May 13, 2025 Regular Meeting

001[Music] I would like to call to order this regular meeting of the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education for Tuesday, May 13, 2025. Board members may attend and participate in board meetings by electronic means in accordance with BBSD policy, BMEA, and state law. Laura, could you please call the role? Chavez, yes. Medler here. Nisnik here. Quinn Linua here. Raj Paul here. Sergeant here. Anger here. Thank you. Now, if everyone could turn their attention to the screen for a land acknowledgement this evening. [Music] The Boulder Valley School District resides and operates on land that is the ancestral homeland and unjustly and illegally taken territory of the Ude, Pueblin, Arapjo, Cheyenne, Apache, Navajo, and 48 other tribal nations historically tied to this Ian who have called this land home since time and [Music] memorial. We acknowledge

002the atrocities committed here, including the painful history of genocide, forced assimilation, and efforts to alienate the indigenous inhabitants from their homeland, supported by the policies of the United States government. BBSD is aware of the many indigenous peoples, past and present, and their dignified nations and cultures who care for this land with strength and resilience. BBSD recognizes the histories of the land in Colorado and the survival of many nations that carried their oral traditions into the present. It is BBSD's responsibility to educate ourselves, our community, and our students so that we can embrace the wisdom and knowledge of indigenous peoples and actively stand together to address injustices. In offering this land acknowledgement, we affirm and honor the history, wisdom, oral traditions, and resilience of indigenous people, and recognize the responsibility to care for and appreciate this

003land together. I'd like to remind everybody that the mission of the M Boulder Valley School District is to create challenging, meaningful, and engaging learning opportunities so that all children thrive and are prepared for successful, civically engaged lives. Good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us here in person and remotely tonight. We're glad to have you observe and participate in our meetings. At this time, is there a motion to approve tonight's agenda? Moved by Kitty, seconded by Beth. Laura, can you please call the role? Chavez, yes. Medler, yes. Nisnik, yes. Quinn Linua, yes. Raj Paul, yes. Sergeant, yes. Anger. Yes. Motion passes. We will begin this evening's meeting with our work session work session study topic which is the be well project. And I'll hand it over to Dr. Anderson for introductions. Thank you board president

004Raj Paul. Members of the board. We are very excited to um to invite our friends from the Ray Renee Crown Wellness Institute here with you today to talk about the Bwell project. Board members. As you'll remember, um, in the fall, um, as we were beginning to think about and discuss the things we're doing for the mental health and well-being of our students, uh, we came to this, um, place where we felt like we needed to really do an analysis of the things that we're doing, how are they working, where their opportunities, are the things working better than other others. Um, and uh, to be able to do that analysis, we turn to our friends at Renee Crown uh, Institute uh, who uh, have done a lot of work over the course of this past year

005and I'm excited for them to present to you today. There's a lot to present, but I think it'll move pretty fast. We want to leave plenty of time for questions. Um, and I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Da Cruz to introduce everybody. Good evening, President Raj Paul, members of the board. Um, it's great to be here this evening with our partners at the Renee Crown Wellness Institute. I'm joined on my far left by Tammy Lawrence, BBSD director of student support services, who provides oversight and guidance for our counselors, our mental health advocates, and more. And um next to Tammy um our colleagues from the Crown Institute, beginning with Julia Ziggurelli, deputy director, and Michelle Reninger, director of research, partnerships, and data initiatives, and they're here to present findings from the Bwell project. While

006the Be Well project covers vast ground as a nearly year-long study of the well-being across BBSD, I do want to point out that there's another important partner in our work and that is impact on education who has been instrumental in our high school wellness centers from their inception through their expansion and we appreciate their robust involvement. The partnership between BBSD and the Crown Institute has developed into a research practice partnership, which is a long-term collaboration aimed at educational improvement and transformation through engagement with research. And we're really pleased that this research practice partnership has been accepted into the National Network of Education Research Practice Partnerships, which is a network of scholars and practitioners across the country. and we are the first and so far only research practice partnership primarily focused on mental health and wellness

007in schools. This is a really important step in our ability to contribute to uh uh the national conversation and to provide leading information to that conversation. At this point, I'll turn it over to Julia and Michelle who will walk us through the Be Well project, the findings and the recommendations. Thank you, Laura. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Thank you, members of the board for having us here today. Um, we are grateful and honored to have this time with you. Our hope is to be able to share um a little bit of our agenda, but I also wanted to note that we're here as m a much larger team, just two of us representing a much larger team, some of whom are in the audience today. So, I wanted to just um acknowledge them and all the

008incredible work. Um we were here and honored to be here in the fall to share with you a bit about the wellness centers. We gave a little preview at that time to this be well project and so that's what we're going to spend our time on today. Um this is where we're hoping to go for our agenda. So we're hoping to share with you a bit about the overview of the research project. um some of our findings with regard to student mental health and wellness, what we learned about how the district is supporting students and then where the students needs and the supports are aligned and where there may be gaps or opportunities and some of the recommendations that we have from um the work over this last academic year. Um so just as a

009kind of brief reminder of where we've been, this is a lot of tiny text, but on the far side you'll see that we've done a lot of work just in this academic year alone. Um, we've collaboratively designed quantitative measures uh that reached both students, educators, and families, so all three audiences. We launched those in the fall as well as our youth advisory council, which I'll speak to in a moment. Um, we also completed focus groups with students and and educators, and we continued to collect data on the wellness centers, which we'll touch on. We also um collected all that data, analyzed it, and interpreted it for our presentation to you today. This is where we are today um on the 13th. And then in June, we'll have the opportunity for our young people to be

010able to be in conversation with Dr. Anderson and other leadership to share their findings and recommendations on this project. And then we'll also deliver a report and have some integration meetings with your leadership. As Laura already mentioned, this um incredible research practice partnership gives us the opportunity to ask deep questions and to use data to inform those decisions. So, we're really excited to be accepted into the acronym is NERP, the national um network that Laura mentioned before. Um, and this is our um our data sharing agreement and ourou that gives us the opportunity to ask these questions. Just as a reminder for our research cycle and the way that we work at the Crown Institute, um we have an iterative design cycle and it is very intentional. So we start with building trusted teams and

011we will talk a little bit about that very large trusted team that we've built over the last year and then we move into this phase we call identifying and understanding. Um it's important for us to share that that's really what we're going to be focused on with you today. Um so after we go through this phase of really deeply learning about the opportunities and challenges through data then we can collaboratively look at what are those solutions? how do we study those and move towards staying power? The beauty of a long-term multi-phase project is that we can do that together. So, we're excited here to share with you a little bit about that second phase. Um, as we move into some of the research questions we had for this year, as I mentioned, we've built a

012beautiful and robust team of experts um both across the university, within your district, and then of course young people within your school district here um on the bottom corner. Um you'll see them in a bigger picture in a moment. And who's not pictured on here are the many educators with whom we also worked. So they were also part of the design team and they're not featured here. And we want to um give them acknowledgement for being key members of that research team. As I mentioned um we are focused on this second phase of identifying and understanding and we used a mixed methods u methodology to be able to answer these questions. So we used both quantitative measures as well as qualitative focus groups and interviews. We will review and talk about the synthesis of those

