Senator Mollica from North Glen. Thornton, maybe are the sponsors, and then bipartisan sponsorship on the House side. The good news is it doesn't cost anything, so that won't be the holdup. It does make the, school readiness assessment optional, which is a kind of done as an incentive for the districts. You can choose to continue to do it, but potentially, if you don't, you could save some money there to help with the transition to the dyslexia screening requirement. A lot of organizations and a lot of people signed up and testified in strong support of that one. Not as many districts, but I'm not hearing a lot of, concern from the districts about this, and I wouldn't have any concerns if Jeffco wanted to support that. Is there anything, Superintendent Dalton, do you have a feeling
055how it would impact us? Based on, some questions that director Reed asked. And then we put into one of your recent board updates, we would support this, and we do it so we would align with the legislation in the way that it's drafted. And, yeah, it's work that we're engaged in. And so I would like to propose to the board that we would support this bill. I have personal experience with it. My daughter's dyslexic and we missed a whole couple of years there on her education. Missing that. So can I just ask for the board? Is there an interest in supporting this bill based on what you know? Or do you have more questions? I'd be interested in supporting it right. Okay. So can we get okay, so could we put that in as one
056of the bills that we do support as the board? Yeah. Works for you all. We can put that on consent next week. Then you could take an actual a vote on it to endorse it. We've done both. Last time we voted, didn't we? We have like, a list that we came up with last month. We had a list, and then we voted at the meeting on consent. Yes. Yeah. You're right that we did vote no in the past last year. Yeah. So yeah, let's put it on the consent agenda for next month and then we can, vote on it. Then. And I also like that one because Senator Coker reached out to lots of districts. He was on zooms with us in December really trying to get feedback. And I was like rewarding good behavior.
057Yeah. I just wondered if you could clarify something. I think I'm not even sure if I'm going to know how to ask the question. So I, I even saw, Redbird talk about the accountability system, though, and implementing the recommendations. And I thought I understood it, but a few people have asked me, have said, I heard that the legislature is reviewing accountability, almost meaning like the accountability of school performance is is that included in this? I always thought this was a, that's what this is, the school. Can you talk about it a little bit? Because I've had several people ask me, I, you know, I'm getting out of my league if you ask too much about, accountability, I just I can't speak, but but how you measure schools and the growth they have and the types
058of students there's. I know that part of this effort is to try and recognize, have more recognition on the types of students at each school and how that plays into a schools accountable framework. There's been a long working group that has been working on, this feedback to the state and, making recommendations about what should shift in the accountability, statute to then drive how we implement testing and looking at school performance and district performance. This is recent, though, this draft bill. And we have, Kim and I just talked about it earlier this week. We have yet to really have a minute to process it, but I'd be happy if the board is interested in knowing, staff perspective on this bill and what it might mean, for our, implementation of the accountability and the changes for us,
059we'd be happy to get you a summary. In the next week or so, I think we can have Carol and Jeremy kind of give us a heads up, but we just haven't had a chance to do that. It's been pretty recent that the bill's been drafted. I just want to follow up. When we use the word accountability here, we're talking about, I just had it the, the, testing and the things that lead to our UIP plans both at the school and the district level. Is that accurate? And the school performance and district performance frameworks, and then the state testing and other measures that go into those frameworks. Ed, can you rattle off the number of do you know what number that bill is spelled? 1278 okay, so Kim, can you just kind of take note
060of that and then let's follow up and get the board some perspective from staff on the changes to that bill. I just want to clarify for those listening, this is not about making changes to like the Account District Accountability Committee or the Accountability Committee structures school accountability committees. Yeah. And that can be confusing for folks who are on like the DAC or serving on school accountability committees to think that that structure might be changing. That's not what this bill is about. And and I was asked specifically in relation to the conversations going on at Jefferson, where there's also an accountability conversation and folks asking, oh, is that going to impact like an immediate outcome? Jefferson Junior senior, which is there was a discussion at on the at the Monday meeting about that. So it was
061since that meeting that two people have asked me, how will this bill, if at all, impact like a very real situation? So I think I don't know, and I don't know even when implementation would be, a bill that came through. But I did hear reports say like the recommendation list was so long and they they've really reduced it to like something like 40 only or something like that. It was the numbers were really, surprising, but I would love to get more information on that. Okay. I do think we, allotted not enough time for this. Is very busy in the legislature I know now. So, thank you very much, Mr. Bowdich. And we will keep in touch. I just didn't know if Ed knew anything about that. Sorry. You just got out. And. I don't know,
062Harry. I think this was the, Something came in at the adequacy study related to the adequacy study. A suggested resolution for school boards. From who was a great ed great education. So if that's something the board wants to discuss with Ed while he's here, and then possibly consider adding to your consent agenda next week. I'll just jump ahead. I would suggest adding up, resolution language to our consent agenda. For consideration, something that I would be in support of our board passing, but I would really want to make sure everybody had read it and was familiar with it before we vote on it. And I would also, I guess, offer if anybody reads it before to by by Tuesday, if you want to take it off of the consent agenda, if you would let the district
063staff know if we need to have a conversation about it, is that fair? So is it on our consent agenda? No, I was just asking to add it, to add it, and then we can remove it if we want. Yes. Okay. All right. And then maybe Mr. Barrett, you can look at it if we gave you a copy of it and you can give us your feedback on it. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. All right. For our next agenda item, the board requested a presentation on the district's school age enrichment or program tonight. District staff will provide information addressing the impact of the enrollment from enrollment processes, attendance patterns, and waitlists on the sustainability and accessibility of the current SRO program. Before I turn this over to Miss Nica. Fotis, is
064there anything you'd like to add? Mr.. Superintendent Dahlin thank you, President Parker. I'll say a few words. And welcome our, group of, folks who, do amazing work with our students after school. And I know that, Miss Otis has invited some friends to join us. I just want to say thank you for being here. It's very helpful for all of us when we're talking about any issue. And for our board, I believe, to hear from from people who are in the field and doing the work and how it impacts, those who are closest to supporting our students. So thank you for being here. And we will, hopefully be able to hear some input from you and some thoughts. I also just want to, thank, Director Applegate for asking for this, this topic to be discussed. And
065there's been a lot of questions out there. We've done our best to continue to communicate with our, communities and help them understand what's happening and why it's happening. And thank you to the rest of the board for supporting Director Applegate's request. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to miss Nick, authorize. Good evening. Members of the board, President Parker and Superintendent Dalton. My name is Rene Nick Autodesk chief academic officer here in Jeffco. I do have some of my colleagues joining, so I'll give them a minute to introduce themselves. I'm Brandi Coles, I'm a site director at Prospect Valley. Hi, I'm Kathy all. I'm director. And one thing that's kind of funny about these microphones is you have to, like, tuck right into it. Not only so our board can hear, but also
066the listening public. Anybody who's watching. Yes, please. Hi. My name is Kathy Lytle, and I'm an assistant director in early learning, and I oversee our safety programs. Thank you. Hi, everyone. I'm Lee Belinsky. I'm the executive director of early learning. And thank you so much for taking the time to hear this. And I should never be trusted with the remote. I would love it. Yeah. So, at the request of the board, we're going to share with you as much information as we can in a short amount of time about the history of safety and where we are right now. Kathy Lytle, who runs Saac, has been with the program since its inception. So she's going to share with you a little bit of what the history. Thank you for letting us be here tonight. And,
067to begin a conversation with you in person around some of the changes, that we are going through. And Sally, and we know that that impacts our families. Some of them are represented here tonight. And then also that you guys as board members are also, getting lots of questions. So, can we see the next slide, please. Thank you. Not no. All right I'm going to swallow this thing. So in October 1987, Jefferson County School Aged Child Care Initiative was developed. It was a group of 19 community members who came together to kind of encourage the development of school age child care in our district. And by October 1993, we had eight community partners along with Jeffco School Age Enrichment, providing before and after school program, and 53 elementary schools across our district. Currently, there are nine
068community partners, along with Jeffco SC, providing care in our elementary schools and 53 of those schools. Excuse me, providing those schools Jeffco S.A. currently provides before and after school care in 29 school communities. Two of those are, early learning centers, which is new to us, and we're really proud of that. And 27 school age programs. Now, I just want to say how lucky we are to have someone like Kathy that's been with us for so long. When we were reviewing this information, I had no idea about some of this background. So, thank you. Kathy kind of dates me a bit. So we just kind of wanted to make note to that, our only, source of revenue is our tuition. We are not taxpayer funded at all. That's a misconception in the community that we've heard
069quite frequently. And we do accept the Colorado Childcare Assistance Program funding with parents who qualify. So we want to make sure you guys were aware of that. So thank you. So just to share some context around the state in the metro and the district, we know that for, every child enrolled in after school, there's five waiting to, to enroll that are not getting the services they need. There's almost 84,000 students in school age spots. Staffing shortages, increased, cottages cost to operate and increase regulation have impacted that. Just not the ability to meet all the needs. So in terms of our, Jeffco and Metro context, there's increased operating operating costs, family needs have been evolving, especially since the pandemic, and more parents are returning to the office. So we've seen an increase in demand. And then
070those costs have increased as well. So that's impacted how we serve our families. So within Jeffco, we currently have almost 2500 students enrolled. There's a very important, focus on the word enrolled, because the way that we currently sign students up when they are enrolled, that does not guarantee them care. That just gives them the ability to sign up for care if space is available on our average currently is that we have around 1000 students attending each afternoon, and we actually have slots for 1290 students each afternoon. So all of those 2500 students who are enrolled, we have 300 spots to the district that are not being actually attended each day. And then we've seen a decrease, to 131 students who attend morning care, which is a two thirds reduction in care since the elementary time
071change. Which then raises the question, so we have spots. We have people. Why do we not just open this up so that everybody can sign up for care at all times? And that is because each program operates as its own licensed child care facility, which means that we need to stick to the regulations and it's best practice to stick to the regulations so that we need to have one, one adult to every 15 children at the elementary level and a maximum group size of 30 children in each licensed area, which means that if we just opened the doors and said, bring your kids and we have 31 children, sign up, we would need to have a third staff member and a second licensed area in order to serve them. So these caps do play a
072pretty significant role in how we can serve families each day. Hi. As an onsite director, I get to see our mission and vision take place every day, so I have to read those to you. Jeffco School Age enrichment Program facilitates a welcoming and inclusive community where all students feel safe, supported, and empowered to grow through intentional learning experiences and play. Our mission is to create safe, inclusive, and nurturing communities where all students can thrive. We partner with families and schools to provide high quality, choice based programs that empower students to grow, develop and reach their full potential. And by doing this, these are our guiding principles, quality and to ensure a safe and enriching environment, we must also comply with licensing, the health department and best practices and sustainability. We must have a sufficient revenue
073to cover the cost to maintain program excellence and for accessibility balance, we have to balance affordability for families and dependability with financial sustainability. And since all of these things are so important, it's really imperative that we adjust the program so we can meet these goals. Thank you. So the challenge we are. That did work. The challenge that we're currently facing is one of sustainability. By November of 2024, we projected to spend $1.3 million more than we were bringing in. And in digging into that, some of the reasons that we came up with was that we had unpredictable attendance, which then led to reduced revenue. We also found that families who needed guaranteed child care and sometimes couldn't get in with the model were using to enroll children, were pulling their children and going elsewhere where
074they could get the child care that they needed every day. During the pandemic, we supplemented tuition raises and, our salaries with pandemic childcare grants. Then we discovered that in summer of 2024, we spent $500,000 more than we bought in, which was a huge issue. We also then had the reduced morning care needs. We needed to make sure that we were complying with those group size and ratio caps. And we had some schools with limited attendance in some programs. So immediately we needed to make changes. We opened the waitlist any way that we could to try and get more students into those slots. We downsized our staff and reduced hours of the assistant director position. We then started to send home hourly staff if attendance was low in some programs, which, as you heard Kathy say
075earlier, there's a staffing shortage. So that is not a sustainable model. Because if we send people home, they they need the money to and then we also looked very carefully at our supply contract expense spending and reduced that where we could without impacting, any of our services. We also needed to address the $500,000 shortage in the summer. So we adjusted the field trip capacity to maximize transportation efficiency by making sure that for summer 2025, we are not serving more students than we can fit into a bus and use that bus ticket to capacity. We adjusted the hours of field trips because we make sure that we have more adults. We decreased the staff to student ratio for field trips, for safety purposes, and we wanted to make sure that we weren't bringing more people into
076work on days than we needed to, just because the field trips were longer. We centralized the field trip planning so that we can get any bulk discounts possible, and trying to find rate activities that have, lower admission fees. We reallocated our supply fund for efficiency and still while maintaining that quality. And then we increased tuition by an average of $8.25 per day for 10.5 hours of care. And we started the contract scheduling. That's what that is what you guys have been hearing. So what is contract scheduling? It's actually a very common practice in the in many districts and in community childcare. It provides guaranteed care for families who need it. And it also provides predictable revenue, staffing and expenses for the program. Based on some of the feedback we feedback that we have heard, Sally
077is actually come up with a plan to offer both contract scheduling and flexible scheduling. As long as space is available. So what will happen for the contract scheduling is that families will sign up once and then they will be guaranteed prioritized, consistent care. They can sign up for five days a week. They could sign up for three days a week on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or two days a week on a Tuesday and Thursday. And the reason that we selected those dates was that our data shows us that that will allow us to serve the most families possible in the system. And having families just pick any days doesn't make sense in terms of trying to make sure we've got all of these spots maximized. So once families have signed up for consistent care,
078who would like that consistent care? They will also still be a flexible care option available to them. In these cases, families will sign up monthly as they do right now. And as as it works right now, for any space that's available, they will be able to sign up for those spots. The flexible care can be combined with consistent or contracted care, or it can be in more of a drop in once in a while. Model. So if a family, for example, needed Tuesday, Thursday, Friday care, they could sign up for contracted care for Tuesdays and Thursdays and then on a monthly basis as long as space is available. Sign up for Fridays. And we're hoping that we can meet as many families needs as humanly possible by offering both of these options. We're also recommending
079a tuition adjustment, to align with the financial stability. And right now we are looking at approximately a dollar and $1.05 per afternoon, more than what our current rates are. This is how we can come up with, affordability while still maintaining the program quality. And it will keep us well within the range of our current in district providers. Currently, we are at around $2.50 per afternoon, above or below most of the other district providers, so that will keep us in that range. All right. As far as ongoing, stakeholder engagement and communication, we have done a lot of planning around this, and we know it's super important that we are, communicative and transparent with our families and with our, school leadership. And so, we have a plan. We've already started working with our district communications department, to
080make our messaging as transparent and clear as possible. We want to be very clear about why these changes are happening. We've been working towards this, but we're going to continue to do that. We're going to explore a general one stop shop, as a web page to ensure there's some consistency in messaging and also some convenience for parents to be able to just access that at their fingertips. We're going to update site level website so that families understand changes and have current information in hand. We'll include families that are in our interest pool, which is part of how we're doing our waitlists, that they're included in that communication so that they know what's happening to and they know where they're at with that process. We want to support families and staff and adjusting to a new
081scheduling model. We also have been working on a strategic strategic plan and developing that, and we're getting pretty close to completing that. Families will be invited to participate in that, in that plan development and ongoing planning through that and going through that process. Our parent, we want to have a parent advisory group, and that will not just be parents, but we want to include, possibly students, school personnel, school leadership, like principals, and, and others within the community so that we can get a well-rounded kind of, not decision making. Advisory council that we have that input in that voice considered. We have been asked, I think, that this question came up with the board, possibly our school leadership, that they would like us to survey families on the wait list to find out what options might
082be available for families beyond S.a.t. We do have some current, resources that we share with families on a regular basis about different, resources where they can look for childcare options within their community. So as far as next steps, we're going to, go forward with implement implementation of contract scheduling beginning in summer 2025. As we said, we'll continue to provide that further communication with families, around a registration timeline. We have kind of put that on pause for next fall because we want to, to really get the, numbers on a tuition increase so that when people are moving toward the contract schedule that they know exactly what they're going to be budgeting for and paying for. So we wanted to pause on that as soon as we get the, information on that we'll be sharing that will
083be moving forward with that registration timeline. And then clearly state families how they can, kind of access that flexible scheduling, which is very similar to what they can do now, but not the same, but it is an option that we heard our families wanted. So we wanted to respond, we will continue as time goes on to kind of monitor changes and make adjustments, listen to our families, reflect and kind of look at how things are working and just do some ongoing, you know, looking at that and reevaluating. So with that, what questions do you still have? Director Applegate? Well, first of all, thank you. As, parents of two kiddos who utilize the system, and, I've gotten to know Kathy because my daughter is actually she sees my, strong willed daughter all the time. And, I
084couldn't do it without you all, quite honestly. So, first, from the bottom of my heart, our kids love our, school directors. They love the program. It is truly a lifesaver for working parents. So first, before I ask all my questions, I want you to hear how much I appreciate the work that you do. And thank you for listening to families. Because I know when it went out for the summer, this is when it all started, right? And it just kind of whoosh and all of a sudden they're here talking to us. And we were getting emails and, so thank you for listening and thank you for hearing families. And I love, love, love the idea of building in parent feedback groups and strategic plans. I think that's really fantastic. So bear with me. I have
085a series of questions. When we. So cost is absolutely something that we're challenged with. We know daycare, no matter whether it's in or out of the district, is is very, very expensive. When you think about some of your largest expenses, one of the things I would love to understand better, and that might not be a today thing, but one of the things I would love to understand better is just when you're looking at your expenses, I assume staff is number one as it is, and we look at our budget. Our my. This is a ignorant question. Are you paying us to be in the buildings? What are your next I guess. What are the next big chunks of expenses? Is it snacks? Because I know you get snacks. Very important. We've had to wait and
086stay when I pick Evelyn up to finish snack. So I would just love to understand. Are there other areas where we as a board can help in identifying expense savings? I can speak to some of the expenses that come in. Yes, we do rent space in the buildings. And that goes to cover the space itself, the custodial, a portion of the water usage and a portion of all of those paper towels, paper towels are always the issue. We also do a cut. We currently pay $1.27 or dollar 29 per snack, $1.27 per snack. Over the summer, transporting portion and entry fees were huge expenses. But those don't happen as much over breaks. And then salaries and benefits are the piece that that is absolutely the top as it should be, because those are the people
087who are taking care of your children. Absolutely, absolutely. And maybe this is another question for a different discussion, but are we are we able to, at least as we get kind of figured out or balanced, are we able to look at the costs we are charging the program since it's for the benefit of of parents? Yeah. For like space rental. I mean it's 6 or 1 half dozen of the other okay. Right. So if we don't charge space rental for our internal city program, then we don't offset the expense that comes with, I mean, those revenues coming in are used elsewhere in our organization to pay for things like custodial supplies. So if we don't offset that expense with the rental fees from city, then we end up increasing the budget there instead of increasing
088the budget for city. We also have, as you noticed on slide, I don't know. So so yes, we could, but then we're just going to be over budget somewhere else because it's not it doesn't have that offset. We also have you'll see the before and after school care providers and Jeffco, I don't know what our agreements are with each and every one of these, but, we are, I'm assume, charging them some, some space rental fees. And so, it's just kind of a common practice, whether it's our program or other providers. I'm happy to take this idea offline and talk further with our team to understand when we do this sort of internal charge, what kinds of expenses is that offsetting. But regardless, it's it's paying for expenses one way or another. But I'm happy to
089follow up with the team on that and get some further like sort of thinking around it. Yeah I would appreciate that. I know we we've talked scheduling right. The biggest concern I think we heard is the, the loss of flexible scheduling. So I appreciate that. That is now back on the table. Did we see in our summer where we switched to this. Did we see a decline in enrollment from previous years. We're actually offering a few less spots just so that we can plan for that with the busses and such, because we can only take about 67 on a bus. So we have 60 kids that we will take, and that accounts for also having the staff on there. If we, take more kids in that which we've done in the past, then we will
090have 75 kids in a day and we take two busses and they're both half full. So that that's a factor in that. That was a consideration. And we do know we want to validate that. We recognize that the change is hard for families. It's different. We've been, you know, 100% flexible month to month for a long time. And it's just a change that is required now. And so we're trying to listen to the community and respond as best we can, to the needs, knowing that the change is hard. Some of some of the questions I'm asking are questions that we have been asked. And so I appreciate you taking the time to answer them, because people are watching and listening to this discussion. Can you help me understand how the unpredictable attendance drives a decline
091in revenue? Yes. We have staff ready to serve students. And so if we have staff who are hired to work Monday through Friday, let's say. And, actually, I had this over to you in a second cuz you've got some great examples. And one week we have 70 children in a program, and the next week we have 30 children in a program. We're still paying the staff. And so we only get paid when children are in attendance right now. And so in that case, we aren't getting paid, but we still have the expense of the staff there. And I believe that there are actually some really great examples from the field. Yeah. One thing I'd like to say is I met Prospect Valley and last year I was the largest program in city, and I've seen
092a massive decline this year. And my real belief of why that is, is I was watching what was happening with attendance with my kids, and I noticed that a lot of my five day a week children stopped doing that this year. And the reason was because they were doing afterschool programs mostly. But I've noticed a lot of my parents work together. They're like, I'll watch them Tuesday, Wednesday, the other three days we'll go to see. So a lot of decline has happened in enrollment, not because they're not enrolled, but I guess I should say attendance. We have the same number enrolled, but they are using it less because they are getting creative. They don't have the money. With our economy the way it is, everybody's trying to find new ways to get through things. So
093that's what I've been seeing as a regular thing, trying to find lots of ways to avoid coming as much as possible and then taking advantage of it when they don't have other options, when, I mean, and I'm one of those five days a week people. Right. And one of the opportunities I had this year with my daughter is that I was able to sign up for an entire semester. So the very first opening, I was able to go in for the whole semester. And, pay that lovely chunk and know that the care was there. So I guess one of my things is if you kept the flexibility but opened it up, did you find more consistency through that method this year, or did you find that that really didn't help? We really didn't see a
094whole lot of parents take advantage of that. There was there were some, you know, that took advantage of that opportunity in that different, form of contract of scheduling. But we didn't really see a huge, response to that. Okay. How can parents sign up to be a part of the strategic planning process? As we're continuing to to do our planning on that, we will be sending out some communication, inviting people to be a part of that. I think it's really important that we make sure that our communications teams help spread that word, because I think there's a lot of interest there. And I think having people understand the real challenges is part of the opportunity here. Right, because that it is. Do you want all the voices at the table? And we want the different perspectives
095so that we can come together. And we are working with communication on that, that plan. I appreciate that. One of my concerns is for the folks who may not be able to afford the contract scheduling, and rely on the flexible. So it sounds like as long as there's room, that flexible option would still be available for those folks and parents. And then I assume when we enroll for next year when that time comes, contract scheduling would go first and then, you would enroll as a flexible family, I guess I don't know the right term. And then you would just follow a similar calendar. Yes. We're going to give, that, full time, schedule priority and then have a go from there to the different, part time. And then there are those drop in options that you
096can do a drop in contract. And then from there, that flexible scheduling will be open to those people that had a contract two days, three a day and need to add days or two. The drop in option people. If you have someone that looks like, let's say I take a five day spot. But I can afford it and I know I'm not going to use it. But let's say Director Kenworthy only needs one day a week. It needs the flexible spot. Aren't I taking up a an open spot that could be used by another family? If that's my only option? What we have seen this year is that when a family who usually comes five days a week doesn't come on that one day, we're not filling those spots as we've tracked the majority of
097them. Those spots are not being filled because families need to know enough ahead of time. So they've already made plans for what they're going to do for that day that you don't need. Yeah. Please. As a, as a I'm also a parent who uses this service. And there have been times when we've needed drop in, but I have had I don't other than calling and talking directly with the site supervisor, that's the only way I can find out if there's space available. And at a certain point, calling every day to see if there's space tomorrow or later in the week becomes not worth it. For the hour or the hour and a half that I would need it. And so if there was a way to know when space became available or if somebody canceled
098that and, and let people know ahead of time. And then for families who were on looking for drop in to know that they could possibly access the spot, might be a helpful way to backfill some of those spaces just because right now it's not, transparent or accessible to those families. And I think at a certain point they stop looking and stop asking because they don't know if it's worth the time to even ask or just or how to act or how to ask, or should I just take an hour off of work? I'm not currently employed, but other families in our in my similar situation would just say, I think I just have to take an hour off and go pick my kid up early and leave work early. If there is a way to
099know that they could just look somewhere online and be like, oh my gosh, the spot opened up to that tomorrow, maybe we could use that. I don't know operationally how helpful that is, but I know that I would be a family that would utilize that if spaces became available. And I have had to miss care. Because the if flexible like if available is not usually an option at the school where I am located or where I'm using, I say we do, have an addendum and an update on, the drop in, process with comms right now. And, there will be a schedule of dates when you can go and, and for the upcoming month, schedule any dates that you need so you can do that ahead of time. So that'll be a regular routine where you
100can do that. Now those last minute things again, that might be, it is all depend on space availability. We want to be very transparent about that. But we are looking to really communicate clearly. Like I said, around the communication, we want to make sure that that's a smooth, process for families. Cathy. Just because there's someone who may be listening, as I'm listening, immediately I'm thinking, is there not a way to set up a spreadsheet where someone can go in and see if it's full on a date? Is that not a possible I just I and that if I'm wondering about that, I imagine someone else might be. That's something we can take back to the team. We do have a team that works specifically on our platform for scheduling, and payment, which is school care
101works, and we've really enjoyed that. So there they do a lot of the back work on that and the building of schedules. And it's it's a big job. And so we can take that back to that team and give that consideration. And definitely follow up. Thank you. I think that's all I've got. I'll turn it over to some of my fellow board members. But again, I appreciate you all being here. I appreciate you taking the time to come talk to us. And thank you for all the the work that you're doing. If people have questions. Sorry, I thought I was done. Had one more who who can they reach out to? I'm sure as a as a school director, you're getting a lot of them. I know at ours, ours are also, what's the best