013findings. Some of these will be quantitative findings with the um qualitative work and stories woven in and some of it will be focused on the qualitative data. So we'll share that with you as we walk through this presentation. These were really the key guiding questions um that we that we centered on this academic year. So just as I mentioned, these are really the questions. This is going to be sort of our map as we move through our time together today. What are we learning from students? How is the district supporting students? And how aligned are those supports and needs? This will be kind of the indicy you'll see on the left will guide us through the conversation. A bit of it will be a whirlwind, but we will intend to stop and pause at the

014end of each of these key sections for discussion. And we will also leave time at the end for discussion. Our intention here is to really make sure that you get the complete picture of each section, pause, have conversation, and then make sure we leave more robust time at the end for additional conversation. So, before I get into the findings in each of these sections, I'm going to turn it to my colleague Michelle, who's going to talk a little bit about the methodology, the methods, um, and the response rates on our quantitative side of our survey. Thanks, Juliet. It's nice to be here with you all. Um before we dive into the first question, we really did just want to give you an understanding of the Be Well project itself, particularly the methods and the response

015rates. When you're dealing with surveys, you want to you want to think about those response rates. We're going to go rather quickly through the findings, but we can always come back to this section if you have specific questions. So, as Julia mentioned, we engaged in a myth mixed methods design for this project. For the quantitative survey measures, we reviewed the literature, employed validated measures to compare to national norms when possible, and we collaboratively designed the anonymous surveys with educators, students, and district leaders to be responsive to the questions at hand. We created th three different surveys called the voices of students, voices of educators, and voices of families surveys. So this slide shows you the overall number of responses and response rates on the surveys. The response rates are in parenthesis. So here you can

016see we had a really strong showing of students with over 72% of students responding. So we had 14 oh nearly 15,000 students respond to the survey. An even stronger showing of teachers at 80%. The survey was an educator survey. So it went beyond just teachers. But when we look at the the teacher itself response rate, that's at over 80%. And families had our lowest response rate of 6%. Um, which still accounts for over 1,000 responses. Just to break that down a little bit further, you can see the number by level of student responses that we had across level, excuse me. And similarly you can see the total number of educator responses by level. And this is where you can get a little bit of the sense of we had early childhood each of the levels

017and then we had educators who were mixed level going across schools for the different roles they play. In addition to the voices survey we also collected qualitative data in focus groups that Julia referred to. On the slide, you can see that we engaged 25 students and 31 educators in a number of different focus groups. That really adds a rich context to the quantitative data that we're going to share. And finally, our landscape analysis consisted of 12 district leaders working together with us to provide critical information for the creation of a resource hub that you're going to hear about that we built with the district um personnel as well as the ongoing data collection from the wellness centers. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Michelle. Um, so we're going to jump in here to this um each

018of these questions in turn and I'll pause at the end of these arrows, give you some of our key findings and leave some time for discussion. So, what are we learning from students? We first wanted to start by lifting up our youth advisory council. This is some of the 14 members who are representing six of the high schools across BVSD. It was actually their request to be able to be in conversation with the district leadership rather than presenting. So, we're excited to be able to have that conversation with them in June with district leadership. They've been key partners from the beginning. So, we really want to emphasize that they helped to co collaboratively design the survey um that Michelle just spoke of. They also were alongside us in reviewing findings, developing recommendations, and they created

019what they're calling three subcommittees with a focus area on students, educators, and resources. So, we um much of what you're going to hear today has their voices um within it, and we want to lift that up. And we also want to name that they'll have an opportunity to share explicitly all of their um feedback and um ideas in June. And we're really grateful to the district leadership for giving them that opportunity. So um part of the collaborative design on that survey was them giving us feedback on how we framed that survey, some of the validated measures and how those were framed. And this was actually a question that they came up with. Um we really wanted to understand uh what students are doing to support themselves for resiliency. We used language like how are you

020supporting your mental health? How are you taking care of yourself? And they said we don't want that. We really just want what brings you joy. Um so this is what your students are saying bring them joy. And the bigger words are of course the more responses, but you can see such a beautiful compilation of the things of your students that bring them joy here. It's also a nice framing for how we think about this work at the Crown Institute. We like to think about everything from a strength-based assetbased perspective. And so we'll use that same framing as I walk you through these findings. Um we are using the lens of bright spots. So things that seem to be going really well um and opportunities for growth where there might be an opportunity for us to

021lean into possible interventions or areas to focus on. We'll go through each of the levels in turn and then we'll pause. So I'm going to start with elementary school. This um may be hard to read. There's a lot of um small numbers on there and sentences. But what I'll what I'll share here is that this is a lot of bright spots for where your elementary school students are sharing that they are experiencing within your school. So again, Michelle shared we had a really strong response rate um of elementary school students. So 88% of students are saying they get along well with their teachers. Nearly 85% are saying they they enjoy spending time with their friends. Um that they've been having fun, they've been in a good mood. So these are all really what we see

022as bright spots, things that are going really well in elementary school. We also see some more bright spots in terms of students saying um this top one seems uh particularly important to lift up, which is that over 90% of elementary school students say they know where to go to access services when they're in need. Um that's a pretty critical number to us to be attending to. We also see that um students feel 84% feel that they have at least one adult they can talk to and um twothirds feel comfortable reaching out for help and support when they need it. We also know from research that there's some evidence to suggest the number of adults actually does matter and so it's encouraging to see that there's over 50% who say they have more than five adults.

023Um and we'll get into that in a little bit. There are also some opportunities for growth in terms of what students are saying their needs are. This is still some bright spots in our p by our perspective. These are pretty low percentages overall um for students reporting areas where they might feel lonely or sad. On the other hand, you do see some rising to the top. So, we'll speak a little bit about how we think there's opportunities to address these feeling under pressure, feeling worried about the way that you look. Um these are appearance concerns. These are suggestive of some other areas of need that we'll talk about when we get to the kind of culmination of those findings. So, I'm going to move into middle school. Different questions for grades six through 12. So,

024you'll see the same questions for middle and high school and they're different from this the survey that we gave third through fifth graders. Obviously, developmentally is part of it and validated measures is another part of it. Um, so we see again some bright spots in middle school. Um hopefully this won't be too surprising that a lot of your students are rating that their u mental health is either average or above average or excellent. Um that they have at least one adult they think they can talk to and feel that they can trust. Many of them feel supported by their peers or they feel that their peers can come to them. We often think of these as protective factors. So these are bright spots in the way that we look at this information. We also see

025that there's opportunity for growth. Um what we what you don't see on this screen, but that we see from the analysis is those students who say they're feeling um often feeling stressed or anxious are also the same students that are having a hard time managing their stress. So you see those numbers on there. What we also can tell you is that it is the same students who are really stressed that are having a hard time managing their stress or their anxiety. So that's something to attend to that we'll speak to in a bit. Um, we also see that nearly a quarter of students do say that they experience bullying or harassment sometimes, often or very often. And then this one on the bottom, students who report frequently feeling little interest or pleasure in doing things,

026feeling down, depressed, or hopeless. Um, at about 21.7%. Those are areas for us that we wanted to learn a little bit more about given what we know in the research and areas to support within your student body. So we did run some associations within the data, some analyses that helped us to look more deeply at those students and what we might consider to be some areas that are questionable for us in terms of how we can support those students. We see that students who are more frequently feeling hopeless um feeling down are also more likely to report having no or fewer adults who they report they can trust. Um that's pretty important because while we saw that there were student a lot of students who said they have an adult, we also see the students