102way our office welcomes any phone calls or emails. Any one of my central team who are here in the room tonight do take calls. And they are very articulate and, listening and then delivering the messages and trying to help folks understand. So our door is open. Well, we want to be open and transparent with our families and that that have that relationship and partnership. And thank you to all of you for being here tonight. We really do appreciate you. All right. Now I'm going to jump in. Just for you. You're not you're not you're not done. For the folks who are listening, we mentioned that we have 27 city programs, 73 plus community partners. Those community partners are our Boys and Girls Club, Red rocks and other organizations, the YMCA. Great. I wanted to clarify
103that. And, on slide seven, we we talked about specific to city regulations for being independent run sites. Right. Does that apply also to those community partners where they are? Yeah. Okay. So they're also operating in the same fashion. Okay. I want to we've talked a little bit about costs. That's been helpful. My question is, is SRT supposed to be a revenue producing program? We are an enterprise fund within the district. So we expected to be self-sustaining. And like I said earlier, our only source of revenue is that tuition. Okay. So the expectation is self-sustaining. And we're overspending by 1.3 million. Okay. If I'm, I just want to lift up that is a pretty hefty expectation for a service that I think is vital to so many of our families and that, I'm not sure that
104expectation. I think there may be a cost associated or a deficit associated ongoing with providing care to our families that we would have to find someplace to cover that. And I won't start talking about our budget right now, but, I just want to lift up the expectation that this this is vital for our dual and particularly for dual income families or single parent families, that are working. I just I don't know how it works, especially with kiddos getting out of school at 305, and some parents are not getting off of work until 5 or 530 with a regular working day. I just really think it's a vital, vital service. My family absolutely benefits from using it, and I know that there's a waitlist. So I think there's a real, real need. And so I would
105I would start to question the expectation that we'd be self-sustaining. I think there is probably a cost for providing this for the safety and well-being of all of our students, who are not legally able to be at home by themselves or transport themselves from school back to home independently. I also, I'm I understand it's hard to fill and maintain positions in an SA program. I want to give you a little bit more space to talk about specific challenges with recruiting. And with maintaining staff at SRT sites. We've seen a lot of turnover at my home site, and so I want to give you some space to talk about that. Well, it's childcare and childcare is the childcare industry right now is struggling to, maintain staff. It's not only Colorado statewide, it's across the nation. So
106that is, something that we are all talking about. Part of the it's a split shift for our directors and assistant directors, and that's a unique shift. So some people really like it, some people it's a hardship. And, so that's part of it. It is a wonderful job. It's a great foundation for, going into teaching and many other fields. And we find a lot of people that come in to us for that reason. But it is it is around pay. It is around hours. It's around those guaranteed hours that we can't necessarily go, give we have to maintain the ratios that we talked about. And so we stagger people home in the afternoon and, make them take turns doing that. And so that those are some of the challenges that we face. I don't know, Brandi,
107if you want to add anything to that. Yeah. I think the main thing I see is if staff have to go home early, they want to know they have their bills. If they are scheduled for four hours, they want to know that they get to have a four hour shift. If suddenly our enrollment has gone down for the afternoon and they have to go home now, they've just lost pay. So that's the number one thing I hear about when people are looking and that causes turnover. Actually, there's a lot of compliments from people out there about how well we are paid in Jeffco, that this is one of the best paying in the state for childcare. So that's something that actually draws higher quality people to us. But definitely not having enough hours is a
108huge impact, and that doesn't cover that problem. I just have to hire, positions for three hours a week in a nursery setting, and it was impossible to keep people coming to work for three hours. One time a week didn't work. And I know that you provide more hours in that, but I think it's a similar challenge when people are looking at time investment and what they're going to get back for their money. Yes, they're going to get the, you know, good money back for their time. But if they don't get to use all of their time that they have available, that's a frustration and it will lead them to look for other work. I understand that I think ours are a consideration too, because we're talking early morning and late evening or late afternoon. And
109so that's a time that interferes with people's, family and just other, expectations and obligations that they have. And then when we offer full day, because that does happen during the school year, does that end up being an overtime situation for people? Oh, it's not an overtime. We just schedule according to, the hours that people have, and we do not go into overtime unless we absolutely have to. It's very, very rare. Okay, excellent. You've also in the past partnered with our schools or high school students or internships or all kinds of creative ways to, to to get this. But yeah, I think we've explored all kinds of options. Yeah. We do, we do have a, high school internship in place that, has one that hours changed with the school start times and dismissal times. We developed
110that because that was a time when we really lost a lot of our workforce. We were looking at that with the high school students being out of school later. And so that has been a great success. We also work often with folks in a dual position within our district so that they're, working as a pair during the day, and then they come and work with us. We have to be very careful that they do not exceed that 40 hours. So we're watching them very carefully. But that's a great partnership. And we're really exploring that in our pre-K programs right now and kind of advertising that a little different, that it's, advertised as a dual position. And that isn't just because we found we weren't attracting people to the preschool positions because they thought it was
111school age. So we're working with our our, partners in early learning to look at that and do that a little more effectively. Fantastic. Thank you for taking the time to talk through that. I want to also mention, I hear you on dialing in on costs and selecting things that have lower, entry fees during the summer, the consideration of bussing and transportation costs, and still trying to give our students, especially over the summer, some fun and engaging experiences. But I appreciate the thoughtfulness about dialing and cost to try to make it, you know, sustainable. Do I want to ask about the timing of the switch? When did you, tell parents that this was going to happen? Effective for the summer. Well, do you know when that communication went out? That went out after our survey, which
112I believe was in January? It was. And followed that shortly after. It was in February. Yep. Okay. I want to lift up that, for families who are living right now with young kids, people start scheduling summer camps and summer trips in December. And so they had already started to flush out summer plans with the expectation of the flexible scheduling, which is where I think a lot of the housing, my own family included. Has has come because, I mean, for some camps, you have to be online at exactly 7:00 in the morning, the day that registration opens, to grab the spot for that specific week. It is stressful for parents signing up for summer programing and summer activities. And so finding that out in February when people had already made plans where they were, you know,
113dedicated this week and then three weeks later, they were at this camp and and expecting the the ability to be flexible between that, I think, is where people are really, really struggling. I'm sure you've heard that for feedback, but I want to say it out loud. That goes for family trips also. And so part of part of my questioning is just if we make major changes like this in the future for anything in our county, I would want to, consider the timing of when families are hearing the communication and enough time for them to be able to adjust. Ahead of time is always way better than after the fact. So, it's one of the set up because I understand that pain and pressure point as a parent right now. The flexible scheduling model. I'm glad
114that that is also back on the table. Thank you for expressing gratitude in that direction as well. I just will say the first it's first come first serve as long as space is available. And then our I'm a Green Gables that we often don't have that that's not available. And so it's nice to offer it in theory, but in practice if it's not functionally available, parents will once they've not been able to access care in that way, they will not keep trying over a period of months. So I it's rare that I try to do flexible or drop it like drop in, hours just because most of the time when I ask, it's a no. And so I have stopped asking, I've been using SCA for seven, eight, eight years now. And I yeah, I
115have just stopped asking. I think that's all of my questions and comments. Thank you for being here. It's complicated. It's a valuable and vital service that we provide. Thank you for your longevity with the program that is on standing. Honestly, especially with the kinds of scheduling headaches, budgeting headaches that come along with a split split schedule job with the changes in school time. There's been a lot of movement, for these families in this community that utilizes the city. So thank you for sticking with it and for continuing to provide, extraordinary care for our students and our families. Yeah. Thank you very much for that. And, Aaron, just to respond, we heard the same feedback about the, summer change and the camps that people wanted to be able to access us as well as camp. So
116I just want to recognize that we did hear that too. So we took those calls and emails and responded, and also, we are always reevaluating our caps and our enrollment, and we do that regularly so that we can, with our staffing models, also try to increase that to better meet the needs within those school communities. Individual school communities have very different needs and then, be able to expand when we can. So I want you to know that we are looking at that on a regular basis. It's important to us to I want I do want to also just add on the timing piece, that as you all know from your budget conversations, we shifted the preschool funds from this, fund into the general fund. This was something CDE was asking us to do. We delayed
117and we had to get it done once we moved those funds out of this, and it just became the enterprise fund for a, we then realized what I believe some of the commingling of those two funds was doing, which was masking some of the budget challenges. So I just want an in support of the team. I want to acknowledge that that decision was made required by CDE, and I believe we realized some of the challenges with the budget. Once the fund, the preschool funds were moved into preschool or moved to the general fund, and then the enterprise fund was just this one thing. And I think that did contribute just as the lesson learned. I think that contributed to some of our timing challenges. So I'd just like to highlight that, and I appreciate the
118the work the team has done to try to find some of these efficiencies for both families who need regular care as well as some of the financial efficiencies. But, I acknowledge that we we did have some timing challenges, and I, I'm grateful that our families spoke up and told us about that. So. One thing that I would, in addition to kind of thinking and looking at the budget, I would also, really appreciate being able to kind of see numbers at schools and how they've kind of fluctuated over time, not for tomorrow, but, that would be a I'd really appreciate that data. I want to say that I don't have school or children that would benefit from this services now, but I have definite memories of how I could have benefited from it before. So I
119appreciate very much what you're doing. It is, for working parents. Critical. So I want to put that out there. I appreciate what we're offering. And it's a very important service. However, I want to say one thing about, the fact that the comment that it's, not taxpayer funded, you know, it's fee based, but when you look and see that there's a 1.5 million overrun, then it is the taxpayer bought money, the school budget that fills it in. So there is that, situation when we don't have enough funds. So I would be interested in knowing how we compare in that area, to other districts. I appreciate you did say the the cost to the parents is within two, you know, $2.50, based, you know, in comparison to other districts. So that's good. That, that cost is in
120comparison to our, other community partners within Jeffco Public Schools. Okay. We can get a comparison. Actually, we might have done a comparison of other neighborhoods of local districts as well. So I'd like to see how the other districts are doing and if they are also experiencing having to fill in, you know, $1 million or more, to sustain the program because I want to sustain it, but to figure out how we can do that. So I mean, I can tell you just from experience in other districts, they are raising fees to cover the costs. They're I don't know of a district these guys might, but of the districts I've worked in, unless there were grants, back in the day, there used to be like a lights on after school grant that we could get from the
121state. I don't know if it was federal funds or just state funded, and we would often apply for that grant. I know this was something we did in Denver quite a bit, and then those funds would be contributed to programing, especially in our highly impacted socioeconomic status kind of communities. Title one schools where students would have after school care based on, for free based on the grant. In other districts that I've been in, it's it's a, it's an enterprise, fund. And so it's fully funded by fees. And I am not aware of districts who are using general fund to supplement after school care. But we can take a look at that and maybe check into it and make sure that that's, just the places I've been. That's not been the case are be great. Any
122other questions? Our other three community partners, are we hearing anything about any of them not sticking around or withdrawing services? I have not heard of that. I thought we had a link maybe in this presentation. Or maybe it was. Okay. That is a link to the other community partners that are here in the district, in the schools that they're in. I don't know of any other partners that are planning to leave right now. I know that I think it was at Weber that the what the why pulled out very suddenly, over winter break. So they're working to try to get somebody else in the near neighborhood to come pick up the kids. It is problematic when the provider does that because it takes 60 to 90 days, 220 days to license a program, much less
123get the funding to do startup costs and get the appropriate equipment to really offer that quality program. But, Christy Cromwell, as someone who handles that in our accounting department and she would know better, I can certainly ask her and follow up if you'd like. I add something because I'm at Weber, and when that happened, it was like chaos for most families. I know one family that did choose to go to a different school, this next year because they don't they need that. And the wife pulled out and they went to an ex, you know, offsite place. And yeah, it was really surprising to happen over a winter break and we couldn't fill it. So that was that was really challenging. Jan Carlson had reached out to me to ask about that. And that was it's
124not really feasible to do it that quickly. And we were in this position with budget that we weren't really in a place to expand. But I know it was really hard on them. Yeah, and it's a small school, so we like really need to keep those, kids. And this was I think a second grader. And so she'll go to a different school next year. So we've lost now in some declining enrollments at all. Is a civic system. Just to say one more thing. Cathy does a really nice job of building a network with our other providers within the district. And so I'm sure that, if there were some outreach done by Christy, they would let us know if they planned any program changes. I mean, just so you know as well, on slide four here,
125you'll see that link, around the providers that we do have, if you're interested. Yeah. I just wanted to verify, that you are in communication with those providers and hopefully they would be giving us advance notice before they were planning on making any changes in their offering. One would hope I don't provide any kind of oversight, over them or anything. Christy is in charge of the leases and, building this collection and that sort of thing. I do partner with them to try to communicate what's going on in the district and just to support. But I don't take any, supervision role or any of that. And I don't even, pretend to know what kind of quality they offer. So that was something that I would not be doing unless I'd been in their program and seen it.
126And I have not done that. Okay. I'm just going to say it out loud to whoever's listening. I hope that they would give us a heads up before they decide to make changes to the offerings that they are currently providing, and I think through building use or other agreements that we could look at adding to some of our partnerships, I think there's a way to to go about I think that I think this is a thank you for bringing this up. Director Kenworthy, I think this is an area where we can easily put some systems and structures in place related to our facility use agreements and the contracts that we have with these groups. I mean, if a program is not sustainable and falling apart, there's not much leverage. We have to say you have
127to run it. You know, I mean, but I do think we can have some more structured and systemic oversight and paying attention to what's going on. I think it's been sort of Kathy would know because she has all of this, experience and history with us. I feel like it's almost been each principal kind of decides who goes where. And if you if you have a relationship with Red rocks or YMCA, then you get them to come to your building and then it's sort of this individual school is in partnership with these programs instead of a, more global, at least view and systemic, approach to paying attention to who's where, what's what, and how do we make sure to know how sustainable the programs are outside of just the principal for that school. So I would
128be happy to take this as a next step, because I think it's an area where we can improve. I can work with Renee and, Jeff and their teams to just talk about that and who could maybe have a little bit more oversight of that. Helpful. Thanks. If they if but if they can't staff Ed that could be why they pull out. So it's the same. They might have the same problem. So I'm not sure if it might just be good to have an agreement that they give us so much notice if this is going to happen, so we can let our community know and try to maybe, fill the gap if if it's enough time. I think it's just an agreement. We might we can't stop them from lead them. But yeah, it'd be good
129to know. I think. Okay. Thank you so much. This is really helpful. And especially you see, there are at least two board members who really care about it. Not that we don't all, but. So thank you so much. And, we are running over time, but because we've had some great conversations and so I am going to call a ten minute break at this moment. So thank you. For our next agenda item this evening, the board requested an informational update on the district's sustainability efforts. In August 2024, the district prioritized and onboarded Jeff Coes first dedicated sustainability program manager. Following a brief introduction of the topic by district staff, the board will hear directly about current and future plans to progress sustainability at Jeffco. Before I turn this over to Mister Gatlin, is there anything you
130would like to say, Mr. Olin? Thank you, President Parker. I'm going to hand it over to Mr. Gatlin, and we'll get this show on the road. Okay. Thank you, superintendent Dahlin. President Parker, fellow board members, I am, excited to be in front of you today with our, like, president Parker said our first, sustainability program manager. So I'm joined by Megan Teagarden, who joined us in August of 2024. One thing I do want to point out, is this we had a we had a vacant energy manager position in the facilities department, so we just thought a little bit differently about, you know what what what might the district's needs be with, with that moving forward. And so we, we use that FTE and change that to, a sustainability focus with some of the functions that the
131energy manager position, was, was providing and doing, following into Misty gardens, scope of work as well. And so really the, the purpose of the presentation tonight, as was mentioned, is really just to provide you an update now that this is relatively, a new position and a maybe more dedicated focus, and I think you're, you're going to find in the presentation that, there are plenty of sustainability efforts happening out there, but having somebody coordinate it, having somebody support it, and then having somebody work to bring it all together, into a plan, is something that, that I'm really excited about. So with that, you're not going to hear a whole lot from me tonight. But you're going to hear a lot from his tea garden, so I'm going to turn it over to her, and she can
132go through, her part. Hello. Thank you for having me tonight. I'm excited to be here. My name is Megan Teagarden. I am the sustainability program manager for Jeffco. Super excited to be with Jeffco. I am a lifelong Jeffco resident. I graduated from Jeffco schools and I currently have, kids in their schools as well. So I'm invested in the community and in the school district. I have a background in, environmental studies and, masters in Masters of Engineering in Sustainable Urban Infrastructure and have done a lot of work with cities and counties across the city, across Colorado and the metro area, working on sustainability plans and greenhouse gas inventories. In my early career. And then I spent, about 12 years with, in, in private industry doing sustainability work, environmental work there. Left that and was looking for
133the right opportunity. And this position became available. So excited to be here. So I'm going to go through I've been with the district now for seven months, and I'll walk through kind of what I focus on, what I've been learning and information gathering, share some observations of what the district has already been doing around sustainability, and then outline a plan for how do we bring all of this together and, progress, sustainability of a district. So, as Mr. Gatlin mentioned, part of the role is energy management. And that position was vacant for a little over a year. And so I immediately stepped into that role. So part of that is managing, our utilities, making sure that we're paying accurate bills, making sure that, we're tracking our energy usage, water usage, waste, that type of stuff. We
134do have to report to the state of Colorado for building performance, energy. And so I'm currently in the process of doing that, reporting, going back through and making sure that our data is accurate and that we can report it to the state, doing additional data gathering so I can do a baseline assessment on where are we at currently. And that includes everything from energy. So, kilowatt hours and therms and buildings, transportation waste and water, and then meeting with people in facilities and transportation to understand building operations and our transportation. So part of building operations is understanding how maintenance works, how we, do construction, what our technical guidelines are, that type of stuff. That's most of the energy management role. And then I've just been jumping in and supporting schools where they're at. So, there's been
135a lot of schools that have been excited about sustainability manager have reached out to me, and, have they have green teams and environmental clubs. So I've been meeting with those kids and teachers who are excited about it. Jeffco has historically participated in Renew Our Schools, which is an energy education program. I think the last time that that was we participated was in 2023. So I got that on online again. So we have three schools currently participating in that, for the spring season. And then, I've been supporting schools and their waste diversion efforts. There's a lot of enthusiasm around specifically food waste, but also recycling. And so we have some schools that are already doing, composting and that type of, stuff with their cafeterias. And I've been, visiting those schools and helping to support where I
136can. Another part of the role is looking for, grants and strategic partnerships. So looking for grant opportunities with energy efficiency, water conservation and electric vehicles exploring those options. And I'll talk a little bit about at least one of the grants we've applied for already. And then partnering with local organizations and governments that support sustainability initiatives. So there's a lot of we operate within many municipalities that have, strong sustainability programs and partnering with those and meeting with them on, what we can do to implement programs within our schools. And then, just broad stakeholder engagement, talking with staff, students, parents, community members, anyone who is interested and has has a voice on sustainability. I've been talking with anyone and everyone. So all of this effort over the last seven months identified a couple of issues or opportunities
137where, we don't currently have a cohesive strategy, so we need a plan in place that tells us the direction we're going to go and sustainability. And then, we also there there are parents and community members who don't know what's happening within the district. And they have a lot of questions. And I think that we can improve our external communication on what we're doing and sharing the awesome things that are already happening, and then where we plan to go in the future. So in terms of the current state of sustainability, Jeffco has actually had a long history of, focus on energy efficiency. And that started in 2012, with a warm, safe and dry bond which focused some of that, bond money went into building envelope improvements. So window insulation, roofs, that type of stuff. And then
138in 2018, the capital improvement plan, had dedicated money for LED lighting. In most of our schools and then Hvac improvements, and other things like variable frequency drives that help control, demand, were installed on a lot of equipment. The thing about LED lighting that actually puts the district ahead of other districts within Colorado is that the 2025 ban on fluorescent lighting, is causing some issues with other districts, and Jeffco is five years, seven years ahead of that. We still have a lot of fluorescent lighting within the district, but we've done a significant work, implementing LED lighting. The district also has a centralized building automation system, which remotely controls our Hvac equipment from a centralized location. So it allows us to set temperatures within buildings, set occupancy, and turn systems off when they're not in use. And,
139control fans and drives, from a remote location, which increases efficiencies. The district also has engages, which tracks real time energy usage on about 99% of our buildings, which allows us to see those inefficiencies, in real time rather than waiting for an electric bill or that type of of the district has also done recommissioning of larger buildings and, removed inefficient temporary buildings was a large effort as well. And all of that, resulted in a 17% reduction in energy use, intense intensity from a 2014 baseline also equates to, some rough estimates. I don't have final numbers on these, but it's about 37% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions just within our buildings. And then we do have about 20 buildings that are Energy Star eligible, to be certified as well. So the district also has 30 buildings with
140solar, which equates to about 4.3MW across the district. These were installed in 2011. In 2012, under a power purchase agreement, and they're still operational today. It accounts for about 5% of our total electricity. So in fiscal year 2024, it was about 4000 megawatt hours. And depending on the building, it can cover anywhere from 10 to 40% of that individual's buildings, usage. And, approximately $432,000 in savings just for fiscal year 2024. Other areas, around sustainability. So the transportation group applied for the 2025 EPA Clean School Bus grant, for two electric busses. We're still waiting to see whether we receive that. They have historically applied for that as well. And been waitlisted. But continuing the effort to try and get some electric busses, we also have a plug in hybrid, electric vehicles that are used for student
141transportation. And we're currently sourcing level two chargers for, those those vehicles. Water is another area, that I have not gotten super deep into at this point yet, but we do have, automatic timers on irrigation, replaced turf with synthetic athletic fields. And I do know that there's a lot of interest in replacing, non usable area, that's irrigated with native gardens as well. And then as I mentioned before, there is a strong interest in food waste composting and share tables within schools. And several schools are already doing that. And then I have teams, school recycling teams that are working on advocating for recycling at their schools and, looking for guidance on how they can implement that. On education and curriculum. The curriculum and instruction group is working on, how to implement the seal of climate literacy. They've
142been working on this for, almost a year now. This was passed by the state of Colorado in 2024 and hoping to have this implemented in 2025. There's also we also have climate and sustainability education within the curriculum, and they're tying the seal of climate literacy to that, existing education. And then we have many schools that have, as I mentioned, the environmental clubs and green teams. And then we have a very strong, healthy Schools program with about 55 school gardens and schools that have the healthy school liaisons as well. So all of this, put together with the district is doing a lot around sustainability. But it's kind of all over the place ad hoc, and it's not communicated externally. The great things that have already been done and what can be done in the future. So
143in terms of a future strategy and plans. So the first thing would be to establish a district level sustainability policy that would guide the implementation of sustainability efforts at the district. We want this policy to align with state and local sustainability goals, and have input from students, staff and families to inform what that policy should be. With a goal of implementation of this policy by Q1 of 2026, in addition to the policy, kind of concurrently would be working on, sustainability or climate action plan. And this would be developed with an internal, sustainability task force to identify the areas where we, can make improvements and think that we can, work on sustainability efforts. Also conducting a baseline greenhouse gas emissions inventory that targets the areas that we where we can understand what our current, emissions are
144and where we can focus. And then, engaging the community with the the proposed plan to collect feedback from staff and students and community members and developing stakeholder groups that have, particular expertise within certain areas, and getting feedback on on how we can implement with buildings, transportation, curriculum, that type of stuff. Implementation of the the plan does the resources are, you know, determined how much, how many, how much resources we have. And, I'm only currently one person, so, you know, I think typically this process I've been involved in several of them. It can take anywhere from a year to 18 months to to to flesh out, a complete, plan. And then this will also have an intersection with the strategic capital master plan that's also being developed. And then finally, I also mentioned, communicating on sustainability.