027who are really suffering do not feel that they have a trusted adult. And then we're also seeing that those same students report that they're more likely to report refusing school. This is consistent with what we see in the literature and it's helpful to see that your students in BBSD do follow the same trend and it's an opportunity for us to lean in to where those interventions can be supportive of those students. We also did look at social media use um and we do see that high social media use is associated with higher frequency about appearance concerns. We also see that higher social media use is associated with those um feel more feelings of being frequently down. Again, an opportunity and an area to lean into when we think about interventions and spaces to support these

028students. In addition to understanding what the needs are, we also really wanted to understand more about access and how these students are accessing and um services and whether they feel comfortable. What I want to draw your attention to here is that elementary school students reported at over 90% that they know where to go. And we see in middle school that drops down to 57%. Um to us that's a pretty significant opportunity to lean into interventions, ways to support your students when we have such a significant drop from elementary to middle school. We also see from elementary to middle school that we had nearly twothirds of students who said that they felt comfortable asking for support. That drops down to almost a third by the time they get to middle school. So again, opportunities to think

029about by level where are their spaces to um to lean into supporting those students. So finally with high school students um we see pretty similar patterns that we see for middle school. Overall, um the numbers drop a little bit in terms of high school students overall mental health and well-being. Um they do say that they feel even a little bit even more supported by their peers which speaks to the value of peer interventions at this age. Also peers who um come to them to speak about their mental health. Again, this tracks with what we see in the literature um and gives us an opportunity to think about where to lean in for support. Um, in terms of opportunities for growth, we see similar patterns except for we see a decline in what students are reporting

030as bullying and harassment in high school. So, we're seeing that actually spike in this data set. It's certainly only one data set, but we are seeing that in middle school more so than in high school or elementary. Um, and we're also seeing a very similar percentage of students who express feeling down um or hopeless. We see the same pattern. So, I won't I won't um belabor this point, but just to say we do see the same trends, the same analyses um with your high school age students, giving us again the opportunity to think about where are there consistencies that we can apply both in middle and high school and where might there be differences, which we'll speak to when we get to the section around alignment and thinking about these different levels. We wanted to

031lift up some of our qualitative data. Uh what we're sharing with you today is not just the quantitative data, but what we think are some of the most important findings to uplift. And those are partially because they're corroborated by the qualitative data that we have as well. These are a couple of examples that I just would like to lift up for you um and share that we heard in our focus groups with um high school age youth in the district. So I'll just read part of um the one on the bottom here is says attendance is something that I've seen I've seen a lot of teachers like go straight to students are ditching instead of asking them checking in with them saying hey has something been going on and things like that definitely show people

032are important. So the reason why this we're lifting this up as a piece of qualitative data is it speaks to that school refusal piece that we just talked about that we found in the quantitative data and the quote you see in the top left speaks specifically to the importance of having those adults who you trust. We see in the middle of this quote the student says they expect me just to put in all my effort and stuff even though I was putting in like more of my effort in just trying to feel safe instead of class. So I feel like if they understood that this is something that's really affecting me, they could find resources. So what we see with high school students is it actually goes back up a little bit in terms of

033access. We see that um while it's much lower than we saw in elementary school, we do notice that high school students know where to go at a little bit higher rate. They feel a little bit more comfortable asking a accessing services. And we hear this, we see this in the qualitative data, in this data, and in our youth council that awareness, access, and destigmatization are probably three of the most youth focused recommendations right now. So, sort of to summarize this section, what are we learning from students? This is again tiny text, so I'll read it. Um, the majority of students are reporting overall mental well-being as a average or above, but they're also reporting important concerns with key focus areas including appearance pressures, bullying, feeling down, and stress. Awareness and perceived access decline in middle

034school. And we see that needs vary by level, but there's also some consistency across the levels. So, but before we move into our next um section and question, I I'll pause to see if there's any clarifying questions or questions I can answer. Yes, Kitty, I have a couple of questions. Um because I think it was the bullying was reported was a little bit higher in elementary. Did the kids understand the difference between bullying and somebody just being mean? Do I mean do we know if they understand that difference? Yeah, that's an excellent question. So, what we actually saw is bullying in elementary school was pretty low. Um, but we saw we did see it go up quite a bit in middle school. Maybe middle I was thinking of. Yes. Um, and it's a good question.

035You know, we did not to answer the question, we didn't provide a definition of bullying on the survey. So, we did just ask um an item from a measure that we have and we don't know how students interpreted that. Okay. Well, I would expect they probably wouldn't. I mean, somebody's being mean to me, so I know how that feels. I'm being bullied. And the other question I have is, and you may not have disagregated this, but you were talking about the difference between kids in elementary knowing where to get help and kids in middle, and I'm wondering if there's a difference in the K8s. That's an excellent question. Um, we will write that down as an analysis that we can include in the final report to you all. you all will have much more detailed

036analyses. We're also running all of the analyses by group which we look forward to sharing with you. So the differences between groups that would be um one we thought about and we haven't shared with you today and um a worthwhile question for us to make sure we include in the report. So thank you for that question. It would be interesting to see also the K8 kids who actually were there from kindergarten versus the ones who come in only for middle school. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, thank you. Um, thanks for this report. Uh, I appreciate all this information. Couple questions. It's kind of a clarifying question and maybe it's kind of silly, but when you say trusted adults, is that defined as adults only in the school environment or does that include adults in the community

037when someone's responding to that survey question? Yeah. No, that's an important question. Um, and we're um, we phrase the question, adults who I can trust in school. So, it Yes. So, it is in school, not in the community. We do have some questions about community. Um so thank you for that clarifying question and it is about adult adults who they can trust in school. And just to follow up on what Kitty was just asking about um regarding subgroups you mentioned. When you say subgroups what kind of subgroups are you thinking? I'd specifically be interested in you guys know what I'm going to say students with disabilities um as well as some of our ELLL students and a variety of subgroups that we typically look at on the board. I don't know if there's other groups

038we'd be interested in. Yes. Thank you for that question. So we we have the ability to run a fair amount of analyses. What what we should have said I think we said at the beginning but I want to repeat is that this was an anonymous survey. So what makes that different is that we they are not linked to student ID numbers. So we did ask um for them to identify their own race, ethnicity and gender. So we do have that information how the students identify. So it's not based on the data that you all collect. Um we have that information. we have grade level and some other variables but unfortunately we don't have all that um level of detail. Um yeah, thanks very much for this and looking at this and you can see that

039the it looks like the survey was done in the fall and then the work the um focus groups were throughout the school year. Um so I'm sure you followed we passed a cell phone ban in the fall and it was implemented in the early part of this year. Did you notice any kind of difference because I look at this and a lot of this is related to social media and the impact of social media and appearances and bullying. Did you notice any positive trends that came up in the focus groups maybe that were done in the spring versus things that were done in the fall? That's a good question. Um I'm hesitant to give full analyses on the focus group. I do the young people have a lot to say about the cell phone ban.