145So I think we can immediately, put effort into actually communicating sustainability efforts out to the, the community and a strategic way. We can make an an external sustainability page, highlight what the district is currently doing on initiatives and achievements, share success stories that the schools are doing and provide resources to staff and students and families to engage on sustainability efforts. And then another source of communication would be to leverage our internal and external communication channels, with newsletters and email updates. I do see that we already include some sustainability stuff in there, but I think that we can, bring that up to a higher level and have it be a, sustained feature within that communication. There's a lot of work to be done on this. I'm excited to do it. It has been so much fun
146to dive into this work. And, something I'm super passionate about personally and professionally. So that's the high level, on the sustainability at Jeffco, I would welcome any questions, that you may have. I just want to say welcome. I'm very excited that we have a sustainability manager now, so that's great. And yeah. I would also echo. Welcome. We're glad you're here. Really glad this is something that's come up that a lot of our public comments for quite a while now, on a semi-regular basis. So, I really appreciate you diving in, and I think you're spot on. Right. What is the whole plan look like for the district is a pretty big question when you consider everything that's out there. I, I have a few just questions, and I'm really excited to see the plan and the
147policy come together. I think that's really what our community is, is looking for is just where are we moving as a whole, as Jeffco? What are we valuing? What do we see as important? I wonder if, you know, in the last session we heard about the the need for steering committee, and I wonder if maybe this is from Mr. Gatlin. I wonder if there isn't a need for a subcommittee of the CCaC. That is maybe something that, Mr. Gordon could use as a community resource. You know, stakeholder engagement is often a big process, and we have committees that are set up to really engage the community from the FRC to the deck. And so I wonder if, as we have a subcommittee of that for some of the property work, I wonder if that's not
148a natural spot for this to fall. So I throw that out just for thoughts and consideration. My question really is around. I know for privately held buildings last year Colorado passed around 28, which is basically all kind of private buildings have to get their UID under a certain level. Are there any requirements for educational buildings? I know we were exempted from that, but I didn't know if there was any kind of state threshold or baseline we had to reach by a certain time. No there's not. We just have to report the data that we have. Okay. Fabulous. And then, I also really love the idea of public facing dashboards or some sort of like website, because I really think the story of what we're doing isn't being told right now, and it leads people to
149think nothing's being done. To your point. So, I really am excited for that. And to see the plan all come together. So thank you. Yes. Welcome. It's so great to have you doing this work for us. It's, something that I think is really important. I have just a couple of questions. One, I'm wondering how the remote environmental control is going. Are we hearing back from schools that are there any issues? Because I just remember when I was teaching, there were a number of times the district thought everything was fine at our school and it was not fine. So I'm just wondering if you're getting any feedback on that. Yes, we get feedback, about that. You know, comfort issues are definitely something that, we deal with regularly and really that the building automation systems are driving
150for comfort in our schools. One nice thing, though, I will say about our building automation system, is it does give us centralized views into things like individual room temperatures. So, it does allow us to dive in when we are hearing, you know, boy, this school is running really hot. What does that mean? First of all? So we really good insight into it. And a lot of times it confirms and validates, we have a problem, and then we can implement a fix and then see the impact. And you can, you know, you start to see a room temp go down. And so, this, this system just allows us to provide a level of service I think is really important and also drive, efficiency efforts to, you know, like, like, like making mention where, you know, we
151can set buildings in unoccupied mode. We can set them in occupied mode, we can make remote adjustments, and then we can also troubleshoot, diagnose and in an attempt to provide better service. So we do use it a lot for that. But we also know that just because we have it doesn't mean that everything is perfect. As far as because there there's systems, there's moving parts, there's all those things where things get stuck open and things get stuck closed. But it does allow our teams to troubleshoot. And I think because of that, troubleshoot quicker and ultimately try to resolve it quicker to. Great. Thank you. And then my other question is when you look at cost benefit analysis, does it make sense for us to be expanding our use of solar? And if so, and this
152may be a question for Superintendent Darland and for Doctor Kim. Is this a potential area where we might look at internships for students in renewable energy? Yeah. So I think, solar is definitely something that I'm looking at. And we haven't installed solar since that initial installation in 2012. Part of that has to do with the initial upfront cost of solar. So, the current purchase power purchase agreement we have is probably one that we would not negotiate today. So it's a matter of getting the right company that can do it. The other challenge that we have with PPA is, is that power in Colorado is is relatively cheap. And so the payoff ends up being a lot longer for those companies. The third challenge is installing them on roofs. Can, cause issues with if if it
153is not a new roof. So one of the issues with the the solar systems we have now were that some of them were installed on roofs that are that needed to be replaced in the middle of, kind of the life cycle of those solar arrays. And that is a significant cost that was not factored in to those installations. So, yes. I'm looking at solar, and I think it's something that we should expand, but it needs to be, thought through carefully about how that happens. And, the cost with like, whether the district owns the array is versus, someone else owns them, and, and we pay a smaller portion of the, utility. And I can just say related to high school reimagined, I think we're looking actively across many aspects of our operations and what we do
154as a district to find opportunities for students to come and learn alongside employees. Whether it's, our mechanics, or our I.T. team who are doing device repair, those kinds of things. And I think this would be a really great opportunity. We do not currently have, in-house people that work on solar. So we do have electricians. But we don't have people who are dedicated to solar. I was just going to add on in my work life, the real job, I where I run into a lot of foundations, who are investing in school infrastructure and a lot around climate. I'll try to start to log those, because I, they surprises me sometimes the kinds of investments that they're making. So I bet there's some partnerships with foundations and such that would their mission is environment. So they're interested
155in partnering with schools. But I all I wanted to say, was, well, thank you. And I think lots of people are excited that you're here, especially folks in our community. We get tons of public comment on this and emails. And I really heard you when you said you're a team of one. This is such a great position that could probably leverage the network of people who really want to see you succeed out there. And the committee, the subcommittee is a great idea, especially I was saying, because they have we have facilitators. So we already have someone who could also partner with you and hopefully supplement. Leading those kinds of groups is no joke. Great. So, and then, you know, like the mountain mamas reach out to us and, I just think and then we have
156like Tara Pena, who works with our families and is an expert on community engagement, who hopefully you can access and just build out your team, even though you do feel like a team of one. And I, I really think there are a lot of people right now that really would love to support you in lots of different ways. So, I don't know how much you like networking or or that kind of thing, and it's probably not in the job description, you know, to go out and and build lots of networks and that kind of stuff. But hopefully they'll come to you, and we can hopefully support some of that relations to building that, that for the district and, and for your team can, really lift this up because I really think there, there is a
157lot here. In terms of resources that we can leverage. So, I'm excited with what you've shown to start with and where I'm excited to see what you build in terms of this program. I just want to add director to, triggered something in my brain. There are also resources at the Colorado School of Mines, where they have programs where engineers are will come do free building assessments for us already connected. Fabulous. We've already done three excellent and Red rocks also has a lot of tremendous resources. Sorry. I can follow up real quick if you are made aware of groups or organizations that are willing to invest, please pass those without love to get eyes on that for sure. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. So welcome. I also wanted to say welcome. I'm Erin Kenworthy. We haven't met
158in an official capacity, so I'm just going to introduce myself. I'm thrilled that you're here. The community is thrilled that you're here. I also want to make sure that you don't get overwhelmed by the community enthusiasm, which I know it can happen. And so I want to express gratitude for this presentation and for listing the things that are already going on, how I am so grateful to have it all, to have written it down in one place. That brain can process that. We are doing a lot of things. Thank you for coming here. The first time you were talking to us and lifting up the work that has already been happening, and then telling us where you think we need to focus our, and prioritize, and so I wanted to ask, when we talk about
159having a community, a committee of some sort to support your work, is are we thinking of wanting to have a task force that is focused around a single issue, a project or something that's more ongoing? Kind of like our advisory committees? That's what I'm curious about. My initial thinking around that would be to have a task force focus on making this sustainability plan. So it would be, a temporary task force that does that work. And then that plan would describe how that's implemented. So it could be that we have a longer term committee or group of people that are kind of advising on the direction, but the initial task force would be people who are internal to the organization that know the operations of the district and can, realistically recommend and provide input into what
160we can achieve as a district. Right. And would that task force then also be helping to, write initial policy language? Is that would that be part of that project? Potentially. I think that policy language can be, a more collaborative effort with the larger community. And that kind of describes the overall direction we're going. And then the the plan would be more, targeted into, the task force that, that is internal, I guess. Okay. All right. That's good to hear your vision around that. Just because I know that we have a lot of community partners, and I think that at our next board meeting, we're probably going to have a community group who comes to present us with some potential policy language. And so knowing how those puzzle pieces will kind of come together, is helpful in
161communication with people who are working on that. Okay. Fantastic. Good. Anyway, I just I'm so excited for you to be here. Thank you for saying yes to doing this work for us. The community wants it, and you sound like you are excited about it. And you have excellent experience behind you, so I'm thrilled that you're here. Thank you. I want to reiterate that I'm thrilled you're here as well. I have a couple of questions. I appreciate the presentation here. And giving us information on what we're doing already, which is great. I would be interested in knowing which three schools do we have that are part of the renew our schools. Mount. Hold on. I wrote it down. Yeah. We reach high school, Oak Creek Elementary in Dublin. And what, what got them to be part
162of the renew our schools. Do they, have they implemented something already or have they just committed to doing so. I had sent out, something in the Jeffco brief for any schools that were interested in participating. And, those I had several schools reached out, but those were the ones that, showed interest and we facilities had offered to sponsor, five schools in that program so we could still get two more. If you keep nudging or so the program, is like it starts over a five week period. And so they do it in the spring and then they do it in the fall. So I would like to also do it in the fall as well. Okay. Also and share tables. I've gone with Mr. Gatlin to, some of the, cafeterias to see what they're doing and what
163their challenges are and so forth, and give me more information on what a share table is, because I know there are a lot of restrictions on the use of food, and that it can't be unwrapped or it can't be, you know, recycled. And so what does the share table mean? So it would be food that comes from the cafeteria. That's unopened. And the kids choose not to eat. And they would set it on that table, so that other kids could eat it if they wanted one. So it's kind of like we forced the kids to take a vegetable and they say, I don't want it. And then you say you have to. So they just take it and put it in the share table. Yeah. And I'm not quite sure what I know that they
164have to take the, the vegetable in the fruit. I'm hearing that they don't have to take the milk, but some kids still do take it and then they choose not to drink it. Yeah. We've got we've experienced this firsthand. And you're exactly right. We we make kids take things. And this is an attempt, though, to, remove those items from going right into the trash and putting them on a table. And if there are other students or, you know, anyone that comes into the school, that does want access to some of those items they have that, that, you know, that's that's one strategy I was recently made aware of, really, an operating procedure in FNS and our food nutrition service department around Cher table that, that was, relatively new to me, but I'm happy to share
165that, too. But it is, you know, systematized with how it operates, what's eligible, all those things. So we can so in theory that sure table anyone could take it and we could prevent it from going in their trash. Got it. Go somewhere. You got it. Okay. The next thing, when I was on the board the first year, one of the first things I did was go visit the Green club at one of my high schools, and, they were very interested in, getting rid of some of the, trays that they used in the cafeteria that were not recyclable, couldn't be used. And they were really funny because they knew that historically, the ones that were reusable, you know, the heavier duty ones were used for sleds and snow days and whatever else. But, what I learned
166from that is the students were not really aware of what can be done at the school level. I just talk to your principal. What changes can you make at the school level and what required going all the way up the chain to who knows what the president. But do we have, you know, can we make some efforts there to delineate things that can be done simply at the school level by a decision by the principal? And what requires the district to make a systemic change? Are you talking in terms of waste specifically? Well, like the trays that they wanted to make a change in their trays that they used at the schools? Yeah, I think that comes at a higher level. I don't know if the school can make that type of decision because the
167trays are provided. And then if you had reusable ones, they'd have to be washed and that type of stuff. I'm trying to think of an example of, like what the school, what changes the school itself could make. Do you have one? Well, I think that in, in the, the outreach that you've done and going out to schools learning what they're doing, I think that that would be an interesting way to frame kind of maybe some of what we're seeing and if there are, you know, it could it could be possibly woven into a plan around these are the types of things that, you know, schools can look into our schools can, you know, maybe a little more easily control. And these are the things that are going to require maybe a more concerted, broader effort,
168just to understand like what? You know, if we if we want to make a change here, what kind of flexibility and is it realistic for us to do this? It's something that as, as, as Megan is, is out learning, assessing, we could certainly keep an eye out for opportunities like that and differentiate it in that way. And then my last question is, we had some presentations, in the past month or two on water quality in, our schools and I know I have some schools up in the mountain area, too. And, when I did a town hall, the Boy Scout Girl Scout troop came in, and the one thing they wanted to say was the the water in their schools was awful, and they really was. They were just addressing the taste of it. Not so
169much even the, you know, quality of it. How are you and your plans and your, your job description? Interacting with, you know, things like water quality that are a federally mandated testing. So that's covered by the environmental services group, they do the water testing. They, they reside within the facilities group. So I do have contact with them and kind of know what is happening. But Environmental Services is responsible for meeting those standards, and testing the water because I do think that the community, you know, puts this all together with their concerns. And, I think it would be important for them to know who is responsible, who they communicate with. And. Yeah. So you're wanting, communication on, like, how to facilitate answers to questions. Right. And water quality. Right. Okay. Okay. Yeah. To what President Parker
170was saying. We also have a new rep, Representative Lisa Frey and this is like, she's the one who introduced the the bill to reduce food waste in schools. And I spoke with her recently that this is, like, a passion area for her. The food topic in school. So we have someone in the state legislature who could. You might also want to, know at some point. And I don't know how, that could work into the work you're doing, but she's wanting to champion this stuff. Okay, well, I do know that the mountain mamas are going to be following up. And, Anyway, I'm glad that you already are starting, you know, planning forward. And I hope we get a task force that does, Exactly what you were describing. And we're very excited to have you. Thank you
171for having me. All righty. So now for the next agenda item. We've set aside 30 minutes for the board to have the opportunity to discuss current topics of interest and the topics that board members have identified to discuss tonight include legislative communications, which we did a little bit of introduction with Mr. Bowdich. Also identified where budget Jefferson Junior Senior High School plans teacher workload and federal actions. So, I think we should start with the legislative communications, because that was brought up already. Oh, and we've got the clock keeper timekeeper starting, anyone like to start on this topic? I do think, it would be helpful if we had a consistent process. Like when we go through and we decide which bills and resolutions we want to support and we've done it, I think several different ways.
172I know the that our first year we took a vote, but we did it like really fast and we didn't really have a chance to even think about it. I know this last time before this, we took a vote. I do think there's something to be said for, introducing it as a study session and saying, this is what I'm interested in, but then taking an actual vote the next week because it does give our constituents a chance to react to, what we are considering and letting us know what they think. So that's my $0.02. I will also say, based on our, I would say inefficient process, in the last go around that the letter that was sent from the board to the, legislature, number one, we need to know what is our time frame. So
173as far as supporting bills, I like the idea. We discuss it and, decide where to vote on it at the next regular board meeting. But if there's anything that is, more time critical and can't wait for the next board meeting, I think we need to know how do we say this is the date that we need to make a decision or make a communication or do something? So that's one thing that I think kind of went wrong. The last go round is whether it was urgent or, just part of general. And one of my concerns with that too, is it it was almost a when we say we're going to communicate as a board through a letter or whatever outside of our usual meetings. It's almost impossible to do that without accidentally creating some sort
174of walking quorum. Because then you're asking everybody to get on the same page about something outside of the public view. So I would say that either we need to just let the district handle that which we've also done in previous years, or we need to build into that structure the ability to meet, even if that's just virtually, so that we can discuss it simultaneously and we can stream that and the public can watch. I would I think one of the things I would appreciate and I, I echo President Parker's timing, if it's urgent or not urgent, if it is a board initiated letter versus we have to respond to this bill in real time. Right. And I, I learned one of my areas to improve on this is to say I can't do that deadline,
175right. Like, I'm a I'm a people pleaser by nature. And so I'm like, yes. And in reality, there is not a chance I was going to be able to get that done. So I've learned to say that right. Like I I'm not either going to be able to do it in this time frame or I need some extra time or, or whatnot. I think the other thing that came up earlier that I would appreciate is knowing that something is final before my name goes out on it, and even if that's just an email, it's like, here's the final, you have one hour. Like that's even that, right? Because that's it is our names. And I think it's important to understand and to your point, in this case, we couldn't all get together. So I didn't
176necessarily know what had been accepted or not. And that's how it was supposed to work. But it would be good to at least say, okay. Yeah, I agree on that. I think the other thing is a question to you all is do we feel like the letter that went out is good? Do we need to add anything? Do we? I know we're now kind of in a different spot because the bill has been introduced and so the other swirls have started. And so it might be kind of moved to we need to focus on the long bill at this point. So I want to ask that to you all who have been much closer to it than I have. And in that I also want to lift up how much I appreciate the fact that
177President Parker and Director Kenworthy, Director Barta, have been at the Capitol, and director Reed, if you have, I appreciate that because that's not something I can do. And so I just want to lift up that. I appreciate you guys doing it. I will also reiterate, something I said when Mr. Bowdich was here, too. The question comes up as a policy governance board, when is it appropriate for us to make a statement and, like, pass a resolution or send a letter or whatever is wanted to do? And when is it, the, superintendent position to do it as the, CEO of the district? And so, I have again been asking a lot of, my, fellow board members and especially the presidents in the different districts, as I mentioned, Adams 12. Just let's, as superintendent do it. Granted,
178if that's, the model, then we would want to know in advance. This is from the superintendent. This is my plan. Not, find out afterwards. This is what I sent, and then we, you know, maybe want to make comments on it, but it's after the fact that it's been sent. So it's not as helpful for our comments, but, I want to find out from the, the feeling of the board, because I remember when we first got on the board and we were working on our mission and vision statements, those things were like one sentence, two sentences. We had so many meetings on them and wordsmithing, and what is it going to be? And then if you increase that to a letter, it's it's very cumbersome. And I don't know if we could ever, ever all agree
179we might get three people to agree we have a majority, but I don't know if we'd ever get five people to agree in the wording of something like that. So, I'm questioning whether, our letter was necessary in that forum. Given our constraints or the, you know, what did you call them, some kind of the walking quorum or whatever? Because the way it was done, you know, there was a draft and then some people gave feedback. And so, the the draft was changed based on feedback, but there was never any option for everybody to say, I agree with that feedback. It was kind of like, okay, here's a change. Because somebody recommended it. Oh, now we're going to make this change because I'm going to recommend it. So when we want to say what our board
180position is and whether or not it aligns with the superintendent, I'm not sure we can do that. I'm not sure I know what the board's position is on these things. So I just wanted to find out when is it appropriate for us to do this whole exercise. And I also want to in that and, to Director Reed's point, is it possible to say and we need a our live streamed meeting via zoom or here whatever to to walk through it because that is really the only way I think. And I think we're pretty good at that now. I totally agree with that. And I think it could be like a 30 minute meeting. And I think it wouldn't be that, if, I don't know, scary. It won't be that difficult if we can do it
181on zoom, to get us together in a short time period. For a short time period. Also, we just have to notice it 24 hours in advance. Is that right, Mr. Olson? Okay. And I like it being public. I think that's a great, great thing, but I, one thing I wanted to go back to when you said, was it necessary to do the letter, like, I think we were running to write a letter, because I'm just going to say and I feel like the position that had gone out prior to that from the superintendent was not the position that the board came together around. And so is a letter. How do we this is a bigger question that I have is. When, when if the superintendents position is different from the board's position, then what do
182we do and who who should be communicating with the legislature? Is it a school board? Should the school board be setting the direction of that? And I do think there are operational questions that only the superintendent or our CFO or whomever could answer. You know, what's going to how is that going to change the cost of the total amount of whatever? Like we don't know that. But a big question like, how do we want to, consider this conversation hot topic of averaging. And the board comes together and says, absolutely no. We want to be really strong on that. That's my bigger question. And it it feels like we've had some misalignment. So I don't know. I do think the letter is necessary, except that then the letter, then the letter was kind of a, a
183fail in a lot of ways because it wasn't the it wasn't what the board, I think completely was. It's unclear if it was or not. The n so I would like to know more about what kind of direction we can give the superintendent around, what we want to do around communications going forward, and for future boards. I'm going to weigh in here about the letter. We chose to do a letter versus a resolution because I think we felt that we couldn't resolve to do anything. We don't get to vote on any of the things at the state Capitol from this position. And so that's why we chose to do a letter to transmit our opinion about a specific issue that, was in discussion at the legislature rather than writing a resolution. And during this meeting
184earlier, I supported us picking up a resolution and adding it to our consent agenda, because I don't think the letter process worked. And so there were around that same topic, of averaging other school districts that did pass resolutions. And that's what what sparked the conversation here between a resolution and a letter? We chose a letter. The process, I think, didn't go as I had imagined it would. And a lot of you have already mentioned why. One of my hopes is that if the board ever does try to do, a communication in that way again, that we would own some of the process as far as setting deadlines, I know we wanted to get a letter out timely, but I also know that because of when we did it, it was the end of spring break
185over the weekend with tight turnaround that some of us just realistically are not. We're not able to comply no matter how badly we wanted to. We just could not. And, and did not know how to come back after we said we would do this. And I want to just say, I think the tight turnaround or the setting of deadlines to give redlines or feedback perhaps should be set. With more board input around what those deadlines are and what our what our turnaround times are. So that was one of the things that I was concerned about, because I do want to make sure that everybody gets a chance to weigh in, no matter what it is. We are expected to speak as a board with one voice, and that whatever gets sent out needs to reflect
186that. And I don't think that our process allowed for that to happen with the letter that was sent. And it was sent before everybody had a chance to see the final version and give approval. And I think that would also be in addition to a process is to say we need to have some moment where we each agree to sign our names to the letter if we're going to send it. And if I think we can talk about this at another time. I don't know how I feel about whether or not you need all five people, or do you need a board majority to send a letter on behalf of the board? And I would be curious to hear from each of you your thoughts about, whether it would need to be a three person
187majority or all five unanimous in support of one idea, or then a letter just doesn't get sent. I mean, that's the other option. If we can't come to a consensus together as a group, whether it's through a meeting or through whatever, process that's facilitated by the district, maybe we don't send the letter if we don't have a single voice message to give to our legislators. I was I was frustrated by the process. And I have recovered somewhat today. I think, one of the hiccups that we had here was we do need to be in alignment with the superintendent. Whoever you know, whichever board it is, whichever superintendent, you know, as we come up with process, there needs to be some alignment there with an understanding that the superintendent often has an understanding of some of
188the moving pieces that we don't have. So that we're not appearing to clash with each other. That just doesn't that's not good for the district. I don't think when, when there's a clear clash going on, it sounded like in many ways, some of what was causing issues outside of the district with us was people misunderstanding. You know, our superintendent position and, you know, sort of the rumor mill getting going about that. And, and we could probably do a better job of sort of quashing that if we're more clear from the outset. You know, where we need to be with that, if that makes sense. Not sure what process needs to be in place to ensure that to get us all on the same page and make sure we're on the same page. And then and
189I think to, Ideally I would want to say consensus, but that may not always be possible. I mean, you know, the board changes constantly every two years. And so, you know, we could be in a position where consensus is just not going to happen. And, you know, Tracy cannot be expected to serve five masters. You know, there's got to be she's got to have some way of knowing how to move forward with whatever board she's working with. And, you know, ten years from now, if it's not Tracy, whoever, that's who, or they can come up with their own process, I guess. But, and maybe that's something to think about between now and the next go around. I mean, it's kind of complicated and we may not be able to resolve that right here and right
190now, but I do think there is something to be said for some sort of process so that, the board and the superintendent can work in, you know, as a team and not at cross-purposes. Yeah. I think I would also want to just get dig a little deeper into clarification about, about expectations and roles as it relates to legislative communications and process. I know that one of the roles of the board is to set the legislative agenda, but I think that that may have come with some assumptions about other, interactions or communications with legislature or executive branch of the state. And so I think we need some clarification around expectations, who, who does what and what's within their purview. And just getting a little clearer on that, but also probably help us avoid some of the
191difficulty that we had in the last couple of weeks. I will also say that I'm extremely frustrated by the process that didn't work for the letter, and my ideal, especially for a policy governance board, would be that we, set our agenda. I think we've been fairly successful with that for the last few years. So we have our legislative agenda that Mr. Bowdich gives to the legislature before anything happens in that session and that, superintendents aware these are our priorities. And then as, the legislature requests feedback, we want to know what do you think out of this and especially bill sponsors who are writing a bill and they want to know what we think. I think for me, the the best way to have that happen is to do it through the superintendent so that she
192follows our guidelines. And as she's going to respond, she lets us know before she's responding to, show it to us. And we see how does it match with our agenda that we put up there. And we can flag anything that we think is not appropriate. But I think that trying to get five board members to agree on something, certainly we can't do it, not in public. We can't. We could have a 30 minute meeting. But I honestly just think that, I, I, I just don't know if it's necessary if we have directed the superintendent. These are our priorities. This is what we want you to do. And she could write the letter. So that's just where I'm coming from. That and say, what happens if the superintendent writes a letter? That is not what the
193board supports. So then hopefully she showed it to us before she sent it. And then we are saying, this doesn't align with what our agenda said. We don't think that this is, you know, following what we said so we can communicate with her, get it our feedback to her before she sends the letter. That it's been a process. I mean, the way we do most things is, you know, if we want to someone wants to do public comment and it's after the time and we get three people to say, yes, you know, I think there is an inability to do consensus. It'd be interesting to me to do like majority any major objections and like no major objections. I don't have time. Whatever it is. Okay, fine. Three have said yes, or even like literally