040Um, so rather than getting into maybe all of their findings, I might reserve the answer to that one. And I would say, um, you know, we've been talking about how interesting it would be to look at this before and after now that you've made this pretty significant change in policy decision and whether that would impact any of your findings. Yeah, Alex. Yeah. On the I was wondering if the self-identification by like high school students includes LGBTQ status or anything like that. What we um what we asked for was how you identify your own gender. We didn't ask about um sexual orientation or any other um personal identifying information. We have um boy, girl, and let me tell you as an open field. Jorge, thank you for the work. It's been really interesting findings. Um I'm

041curious how the survey was administered and how the response rates compared to our climate survey and if you're able to some of the questions were very similar to what we asked in the climate survey. If you are able to kind of see if it's comparable or not to what we've asked previously or at other points in the year. Yeah, thanks for that question. So we worked really closely um with Jonathan Dings, who we should give a big shout out to for all of his support with this project. Um, so they were administered in in different ways. So for the educator survey, there was time carved out of staff meetings to allow whoever attended staff meeting to take that survey. For students, it was carved out of class time. Um, and then for families, that was

042one link sent to households. So I think part of our response rate being so low is that it's anonymous. We had one shot. we did show up at the showcase and we showed up at parent events trying to you know raise interest in the survey. Um it was it was hard. Um so I think for the places where you all were very open to allowing us to use that time to get the answers you know to allow people to respond it was so helpful because we put it's so important what your response rate is. Um and then I think the second part of that question is with the climate survey. So, we also did work closely with Jonathan to make sure we weren't being redundant so that we can pull from that survey as well.

043Um, but in there are places where there are going to be interesting comparisons to see what looks the same or what looks different. So, we're looking forward to being able to do that analysis. We just haven't yet. Alex. Yeah, I was gonna say in terms of the parent survey, it might be interesting to see if we can partner with some of the different groups we have to get links out again next year for for higher participation rate through DAC or Sachs or PTO's or whatever. Um uh my question is also do you have enough will you have enough responses to really examine school by school differences to figure out when especially when we're trying to figure out how things are working to figure out what the school level implementation is in terms of outcomes as

044far as the student and teacher surveys. Yeah, thanks for that question. Um yes, we do have for the most part we've got very robust numbers at many schools. Now the smaller schools it was harder and we the charter schools were provided the option to participate only one chose to participate. So we don't have data from most of the charter schools. Um and when we depending on the analyses we want to do we have to look at who responded and how many responded. So some of those sample those cells do get really small and because it's anonymous we don't want to in any way potentially identify someone. So we are we are able to do many things but there are limitations. I one thing I I've been really thinking a lot about is the and you

045called it out directly the awareness access and dstigmatization and that kind of lull that we see in our middle schools. When we go to elementary schools, we see those cozy corners and the bean bags and the stuffies and the quiet places. And we've toured the wellness centers at our middle at our high schools. And we I have received a lot of comments from our community about wanting wellness centers in our middle school. And I do wonder how how the presence of those physical spaces within our buildings impacts awareness and dstigmatization. And then I mean it's an access point, but the direct correlation there. And I I was glad not glad elevating in this data is for me those physical spaces are really important and our middle schools could use a little support in that area.

046So encourage you to continue as you're working with your student groups to dig into that piece and what might be more supportive for middle schoolers who not quite high schoolers and not quite elementary schoolers anymore either. Like what would that look like for them and how could we support them in those ways? Yes, thank you for that. I we're over here doing like a little bit of a Yeah. Um we will talk a little bit about that at the end is some of our recommendations. Um and we also see I'll share I guess I could move into that section if this seems like a good time to share a little bit about the how the district is supporting students. The wellness centers do come up as part of that. There's opportunities both to celebrate those

047and where we can refine those and expand them. So, um, sort of moving into that next section, how the district is supporting students. Um, this gets a little bit some of what you're, um, all referencing, which is that we you do have really a lot of services that young, um, students are accessing. We see almost 90% of elementary school students are using one or more of these supports, which is which really is a celebration from our perspective. We do see that um, decline in middle school, but still at 77% that they're using these services. Um, we also want to call out that one of the wonderings we had when we looked at this is are students who are suffering in particular whether they have higher anxiety or stress, whether they're reporting feeling down more like

048they are they more likely to actually use the more intensive services and they are. So from students perspectives themselves in middle school, they are more likely to access those services when they are struggling. that speaks to the, you know, essential need for mental health personnel for counselors and other school-based mental health advocates, um, school psychologists, social workers, and crisis support because we do see that they are accessing that support and we know that early intervention is so critical before they reach those high school years. So, um, your data does support the value and the importance of that. Um, we also see high school students, it dips down. Not completely surprising that um, high school students maybe are accessing less services. And um we also wanted to note, which is what we were just talking about,

049not only are a large number of students using your wellness centers, which we'll talk about, but students once again who are um feeling more down, students who are having higher stress and anxiety, they not only report using these crisis services more, but they're also actually more likely to report using wellness centers. So to us, this speaks to a huge opportunity in terms of more of a systemic level support for mental health and wellness. thinking about increased coordination in a building and not just only focusing on one person's job is to support the mental health and wellness. So we wanted to just share a bit about the wellness center data with you all. Um this is we were here in the fall. This is comparing last year their first year of launch to this year. We

050see that just um up through April there's been over 24,000 visits from the data we've collected. We also see an increase in the number of visitors. So individual students who are visiting and we do see that percent of enrollment means that at stu at schools the six high schools where the wellness centers are currently existing. We see that over close to 35% of the students that are enrolled are using those wellness centers. So that's really significant in terms of the number of students who are accessing that service. Um, for us, just to kind of nerd out on this, it might not seem like a big deal, but actually to find a significant finding here for increase in positive mood is actually pretty it's a pretty big deal in our world. Um, so we do see

051that this is significant. What's not on here is that we also saw in our survey results that students who use wellness centers or report that they do on our survey are more likely to report having a trusted adult or or an adult that they trust. So when we think back to what are some of those important protective factors for particularly for the students who are really having a harder time, we do see that these spaces are buffering against that and they're more likely to have access to that support. These are some of the focus group um comments. Um I I can't you know help myself but um just share this one quote that I think is so great and truly is it's clearly that we were talking to students. though she this actually I don't

052know the um so I'll just say this student says but yeah I have like actually like have recommended it to a lot of my friends and I've been like if you're ever having a bad day go see my girl so I think that just you know helps us to see that students really are using these faces this is um these are quotes to elevate but again this is a deep um analytic process that the qualitative team goes through and these are just lifting up some quotes but they're really emphasizing ing the themes and the findings. So in addition to thinking about how students what their perspectives are, we really believe that it's important to understand the perspectives of those who support them. We're not here to share all the details of the family and educator

053report. That would be a whole another conversation. Um but what we are here to do is share the really important findings that relate to students and students and how we are supporting those students. So a lot of text you can look back at this another time but to elevate the larger text here in the key bullets according to educators and families. Schools do have an important role. So um students or families and educators do feel that schools have an important role. Educators are sharing that they think a lot is working in terms of bright spots and families are saying that students are seeing receiving support. We are seeing that decline through the levels if you look at the percentages. We're also seeing that um educators according to educators so according to themselves they have an

054important role in supporting students. Um we saw that 61% of educators feel mostly confident in in identifying signs and symptoms which we see as a bright spot and an opportunity. Um we also see that educators feel more confident at the elementary school level. So again speaking to being able to support educators once students become u middle school and high schoolers. how can we help them know what those signs and symptoms are before there's crisis? We do see that that's an opportunity here that we found in our data. And then finally, according to families, um it's important for schools and families to work together. Probably no surprise there, but just to name that um on just on our sample, about a quarter of parents were unaware of the resources available to them. Um and we also

055saw that about a quarter of families reported that they don't communicate with the school about um their child's mental health. So opportunities there for increasing collaboration and communication. So um this is what we learned in this section that students are using supports across all the levels that mental health services are needed and they provide critical support especially for some students. So especially those students who are really struggling. Wellness centers are a promising model of support. We didn't get into all of the opportunities for growth. There are opportunities for growth. We heard that in our focus groups and in our survey. So we look forward to sharing about those opportunities. Um, according to families and educators, schools, like I said, have an important role in in supporting student mental health. So, before I go into our

056last section, I will pause if there's any questions I can answer on that section. Kitty. Well, I don't have a question, but I have a comment and I won't be here to find out the answer, but it'd be interesting to see if the students in elementary who are accessing the resources at a higher level will continue to do so as they, you know, age. Core To piggyback off of Nicole's question about spaces and um their use, there's a transition from elementary school to middle school that from informal to formal and they're able to to kind of tease out, you know, cozy corner, you know, lunch bunch, like the informal stuff that kids can utilize that's easy to access, right, without the crisis school counselor, social worker, psychologist to get that dstigmatization. like we don't have

057that in middle school in the same way, right? And kids are there for three years, so it goes by so fast. So, I don't know if you're able to kind of tease that part of it out in terms of what they're accessing and how. That's an excellent question. I'm not sure if I want to turn it to Tammy to answer to address some of that. I think when it comes to the findings on our survey, we spent a lot of time um from an analysis perspective um looking at whether we wanted to divide physical spaces and human- centered care um which I think is part of what you're getting at um and we're in the middle of running those analyses to determine are they valid? Are they useful? Are they um information that would be

058helpful to inform decision-making? And I just I guess I'm validating for you that our research team had the exact same question. Are we looking at accessing physical spaces? Lunch bunches can are human- centered, but they're also physical spaces, cozy corners, wellness centers versus the more individualized care. It's an excellent question. Um, hope to get back to you. I had a question on the if you had any thoughts on the the parent responses the parents resping or commenting on lack of awareness around available resources. They also had the lowest participation rate. I just curious if you have if you're digging into that a little bit. I know we often push out a lot of communications, but communication and getting resource information to families is something across the board that is it's never perfect, but if there's

059more information from those that you could dive into on those family responses and and then the secondary wondering around is do you think it's sample size and like the part people that the grade level that those students those families had students in? There's anything else that we need to be aware of with the family responses. Thank you for that question. Um I can speak to the first part and if you want to speak to the response rate. Um we are sharing kind of a snapshot with you from that survey and um what I think is helpful in terms of communication as we ask questions. How frequently do you want to be communicated with? Um what types of communication do you want? So there is a space to look deeper at the patterns um and themes

060that are emerging there. Not just how do you want to be communicated but also comparing that against how frequently and how much are you responding. Um, so I think there there's an opportunity and um it's it is a small sample size. So I do I don't know that we're totally limited in that way. We did have representation from all grade levels. We actually had pretty good representation across the board. Um and with only a thousand well a thousand from a statistics perspective is strong, but from a perspective of looking across your district, I think we'd have some work to do to make sure we felt really confident in answering that question. Did you want to And then a little kind of related to this section, a little bit related to the next section. In our

061most recent UIP, we have MTSSA and MTSSB. One is the supports for students on behavioral, social, emotional capacity. How is this if at all dovetailing with that work? There has been a lot of conversation about the collaboration as we move forward with the findings with MTSS, the MTSSA, MTSSB and ensuring that we are working together across our teams in supporting our our schools and our employees in making sure that that is dovetailing together because we want to make sure that we're all working together and not in different silos, which it's it's been a goal of ours for a long time to get out of those silos and ensure that our work is together. But now that it's really part of the strategic plan, it provides a great opportunity for us. And with the data that

062we have found from be well, it will it will spark a lot of those conversations to ensure that as we move forward, we're moving forward thoughtfully um into that work that we have and our goals that we have set for that. We wanted to bring the the findings to the board first and some of our next steps will be to engage in the findings with our school leaders and our um district personnel so that we can create that intersection that Tammy's describing. Okay. Um so we'll move on to the last um section here. um how aligned are those supports that we've talked about and what we see as the needs um from this work over this last academic year. The first thing that we wanted to do, which I think actually is um it's a

063nice segue from the question that was just asked, which is looking at your overall organizational structure and how you support student mental health across the district. Uh this to us is a bright spot that um what you're seeing here is the organizational structure of your district and all of the um sort of highlighted boxes suggest that those um individual divisions, departments have a role in supporting student mental health, a leadership role. What's a bright spot for us is that that means it's great that it's not just in one department and that really is everybody's job. That's a celebration to us to know that everybody has a role in supporting student mental health and wellness. It also gives us an opportunity from our perspective as we engaged in conversation with all of these district leaders and

064looked um across your district for more increased collaboration and communication across um departments and um and divisions. So it does speak to the need not only to use the findings across these different areas but to ensure that people are having conversations with each other, collaborating closely and communicating. We see that at the district level. We are also what you see in these tiny pink boxes and blue boxes are the um people in in pink support schools and the people in blue are actually on the ground in schools. We see this kind of need for increased coordination at the district level and really all the way down to the school level. And we've had a lot of incredible conversations between um departments on this screen as well as on this screen to talk about ways in

065which for example um we've had conversations with student support services and health services about how can we make sure that the their nurses and the um school mental health folks are working closely together. So we see this as an opportunity to increase that collaboration and support. We also worked on creating what we're calling a resource hub um in close collaboration across all those divisions and departments. So one thing that we wanted to understand is what are you currently offering? Um is there redundancy? Is there an opportunity to improve efficiency? How effective are these programs? How well are they implemented with fidelity? Before we can answer any of those questions, we need to know what are you offering? Um and what are the details? Um so this is something that we have created for you. It's

066now own you know now you all have this information and you can use this across departments to um inform conversations about any of these things which students are eligible which tiers of support are these programs supporting what topic areas are they supporting what data are they collecting and is that data being used um to inform decisions. So what we saw when we went through and created this resource hub with you all is that at the district level you are offering 48 programs across the district at all levels um different levels all tiered levels of support. They address a range of concerns. Some of those are collecting data from what what has been shared with us. Some of them are not. A small number of them are actually in community partnerships which we see as an

067opportunity to leverage more community partnerships in the work going forward. So we see um this does not include all the programs that schools are offering. So we know a lot of schools will pick their own programs to implement and that that is not what we're looking at here. We're looking at those that your um district leaders have decided are um worth sharing with schools. We also see that um we did a kind of an analysis across all of those 48 programs to understand what are the topic areas addressed. There's a lot on here and this again to us is a bright spot. It means that you all are offering a lot of support and um across these different topics to your students. It does depend. We don't know how many students are accessing these the

068quality that they're accessing. Um we have a lot to a lot of questions to explore here and we do think that it's an opportunity to see how much is being shared across the district. Um, so what we wanted to do was take all of those topic areas and program areas that we see as support and look at all the data that we had collected from students, families, and educators, surveys, qualitative data, focus group data, interviews, and figure out what we can see as kind of the top needs that arise at each grade level and then match those top needs to what you're currently offering in the district. So what you see here in the parentheses are when we could derive um a a top need from these particular populations. So the first one you see