194like going this Friday to speak to the delegate session. And I would have really valued, reach out to say, hey, we're thinking about convening the whole county delegation. You know, how could that work for the board? This meeting that, Ed talked about a public meeting with them. But, I mean, personally, like, it's at a time when a working mother could not go. And that's not very, I think, collegial or board. You know, I wish that we could say that's a pretty big deal to go sit in front of them and with them and speak about this. And I don't know if anyone can go. I don't, you know, with you, but I, I wish that the board had been asked and that had been a meeting. So I think there's different ways that I don't
195know, I think we could, actually implement some of this without it being completely painful. So because if the, if we get a letter from the superintendent, it's not aligned with what we want to say. We're going to have to somehow someone from the board or multiple people are going to have to go through a process of a revision of a letter. So I don't know how different that is. I would think she would be the one revising a letter, but we would tell her what we didn't like about it. So I, I feel like we did get the letter. But then there was, you know, perhaps feedback. That's why. Oh, so quite a while ago, one from. Yeah. I'm, I'm saying if we said, here's our legislative agenda and the superintendent decides to write a
196letter and it's not aligned with what the board would have said, which I think is what happened. Okay, so not this latest letter. No, but we didn't get to see the superintendent's letter before it went to the legislators. So I think President Parker is suggesting is that wouldn't happen again. The superintendent would let the board review letters before they go to the legislators, and then and if there's dissent, then that's what I'm saying. We get into a letter process again. But I do appreciate being able to review letters that are going to our legislator, especially if they think their board support it. So, yeah, we I mean, yeah, we could take a look at that. And then, you know, sort of what we do in general, which is that Mary contacts each one of us
197individually and we can say yay or nay. And then you have a sense of whether or not there's a board majority supporting it, and if there is great, it goes forward. And if not, then you can do a quick meeting. If you think it's that easy, if it's, you know, what you're getting, getting from feedback is that this is probably pretty easy. Or if no, this is pretty serious, you know, then and it doesn't go forward. I also want to say something about the meeting this Friday. I think it's very standard practice for, school districts where the superintendent contacts the president first whenever it's happening, and then it's up to the president to contact and get feedback from the rest of the board. So for this meeting on Friday, Tracy, Lisa, Ed talked about this
198possibility and and actually, what day would be the best we even mentioned Wednesday, which would have been like Wednesday morning. And I said, well, that's before we actually have a chance to talk as a board, what we want to be said or done or yay or nay. And then it was possible for me to just start calling people. But I have learned that, you know, it's the first person I contact that I say, hey, are you interested in doing this? Would you like to go down to the board or to the legislature, or are you available? And, and you guys are busy and there's some people that don't, you know, answer the phone right away or don't, you know, have a chance. And I didn't like that idea of it's just the first person I
199get to tag. Yeah, you're it because I talked to you first. So I wanted to wait until we have this meeting so that we can have a chance. At the same time, who else would like to go to the meeting on Friday? So, so that's about this meeting. But I do think it's, important. I know Ed has been doing this for many, many years. As he said, he used to have it be a regular thing for the school board, and he had it announced so that the whole board could be there. And we talked about, is that what we should be doing this week? Have the whole board there? And that's that's a pretty big deal. And I don't think we could have gotten everybody available. No. And it's not easy to have a virtual
200meeting at the legislature. So anyway, so we are trying I'm trying to figure out a better way, to include all the board, let them know about it in a timely fashion. But I have learned my perspective for the years I've been on the board. It's it's better to have our position align with the superintendent that we direct the superintendent and the superintendent is the one that takes the lead in responding for the district. So that's my position right now. I have a couple of. But when it sounds like this meeting will happen on Friday, whether additional board members can be there or not. That's correct. That's interesting because I, I don't I don't think the board's been asked if that's well it it if you if four people up here or three people if three
201people said absolutely not. We don't want that, we won't have it. So when I say it's going to happen, it's it's not going to happen. If three people or three of you say, no, I'll do it. I guess I just think within policy governance, it's very frowned upon for the board president to to take an action without consulting or getting consensus or a voice from the board. And I feel I do feel like that's that is what what's happened here, right here. We're having no sense of agreeing to the meet, this meeting without because I waited until we have this meeting said the meeting's happening. Whether and then I had this conversation or directed myself. I corrected myself by saying, no, we're discussing it here. And I said, if three members say no, don't have
202it, we won't have it. I specifically waited, I did not say, let's go down this morning. I said, let's wait so we can talk about it at the board. Can I offer a potential process? Solution. So what I'm what I'm hearing is, director Varda would have liked to have been able to go, but can't because the timing. And so where I'm going is perhaps when this is coming up, could an email have been sent by, our new amazing executive assistant, each of us with you? Copy. Like we do. Send. Well, but since we. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Saying, hey, we're trying to schedule a meeting. Is there a date that works for most people? And I know that is an extra step and a whole bunch of work, but I but
203I what I'm hearing is the date was picked and I know you picked a Friday and you thought about this meeting, which I really appreciate. But but what I'm hearing is, I think, can we be a part of picking the date so that more of us might have had the opportunity to go? Is that a fair statement? And I'll just take it one step forward. I don't think it's surprising that I don't think the superintendent's messaging has been aligning with the board. And yet now the superintendent has a meeting with the delegation. And I actually want to clarify, I if Ed were here, what he talked with us about was, if there is confusion about the position, then it's very appropriate for the superintendent and board president to go to the capital. What he was
204talking about tonight was a practice six boards ago when he, because he's been the lobbyist for the district for a long time, where they did do a legislative breakfast down at the Capitol during the session. I knew that that was something they used to do, that it's not been a request of any board that I've worked with here to do it again, and Ed hasn't suggested it. And so I think what he was contemplating this Friday was for us to go down and just talk with legislators to say that were available, were at the Capitol. I think anybody on this board, any citizen in the state of Colorado, has the right to go to the Capitol and talk to their elected officials. Superintendents go down, board members go down, sometimes together, sometimes apart. So what
205was contemplated for this Friday was not a we've reserved room two E for the board delegation meeting. It was just we're going to be here. We understand there are some people saying different things about averaging not averaging 1448, not 1448. Different districts are lobbying for different things right now. And so Ed was saying, why don't you guys come down here and hang out with me? We can pull legislators off the floor to see if they want to come talk to us, or we can be in this area and people can stop by on their way in. It was not contemplated as a formal meeting. Helpful. That is what it sounded like. So if if we could. Well, I can go any time I want, as you just mentioned, but, because I, I was already thinking
206of going on Friday, but I can't go at that time, so maybe I'll just contact Ed and let him know that I will be there later. If anyone wants to join me. So yeah, I, I just want to say, as the board president. I am trying and not always successful, but I'm trying to figure out the best way to include everybody and make sure that we all get to hear about it. So, as I said, when the the question of what day works, I specifically said we shouldn't do it on a Wednesday morning because we're going to have a board meeting Wednesday night, we can talk about it. So that was at least my effort to make sure that everybody got to know about it. And then we can discuss it. There are times when
207there's I can't there's not a meeting coming up in the week. It's there's a well, you know, two weeks before we're going to have the next board meeting. And, so I have come to feel that I believe we need to trust our superintendent to give our message. And if she doesn't give it, then we have to give her that feedback. But she's not doing it. And we want some corrections taken. But trying to get all of the board members available on the right time frame to review a letter or review anything that we're going to do is hasn't worked for me. And if somebody else has a way to to make it work, I'm open. Mary, can I just say I want I want to address the feedback that I think is not being said
208directly to me, but indirectly to me, that I sent a message not in alignment with the board's legislative agenda. Thank you for sharing that with me. It's the first I've heard that board members feel that way, so I appreciate the feedback. I request that if board members are feeling that way in a given moment, and it's frustrating for you that you call me, give me a phone call and talk to me about what you're hearing and let me know that you're frustrated because I am always happy to receive feedback. Let me also share that I think this is stemming from the message that I had Ed send to legislators to clarify, when we heard a rumor that was going, he heard a rumor, Senator or senator or Representative Corker, I don't know which one, sorry,
209shared with Ed that he's hearing Jeffco doesn't support averaging. So Ed said to me, we need to clarify. And I said, great, let's clarify now. So we drafted a, message. It was not signed. As director Varda has pointed out. In that message, the first point was maintain averaging, which was in alignment with the board's legislative, platform. We then were in an environment. And by the way, things changed so quickly, the context we're all operating in, right? We were also in an environment where they were debating possibly doing 1448 or not doing 1448. We were also in an environment where we had a governor talking about phantom students and asking us to take averaging off the table completely. Right. We were worried about losing it to the tune of possible revenue shortfall of $24 million. And
210so in the moment, I said, Ed, send the message we support for your averaging. Send the message that if given the billion dollar shortfall, they have to adjust that at all. We would think about three year if there's a 1448 implementation that helps us offset you with me. The loss based on a year loss of averaging and send the message that we strongly support advocating for the maximum amount of funding to be put into K-12. We can split hairs and debate this, and I'm happy to have that conversation one on one with each of you. I don't feel like that. I didn't feel at the time like that was in opposition to the board's platform or the board's guidance. To me, if you any of you feel that way, I am happy to hear that
211feedback. I don't feel that it was. I do think we probably had some people because we had a if you can't do four years because of the billion dollar shortfall, then at least do three and and offset it with implementation of a percentage of 1448. That actually helps districts make up for that last year of averaging. I mean, these are the kinds of nuanced conversations that Sabrina and I can have with Ed and the state legislators because we understand the moving parts. If you're hearing that people are concerned about that, like, by the way, I want to give Vicki and Zander some credit. They showed up to my monthly meeting and they said, we're hearing this. Can you clarify? And I said, thank you. Please let me clarify. And I was able to talk to
212them about the difference between a 1448 implementation. The current school finance, model. Why why we you know, if the governor's saying we're going to take this away completely, I mean, do you draw a hard line or they just, you know, not not be part of the conversation with legislators? By the way, we have not talked to the governor, because I know that's another rumor that's out there that I've heard. So I just I would request that if you're hearing things that are feeling frustrating to you or that I'm not in alignment with something that the board has established as its protocol in its position, please call me right away. That was not my intent. If it still feels that way to you in terms of what I sent, I'm happy to talk about that with
213each of you. But I our interest, my interest is in going down on Friday is to talk to legislators and make sure we reiterate the importance of averaging, the importance of increasing funding for K-12, the challenges around, the decades long, negative factor, right? The challenges with declining enrollment, and all the things. So, that's what I'll say tonight. And, I'm going down on Friday. I'm going to talk to legislators. I will align my messaging to the letter, most recent letter that you all have shared. I think we're in a good spot with a four year average going into next year, at least based on the feedback Ed has given us and the feedback that the speaker has asked for all K-12 lobbyists and districts to lean in on. So I feel like the advocacy is working.
214In addition to the four year, we're also talking about a hold harmless, which is also beneficial to us, and an increase in the percentage of 1448 being put in place. So, so so I'm going to go down on Friday and just try to clarify for legislators who maybe are hearing all kinds of different things about me, but not from me. And so that's my plan is to go down and just hang out with that and talk to whoever might want to stop by and chat with us, or who we can catch on their way in to the floor. Or pull off if they'd be interested in coming and talk with us. So. Is there anyone else on the board who's available and would like to go down? And it's 815, and Ed's recommendation is just
215because of their schedule and being able to catch them to be there between 8 and 815, because then you can talk to them on their way in. And then if they do get on the floor and they start their work, we can always send the Ed's card in and then they can come talk to us for ten minutes. Erin and I have done that before with legislators, so I'm going to go and I would I would welcome all of you to to join me. If we have to notice it, we'll notice it. But if only two of you join me, we won't have to notice it. So you're welcome to come with me. I would enjoy spending time with you guys down there and talking to people and trying to clarify some of our positions.