069we see in elementary school that students and families are both reporting academic stress as a top concern. So that's how this um kind of table is set up here. I'll quickly go through these because at the end it summarizes all of them together. This is what we see for middle school students. This is what we see for high school students. So looking at all of those looking at um across the different levels we see there is consistency across the level there is also difference which isn't surprising but is good to know that there's an opportunity to um create more parody and more consistency across the levels. We also know that these um areas these domains don't occur in isolation. They have relationships to each other. We know this strongly from the literature. So, it's not

070to say that one program needs to only address one topic area. Certainly, there is strong robust evidence for some programs being able to touch many of these particular topic areas. So, we see this as an opportunity to increase alignment with what it is that you're currently offering and now what we know are the top needs based on the work of this last academic year. So, what we see from the alignment there is that there are many programs that address many topics. only a small number of them are offered in partnership from what was reported to us. There are many different departments who support mental health in um different divisions. There's an opportunity to focus on the key areas of need. So, in the interest of time, I might just say these are the findings I've

071already shared with you. There's nothing new here. Um I might um move into recommendations given where we are in our time and then if we have additional conversation questions, happy to take those at the end. Um, sorry again for the smaller text here, but um, this hopefully isn't surprising. As I've walked you through all of the key findings of each of our sections, we will you will see those reflected in our recommendations. The way we think about recommendations are in our research cycle, we would select the those of these that the team feels are the most important to move forward with. We would then move into a collaborative design cycle and then want to study the implications of those. That's how our design cycle would function in this case. So, we're recommending increasing awareness of

072where to go and access in middle and high schools, collaboratively refining the wellness center in high schools, and expanding into middle schools. Consider supporting educators in recognizing the signs and symptoms of concern, particularly in middle and high school. Actively sharing clear, accessible mental health resources and information with families, which is again a great question about how to do that would be part of that kind of design phase. Increase and enhance coordination between the departments. continue to support all of the um human- centered care and also crisis services as we know those are essential and then focus the next phase of learning strategically on just a subset of those 48 programs. We would not recommend looking at effectiveness or trying to look at effectiveness across all 48. We would recommend that you identify those strategically that

073focus on the key needs and topic areas and then dig into and understand better the efficacy um and and the fidelity with which they're being implemented. and then to leverage community partnerships to extend the capacity of the services you're providing. So, we already mentioned our celebration here and that is what we have for you today. Pause. Board members, any final questions or thoughts? Jason. Yeah, thank you for this and for the excellent work. Really appreciate this. um on some of the recommendations and maybe I missed it in the beginning. Um will you come back with some of these very specific things like I'm looking at you know increase awareness. Are there best practices that you all aware of like hey the you know more signage or more you know something like that or how we

074you know the recommendation to collabor collaborative collaboratively refine wellness centers like you know that's pretty broad. Is we going to get into like what would work? Um, so more does a process question on where those specific recommendations come in. Yes, thank you for that question. Um, I think what's really exciting to us about this research practice partnership we have with you all is that we do see it as long-term and enduring. Um, it's exciting to us to be able to be not only nationally recognized but also in in it for the long term. So the answer is yes. We do have um I think depending on what you all choose to focus on, the sequencing that you choose to focus on, we would pull in different um sort of expertise, best practices, and what we

075know from the literature to help you make decisions about what you want to collaboratively work on together. And again, we would make sure students are a central and key part of that. They have a lot to say about the wellness centers. They've already shared that with us in the focus group. So we do have a lot of content to really inform each of these bullet points already. Um, but we knew we only had limited time with you tonight. Um, so yeah, more to come, I think. Yeah. And I would say to the board, um, you know, as part of our commitment to come back to you with an action plan, um, you know, we wanted to make sure that we were thorough with analyzing the information. I I don't know a district that has gone

076to this length uh to really think about, you know, what's being offered, how is it being accessed, what do kids trust, like these are really, really important questions. You know, I think as we move forward, we'd want to be thoughtful around our team's bandwidth, the bandwidth of Renee Crown. Um again, this is a partnership. So, you know, as Laura had shared, getting these findings, recommendations, you know, circling back to our leadership team, you know, as this is one of a set of competing priorities for people's time and and effort and focus u and bring that back with what we think is is um maybe one year maybe multi-year action plan on what are the steps that we would need to take moving forward to really learn from the things that are working. You know, some

077of these things are budget neutral. Some of these are just changes in practice, communication, assign you know some of these things, the physical spaces and then other things are um FTE dependent which in our budget situation those things become much more difficult to start when we're in in the position that we're in financially. Uh so um and and to the extent that there is uh just a tightening um ecosystem around grant dollars in general regardless of the nature. Um I I don't I I would say that you know these these are are important recommendations that will allow us to to develop a action plan that that you know maybe looks at some of the lowest hanging fruit allows us to do some things maybe really thinking about budget implications seriously because without new money we

078would have to turn something off to turn some of these things on and it wouldn't probably be in in this space. It would be something we're doing academic or something we're doing through operation. you know, we would have to think through that. I have a question about the analysis of what we're currently doing districtwide and the recommendation not to go through all of our programming and focus on the higher level or focus on a couple and see what's working, what's not. My question comes because we did a really thorough ROI dive on our literacy interventions, found a lot of interesting information, were able to turn off things that were not successful or as impactful as others. And I wonder why we would limit the scope there. Similarly, and because our UIP and our strategic plan

079are so well aligned now, I have a hard time remembering what is in what, but we do have a goal that schools are supposed to pick like a social emotional learning program to un unveil or to have at their schools. But if some are more effective than others, I'm also curious about why we wouldn't look at that if we're trying to be very mindful of how we're using our resources and our staff time. You know, it's interesting. Uh, you know, do you need 48 programs? When I when I first heard this, it reminded me of where we were with our curriculum uh and with with our instructional infrastructure five years ago and that there's a lot of really hardworking people doing their very best work rolling out programs that might work. Uh but what is

080the be what's the best and what's the best to scale I do think is a critical question because if we're thinking about this as some things get turned off so other things can get turned on so so more um students have the ability to access or feel comfortable I think that that's a critical component and so I do think that you know within further analysis for me that'll be a priority uh is to you know do you know do you do a fewer a fewer things really get those things going incredibly well. Um as opposed to everybody picks their own thing. Tammy can't support 48 things. Her team can't support 48 things. And so you as we think about the efficiencies and the ability to to maintain and operate um some some of the supports.

081I think that that's going to be really really important for us from from just an operation standpoint. No, I'm glad it's a priority for you as well. And as we've seen with all the alignment we're doing with our curricula, it is improving outcomes for students academically. I would be shocked if it didn't similarly improve outcomes for our students mental well-being when we really are focusing on using tools that we know to be evidence-based and have the outcomes we're after. So, I'm glad that that's a priority. Other priority that really came for me from these slides was academic stress. And this is board members are there are a couple policies that I have previously prioritized that we didn't elevate up to this round of work but I have prioritized again. There are some things we can

082do within our control. Our community has been asking for us to look at homework policy and our grading policies, the IGA policies around curricular curricular design. And I'll I'll bring some forward at the end of today that I haven't previously prioritized, but I did dive in all of our policies today looking at those that are related to academics and what might be a lever for us to pull to help alleviate academic stress because it was at the top for both elementary and high school and it was the second for middle schoolers. And so what conditions are we we creating that may be costneutral that are creating stress for our students and what can we do better for our students with regard to academic stress. And I will say um you that there is is not

083tons of consistency on on how those things happen or operate or how much homework versus class participation versus assessments versus formative versus summitative. And I do think that that is a place where where your policy can certainly address some of these issues. Um uh and uh you know I'd really be interested to hear what the kids would have to say. I would say as a principal um and even as as I've been in high schools asking kids, you know, what's stressing you out? Academic stress is typically close to the top of the list. Jorge, yeah, that that number 48 is quite striking and that such an important issue. Um, you know, one other thing that comes to mind, well, the parents had slow a low response rate, but very few parents knew what was going

084on in terms of mental health. They're always accessible. And I'm curious if you have information on um barriers or challenges to accessibility from students perspective or the parent perspective in terms of where they get information or or or you know, difficulties they have because many times, you know, you don't know about it till you need it, right? So, you don't know what you don't know. And so I don't know if you're able to tap that dimension of it in terms of our ability to access the information if you go to their website, you know, trying to find something or trying to find a resource or as you know, you mentioned the poster or something, but how do we how do we get at that part of it? Yeah, thank you for that question. Um that

085amazing group of people at the beginning, I just want to um call forward Dr. Ana Yalo and um Antella Ortega Graphy. I just butchered her name. Um, sorry, Antella. Um, they've done a lot of work on the family survey and have a I think a lot of ideas and questions about how to talk about access um and how to think about where families are getting access. I think there may be one item on the survey that says where do you get your resources and information? That's an item that we could analyze and bring back to you for sure. um they also have other questions that they're wanting to analyze within the survey that might also speak to a bit of the questions that you're raising. So, we don't have that for you in this exact

086moment and just want to say thank you for that question and also that I know that they are they are curious about that as well. What are the ways that before you're in crisis you can access the services and the support that you need? I know that as the survey was being implemented, some of the research assistants at um the Renee Crown Institute came to some of our parent groups, Kappell and others as well as to some of our student leadership groups and shared information about the purpose of the survey um and where it could be accessed. And it would be I think a fruitful followup now that we have the findings to come and bring them to um parent groups and and student groups talk about the findings and also ask some of these

087important questions about access communication and what would be helpful. Jason just I have a question for Dr. Anderson. What what kind of information are we going to share with school leaders on the with this survey or with this report? Well, we're going to get a a full report which will be transparent and and available, right? And I do think that um Dr. Dea Cruz and Dr. Fernandez and I will we will need to sit down and think about, you know, um you know, how do we get the feedback from from leaders in terms of, you know, what what makes sense to move forward to next? Uh uh but all the information uh is going to be public and shared. Everybody has an opportunity probably more information than most folks will be able to kind of

088digest. uh but very thorough and uh really, you know, the response rates um just lend themselves to a level of of accuracy that I think I'm really encouraged by. Follow up on that. That's good to hear. The reason I asked that is um you know, we went to middle school tours last year for my oldest son and you know, I think the the tone is really set at the top and that's why I was asking about school leaders. Um we went to a number of different schools and there's one school in particular I won't name you know where from the beginning they the principal talked about the importance of mental health and social mo emotional um you know the value of that and that we didn't hear that other at other schools in the same

089way and I think that is important for I mean there's a lot of things we can do policy-wise and um you know some things that cost things some things that don't but I think letting our middle school particularly because that's an area of concern leaders and high school leaders know like this is what the kids are saying, this is what the teachers are saying. Uh, and even just the tone that they set at the school will help change some of that, I think. Um, and let people know it's a priority and let them know where they can get this, you know, the resources and the information. I I appreciate that and certainly, you know, that's the message that we'll be sending uh that that this is certainly important. you know, we've embedded it in their

090unified improvement plans. Um, and also with this new resource hub that has been developed as a result a result of this and then individualized results. Uh, I think you'll see a lot of ahas amongst just folks within our system saying yes, we see that that makes sense. And um but but again and I'll remind the board and we've shared this freely with uh you know the folks at Rene Renee Crown um we were responding fairly hectically to postpandemic times as we rolled out resources programs saw needs and some of those were directed some of those leaders just stepped in the void and said we're going to do something because I haven't seen like we're going to do something and so um this is an opportunity to to really build from that, learn from that, and

091become a a system that supports all kids. Alex, oh, you're muted. Apologize if I missed this, but I'd be curious when we look through all the programs, like which staff are responsible for which of them and which are sort of like a curriculum a counselor feels the need to do uh and which are something that's integrated into what the teachers are doing in the class, etc. So find out who's responsible for what and and then also probe um when we get to the other things like the the other activities and fun things kids do and and what role those things outside the mental health support but when we we'll be talking today about our um like our activities fees you know and and if we can integrate into the other things kids are finding out

092that might make them feel better um how we're doing that. So I' in later stages I'd be curious to know who's responsible for what and how do they feel about their role in terms of teachers and staff. Thank you for that question and um the good news is some of that is captured in the resource hub and so it is an opportunity for those teams um to look through that and answer some of the questions that you're raising. So, and they are really important and good questions and there's also an opportunity we think to continue to use that actively and to update it and to keep it as a a useful resource that um I know Tammy's been asking for for a long time. So, we're excited that we were able to partner on that.

093Thank you for that question. As you're diving a little bit into data, piggybacking on what Alex said, a touch somewhere in the slide deck, we didn't cover it directly tonight. There's something around movement, outdoor time, physical activity, and there's a ton of research to support how that is so supportive for mental health and well-being. And I'd be curious by the age level, how that access changes and what how that relates to responses. is I know we have structured PE time and we have structured recess time for elementary schools that shifts a little bit in middle schools and you get into high school and you really just have to get your couple high PE electives done. Some schools are doing a different way are addressing access to outdoor spaces for lunch or free periods in different

094ways than others. So I would be curious to see again how how the conditions we create in a variety of ways are really impacting those and if your data can tease any of that out that would be interesting to see. Yeah, thank you for that question. Um, we certainly we do have data on that in some of the levels, not across all the student levels. We do have that data from how educators are perceiving how those things are impacting student mental health, which is interesting and something that we've been analyzing from the educator survey. Um, we do have that at other levels that we have been looking into. We also see this rise to the top in the qualitative data, movement, access to the outdoors as some of the key um areas that can support

095mental health. So, thank you for that question and we're furiously taking notes and things we can get back to you on. Any final questions, board members? Thank you so much for this partnership, for the very thorough presentation and taking the time to be here with us tonight. It's exciting work. Um, and we look forward to see what our student discussions bring up over the summer. Thank you so much. Board members, we were are going to take a little bit of a recess to reconfigure the boardroom as we head into the rest of our agenda. [Music] Welcome back everyone. We will now resume our meeting with the superintendent report. Dr. Anderson, good evening. Thank you, board president Raj Paul, members of the board. Uh few updates uh this evening. Uh just uh first foremost know we're

096a couple days late but want to make sure that we say happy employee appreciation week to all of our amazing employees, our teachers, staff, the best people in the business, best people I've ever had a chance to work with. We always say this in BBSD. BVSD is it our people are our strength. I want to thank everyone who supports the the the students of the Boulder Valley School District each and every day with all you do. So, happy employee appreciation week a couple days late. Um, the time is here, board members. It is the week that we start celebrating the class of 2025. Graduations begin on Friday, continue all the way through Memorial Day weekend. You can see a full list of graduations and you we've worked really hard and our comm's communications team has