216Given that, I think there's this rumor mill that started, I will also say Denver and Jeffco, when we lean in, tend to have, the feeling of more influence than others just because of our size. And sometimes there's a reaction to that. And so we I have worked hard to try to work with case to make sure that we understand the perspective of of districts who are smaller than us, more rural than us, and have different characteristics, which is why I was happy that Ed was able to highlight that for you tonight. In terms of, what Casey's saying is really, this majority of districts getting behind the actual implementation and moving forward to 1448. And so, yeah, I'd be happy to have anybody join me, but I'm going to go down around eight so that I
217can catch what's Ed's recommendation is to catch them on their way in and just be able to talk a little bit. And I plan to go down there at the same time. Is there anyone else I will be there. Okay. And then, Doctor Valerie, you said you're planning to go later in the day. Oh, okay. But you can certainly anybody, you see, you can talk to. All right. So, we are a little over the time. Is there anybody, anyone want to, finish up on this topic? Any other comments? So, I'm not sure what we exactly have identified other than the process we did use for the letter. Didn't work. So I think if there's anything coming forward that you can. Preview or if you think that we're going to hit the same problem, let's identify
218it. Now, if you have an idea just real quick, I think, and, you know, for a future retreat, discussion of this process and solidifying this process would be a really good thing to do. All right. Okay. We will go on from this. And that brings us to the, monthly consent agenda preview. And we will hear, the preview of the April 10th action items, including items that will be included on the consent agenda. Superintendent will provide the board a preview of upcoming board agenda items. Boy, that sounded redundant. And so I'll hand it over to Superintendent Darling. A little bit redundant. Okay, great. So you have this attachment in, you have two attachments related to this agenda item in your board docs. The first one is the actual, preview of the consent agenda for next week
219as well as upcoming board meetings. So we'll start there. Approval of a donation, by the Governor's Ranch Elementary PTA, approval of, monitoring report 1.4. By the way, that monitoring report you have not yet studied, we have it built into a presentation and study component of next week's meeting. It's usually we have you study something and then at a, at a subsequent meeting approve it. So we will have this on your consent agenda. It would be nice to get it done. Primarily because in May and June you have such heavy budget agendas that it would be nice to, get this done so you can focus the board's energies on budget. So that's our thinking about why that is both studied and on the agenda in the same night. If you study 1.4, I just want to
220invite the board to give us feedback in the moment next week. If you study it and you don't feel ready to approve it, you can pull it off the agenda. You can ask us to move it to the next regular meeting. You can, reconsider it as an agenda item on your consent agenda. If after studying it, you feel you don't feel ready to make a decision, one way or another. Okay. All right. The next one is the supplemental funds notification, which is what you have every month, approval contracts. In the following order, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This is our elementary literacy curriculum. Food and Nutrition Services has several that you're you'll see related to products that we have on our menus. A contract amendment for Lexia, which is, an intervention that we use for literacy, a
221contract award for athletic trainer services with Children's Hospital, a contract, for Apple, which allows us to buy the devices and tools that we use that are Apple products. And approval of a contract for Perkins. Eastman. You mentioned you heard, Megan talk about these. The plan, the sustainability strategic plan, being connected to the strategic capital plan. And so this would be a contract approval for, Perkins Eastman, who won the RFP to support us at developing our new capital strategic capital plan. Approval of contract award to BCC interiors. And OS schools. You'll see some more. That was a that's a charter component for you to approve. And there'll be more information about each of these contracts in your board docs next week. An award for a company called Meteor Education and Virgo, the last one. Can I
222ask one question before we go? The last one on the on the food contracts is that for like the next calendar year? Is that for the end of the school year? How long is that for the next calendar year? Okay. So it's all right. Thank you. We shouldn't have more of those coming. Like they're usually annual right around now for the following fiscal year. Right. The, march. What it says it the, purchase was, are the board approved a purchase not to exceed 2 million, and this is 4 million. Is this an increase? We didn't expect? Go ahead. Kim. Yeah. The original cohort one and two were a total of 2 million. Now that it's all three cohorts buying all of their materials going into next year, the total is 4 million. And I think this
223also includes some new a resources related to secondary English language arts and middle level. And we do have some middle schools that have adopted the middle school version of MH. So that's also in that total. And then the award for the Perkins Eastman is that costs a million. What about $1 million? What's the time frame on that? Is that is that how is that for like, a year long contract or. Yeah, Jeff can let up more than I would have expected. Yeah. The the development of that plan is going to go through, the winter of 26. And so a year and a half ish. And, you know, I think one thing to remember with, with that process, we had hired an external ownership kind of service to kind of facilitate that whole process. And this
224pricing is in line with what they were expecting to see for the development of this. For a district this size, is it possible for us to, like, see what they're proposing they're going to accomplish? I don't even mean I don't need it to vote on it. Like, I'm curious what we're paying for. Just we're going to include the for the full contract. All of all of their all of that information, in with the consent item. So you have, have access to that. Okay. And then my last question is, I think always and all of these, these are all expected costs, none of them. And I mean, in all the categories, there's nothing here that is increasing any part of our budget. We're just so, like, scrutinized for this right now. I want to just make
225sure none of this is new, okay? And and not just yours. I'm sorry, Glenn, but. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Okay, so this last one is actually one that we need a little bit of guidance on from the board. So, tentatively, the we have a the second attachment in your agenda item tonight is the a resolution regarding the Arvada Aquatic Center. And so it as if you'll recall, the board received, a presentation from the city of Arvada requesting for additional funding to be contributed from our capital reserve to the overall cost of the Arvada Aquatic Center. You know, they we had presented and talked about some options for the board, the full amount, a partial amount minus the Leed certification or some other amount. We need some direction from the board. This this is contemplated to
226be on your, consent agenda. We need to fill in a dollar amount. At the board's direction. And then next week, if if this is an item that the board wants to vote in favor of, then it would be part of your consent agenda, and you can just vote for it along with the other consent agenda items. If this is an item that the board is not interested in supporting, then at next week's Consent Agenda item one, Mary asks if board members are interested in pulling anything off. You could pull it off and have a separate vote so that everybody could make a decision. If there was somebody interested in voting no. And we have talked at length with we have provided information to individual board members over time about this topic. The city has come
227publicly, asked the board for support, and it is now time for the board to make a decision. So if there's, a board majority, if everybody wants to vote yes, it stays on the consent. Consent agenda. If somebody wants to pull it, for a no vote, then every individual board member would vote separately on it and be able to make their own board board member decision related to this item. And then you can do that for any consent agenda item. But this one, we had indication that there might be some interest in somebody pulling it off. So and we need direction on the dollar amount. Yeah I was going to say the the draft right now has no dollar amount. So we couldn't leave it on the consent agenda with no dollar amount because. So so
228I guess my question is right now, do we would it be helpful to talk about a dollar amount at this moment. Sure. And in order to make that maybe a little bit easier for you all, as Jeff and I were, over the last month, as we've been sharing information with you all and having conversations through that information, sharing each of you has sort of in those conversations said, if we're going to contribute something, then we would be inclined to do so at the rate minus the Leed certification. That is what the majority of you have said to us would be your interest. So one suggestion is that we put that I Jeff, I don't have it in front of me, but we put that dollar amount. It's 3.5 million into the resolution. We put it
229on your consent agenda. And then if somebody wants to pull it for a no vote and discussion, then the board has the right to do that. Obviously, you have the right to do that on any agenda item that's on your consent. But this one might be one that we wanted to to flag for you this week as a possibility that that might happen next week. Can we can we talk about it? I mean, I know this is the consent, but, I'm really worried about our budget. All of our conversation tonight has this like dark cloud of and there's positives. Like we've we've definitely heard positive news. But I am incredibly concerned about money in our house right now with negotiations and costs and all of the things. And I, I just feel like I, I
230understand where the city of Arvada is at and I feel for them because I know costs have gone up. But I just have to be really honest with you all. I'm really concerned about putting money towards this when I'm also concerned about funding teacher salaries and not knowing where our revenues coming in. And that's like, that's just where I'm at right now. I will echo that, too. I feel like we are in such a budget crunch right now that we can't afford to put anything more into the Arvada pool. I am in agreement with that. I realize that when you look at our total budget, that's not a very large amount, but we can nickel and dime ourselves. And, there's already been a general feeling from many people that we overstepped what the district's role
231is. I don't necessarily agree with that either. I do think that it's great that we have this resource for all of our kids and, you know, that it did a lot for equity. So I'm not saying that we shouldn't have been a partner in it, but I think we've partnered about as much as we can, partner. I think I would be willing to contribute the additional 3.5 million to complete the project. And move on. I am also concerned about our budget and. In this budget year, where it looks like we will be maintaining at least with little to no harm and not any major reductions, from the state. I think we can probably stomach it this year, but not anything further in the future. Can I add to that though, because we have an MSA?
232My understanding, I'm sure I can't see, Mr. Olson that we are sharing. I mean, once there's a there's a set amount of money and once that money is gone for capital expenditures, we are sharing the costs. This wouldn't be the last amount of money we would share in that cost. We we are committed partners to this long term. I just want to be clear about that. Sure. And that is going to exist whether or not we pay this additional money. Right. So this is a this is a one time cost for for finishing out this particular contract. And then the ongoing maintenance and upkeep is what that agreement is for so that I can. Yeah. So I would be I would be willing to vote in support of paying minus for lead. Certification costs the
2333.5 million. I don't know yet. Is the 3.5 million. What is that again for increased construction costs is what the our memo said. I like when all is said and done and the bills came in. That was the left. There's leftovers what 7 million. And they're asking us to pay. We can we can resurface the presentation that the city of Arvada presented to the board and this fall, and then we we have a memo that Jeff has created. It's like a cost sharing percentage of the overage, minus the investment that the city made in leaves. Jeff. Jeff looks like he can jump in. Yeah. The total overage that we in the presentation that we received from the city of Arvada was $9 million. Part of that was, about a $2 million cost for the lead
234component of that building. So if we subtract out the $2 million from the nine where it's seven. And so the that the three, that's how we're getting to the 3.5 splitting, splitting that 7 million. What I would propose is I don't know I don't think we have consent to put it on the agenda. And maybe we can each ask some questions in the coming week and put it as a vote item. I don't know what's the thought when you say we don't have consent to put it on the agenda, the consent agenda? I'm sorry. I mean, I, I would be pulling it off if we put it on the consent agenda. I'm just going to share that. Okay. You know, there's not there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah. So if I think my, my recommendation
235process wise and Julie jump in here if you see it differently or agree. But my recommendation would be that we put it on the consent agenda with a $3.5 million investment price point. And then if the board if a board member wants to pull the agenda for discussion, the item for discussion and a separate vote, somebody can do that. Whoever might want to that allows you to continue the discussion. Publicly, and make a public vote, which then gives us the authority to share with the city of Arvada what our board's decision was. If, the alternative would be if because three, because there's a majority that says no. So the alternative would be to not put it on the consent. What's the alternative? To put it on there with a zero or I mean, we could
236just what? Yeah, we could just, I'm looking at Julie, but I think what we could do is just say there was not an a, a majority of the board who was interested in taking up this issue. And so the answer is no. What that doesn't do is allow each of you to make your own statement about why you would or would not support this, which is often beneficial for board members to do in their public meeting. And Julie looks like she wants to in my recommendation, based on what I'm hearing, is that you just listed as an action item. Oh, I don't have to have the consent full presentation because you obviously don't have a consensus. I mean, it's a little tomato tomato right thing. Do we pull it off or do we actually listed
237as action? You're going in the same place. But that way, rather than saying we don't have permission to put it on the agenda, so we're not taking action is it's difficult because the request could come back. All the things like you guys, undertake a vote, you have a decision and we know where we are. Having the board's decision documented publicly with a vote allows us to very clearly communicate with the city one way or another, what the board and the district are willing to do. I do, I would need, if we do what Julie's talking about related to just making it its own action item and not including it on consent, which makes sense to me. Julie, I would need some direction from the board about how much of another presentation do you want versus
238the memos attached. Have a discussion. Take the vote. That's that's what I think it is. Okay. Is that how that's helpful? Because I just want to make sure we're prepared for whatever the board's expectations are for that agenda item. This also gives, again, constituents a chance to write in if they want to. Can I just ask for clarification? Should we put 3.5 million in the amount okay. Thank you. So just to summarize we're we're going to update it with that amount. And we're going to make it a separate action item on its own okay. And Jeff and maybe you can answer this. You want to answer this now if you don't have it I know when the city came and asked for the money, I mean, the pools open. This is really just to be
239a good partner to them, right? We're not contractually obligated, but this is their request. And. Julie, do you want to answer that from a contract perspective? Under the plain language of the contract, you're not obligated. So yeah. And we can get you we can resurface. We also had a memo from our outside counsel kind of summarizing that. And we can add that to executive content for next week. Thank you. I, I was able to talk to Kristen about it and she explained a whole bunch of, of all of this and that part of it. And I do think this part might be a little unclear from what she was saying like that. Not black and white. You don't pay this. I think it was not as clear, but that's what I remember. Not to contradict.
240I'm sorry. I just, I just, I think there might be a little, like. They might think it says something different than we do. I'm not 100% sure. Okay, I'll send in my questions and maybe see if I can speak to Tolson, our Kristen again. Yeah. Because and Kristen had, like, all this history, which was really helpful too. So yeah. That is helpful direction. Thank you. All right. Now back to your agendas. In addition to those consent agenda items, let me find my, you will also be on your regular meeting next week. You'll have a, a tentative executive session. We're still making decisions about that. I'm not sure we're gonna need it. Julie and I will connect with Mary on that. And and let you guys know 20 minute dedicated public comment for negotiations. And then
241regular and regular public comment as well. You will see the 2526 budget development school and departmental allocations, which is a another step in the process to get to a budget approval, by the end of June and then monitoring report 1.4, we will study and and if you feel good about it, well, it'll be on the consent agenda. If you want to ask us to remove it from consent before you take action on the consent, we can do that too. And then you'll see in May, study session is, we are having public comment during the study session, because why are we doing that? Lisa, I know you told me. No, I can't remember. Sorry. Just because of the timing of your board meetings, this in this month, is why typically, you know, your meetings are the
242first Wednesday and second Thursday, but because of graduation schedules, we had to move the regular meeting to the end of the month. We wanted to ensure that's really when May is when, negotiations hit their peak. And so we wanted to make sure we gave folks an opportunity. Yeah. And by May 29th, people are winding down and gone. And so we want to make sure that that you all have a chance to hear from constituents, especially during the this time frame of negotiations. So May 7th, you'll have some public comment for negotiations. You'll have your for dialog time that you just had this evening. DAC will be coming to, collaborate and share with you. JSB will be coming. We're going to study EAP Services and Jefferson Articulation Area Plan, an update to the board on where
243we are with that. Another study session on the ninth will include the charter school application for Horizon Montessori. You will study the proposed budget, which is required by statute X number of days before you approve it. You will have a board calendar for next year to review, and you will be studying your board committee appointments in the regular meeting, which is not until May 29th. We will be doing the superintendents mid-year check in during an executive session. You will be, finalizing board committee appointments. TD PAC will be coming to speak with you and studying or looking at and possibly approving monitoring report 3.1 and 3.3. In June, you will have your dialog, the board's dialog for 30 minutes. You will be presented a budget for adoption. You'll be studying it early June, EO 11, which
244is school safety and savings care environments. And your monitoring reports 2.2 and 2.6. And then in the regular meeting, we'll do a legislative recap. Hopefully things have settled down and we have some clarity and some answers from Ed. We will be presenting the cell phone research report, because we've had these pilots around cell phone users in schools excited about that. Actually, as a mom and superintendent, you'll be looking at the Q3 financials for 2425 or will have even a more clear picture about the estimated use of fund balance this year with our budget expenditures, you will adopt an appropriate the 2526 budget, and we will have CAK joining to engage with you as well. And that will be the end of the 2425 school year for the board's business. All right. Any comments? Questions. Yep.
245I received a few emails about alternative education centers. And I'm wondering if we need any information on that or. Yeah, you're actually going to be receiving information, quite a bit of information in 1.4 related to ACS. So that's helpful. Yeah. Yep. Thank you. And what happy to engage in that conversation next week. Okay. Great. Okay. That brings us to the end of today's agenda. We will stand adjourned. And our next scheduled meeting of the board is a regular meeting scheduled at 5 p.m. on April 10th at the Ed Center. Good night.