097done a great job to make sure that we have live streams of the events in the event that folks can't make it on our website bvsd.org. org. So, if you're listening at home and you have somebody who's graduating and somebody's out of town and they want to be able to see um to see their relative or their friend walk across the stage, go to bbsd.org. Uh board members, as you know, this is one of my favorite times of the year. I will be um busy uh all through the next few weeks uh celebrating as many of our graduating seniors as I can, and it's just the best time of year for educators. We had two other celebrations over the course of the past week. Um, last week we had our title six graduate honor honoring

098ceremony here uh at the ed center recognizing the achievements of our Native American and Alaskan native graduates. I think we have some pictures there. That was a a wonderful event. I want to thank Advette Solace for she does such a great job each and every year. Um and selling celebrating those um graduates and honoring them was was really a highlight last week. And then two weeks ago we gave medals to the first BBSD students to earn the seal of climate literacy. That was a really really cool event. Uh board members, as you may know, and I know that you know, but for our public, they may not know this. Brand new diploma endorsement was established this year by Colorado Senate Bill 24-14, and BBSD is one of 14 districts statewide to offer this opportunity. Uh

099it was also in this room. Students had the opportunity to present to those that were in attendance uh their projects. That was their culminating work to be able to earn the seal of bioliteracy. Uh, and it was just so neat to see so many purposeful, bright, passionate students uh, put in the extra work to be able to get this honor. You know, we are a leader in climate literacy here in Colorado and across the country, and the seal of climate literacy is a great way to honor our students. And that is all I have for my remarks this evening. Board members, any questions for Dr. Anderson? Excited for those graduations coming up. Our next item on this evening's agenda is public participation. The board respects the right of the public to speak on matters concerning

100the operation of our schools. The board does not endorse the comments of any speaker and remind reminds all who speak you are responsible for your own speech. Speakers will each have two minutes to speak. You'll see a yellow card when you have 30 seconds remaining and a orange card when you have 10 seconds remaining. If you run out of time or like to share additional thoughts with the board, you are always welcome to email us. who do read all of our emails. With that, our first speaker this evening is Grace Zachman, who is speaking, who has two minutes from Stephanie Zman. Can you push the little button that has a picture of a person on it? There you go. Okay. Did I start? Okay. Sorry. Um, hi. My name is Grace Segman. I'm a 10th

101grade student at Burnfield High School and I've been on the varsity cheer team for two years. This year has been incredibly challenging. Not just because of personal issues, but also due to the actions of a family that have made me deeply uncomfortable. through videos, pictures, and social media posts. Cheerleading has become a lifeline throughout my high school experience, especially because of the emphasis on community outreach that Bailey has instilled in us. Events like Daniel the Lion Day, the Walk for Down Syndrome, and our little cheer clinics showed me the importance of service to others. However, my trust in the district's decision-making has been shaken. Each time I reached out for help, I was met with silence and empty promises. And when I took the risk of speaking out in public in public meetings, I felt

102dismissed, leaving me questioning where I stand. Currently, I do not trust be that BVSD has my best intentions or my teammates in mind. Their actions throughout the course of the year have led me to feel as if when I am struggling, I cannot go to them. As of now, I struggle to go to school every day with knowing something that gave me purpose was taken away. My attention and focus has been impacted along with other things. In January, I was a 4.2 GPA student and now I struggle to even turn in assignments. Throughout the course of this year, my parents and coach have told me to rise above adversity and do what's right for myself and those around me. However, now I question if that was the right approach because it feels like everything I've

103worked for has been taken away. When I look to the future, I hope to see a su a successful program built from what Bailey has already made along with trust and respect being brought to our program. I also hope that the adults at our school can see the impact that their decisions have made and understand that their actions can be the causes for others downfalls. Thank you for your time. I hope you take my words into consideration. Thank you. The next speaker this evening is Braden The Sorry about that one. Okay, good good evening. My name is Cameron Duca. I'll be talking as Brady Theiti since she will not be able to talk today. Is that okay? It is not okay. You have to submit any public requests for comment and changes to those at

104least 24 hours in advance. Thank you. And thank you for your bravery to attempt to do that. The next speaker this evening is Marley Mackey. Good evening. My name is Marley Mackey. I'm a two-year varsity athlete and I'm here to share some concerns about the past cheer season. We realize we are just girls and cheerleaders, but it was my impression that everyone mattered in BBSD. To start off with our our athletic secretary made us switch our practices to dominate other sports. One said sport is men's basketball. That sport, our secretary's husband is the coach. Favoritism. We were made to travel to Frederick to practice. This is a concern because of the travel and safety within teenagers driving. Also, what other sports are made to travel 30 minutes to practice their sport? Another concern is the

105lack of admin supervision/attendance at all of our events. Broomfield admin only goes goes to every event but only attended cheerleadings leagues, state and nationals. At nationals, our assistant principal was supposed to supervise us and a troubled team member but went with his wife to ride rides and have a break. When we brought up issues we were given grief by Mr. Barnes and Mr. Zapia and such as doors shut on our faces or we were just we were told that our voices were heard but in reality we felt like they were not. We would like your support and helping us gain our trust back with our admin and the school board going into this next season. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kayla Coinen. Okay, we're good. Hi everyone, my name

106is Kayla Coinson and I have been on the varsity cheerleading team for the past four years. It is because of this program that I have committed to continue my cheerleading journey at Morhead State University in the fall. I was extremely saddened to find out my coach had been fired on my signing day. I think it is clear that our cheerleading coach had a heavy impact on her athletes and her absence is being felt very deeply. I want to share how her absence has not only affected me emotionally but educationally. My math teacher is also the golf coach at Broomfield High School. A couple of days after she was fired, I went to him with hopes to make up a test I had missed. Sorry. He proceeded to speak to me very harshly about my cheerleading

107coach instead of talking to me about my grade. This is just one example of the changes in our school due to our absence. And if I had more time, I would be happy to share other examples. I just wish more than anything for the program to return to the way it was previously. And if there's anything I can do to help it, I'm happy to do so. But thank you for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker this evening is Grace Shrek. Hello, my name is Grace Shrek. I am a sophomore at Broomfield and it is my first year on the cheer program. After working hard and having an incredible coach, I had the honor of being moved up to varsity halfway through the year. This program means the means everything to me. Cheer quickly

108became my favorite thing to do and I created so many memories and friendships throughout the season. However, having had some struggles along the way with a certain family from with a certain family. From the moment I started to feel uncomfortable, I went to my administration. I was always taught that administration is someone I can trust. However, now I'm not sure I believe that. My team and I feel very frustrated and ignored by our administration due to the fact that we sent many emails and even had many talks about a certain situation and how we felt unsafe and uncomfortable. Despite our efforts, our administration did nothing to fix this situation. The one person who never turned her back on us, never lied to us, and was the most trusted adult in some of our lives was

109Coach Bailey. When we found out that she was whip ripped away from us in an email during school hours. Now, the people who took our coach are asking for our trust. How do I trust someone who I went with with many concerns and they chose to ignore us? What steps do you guys recommend we take as a team to move forward and begin to entrust our administration? We've tried to ask them this, but they were unable to answer our question. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker this evening is virtual. Gianna Martin. Hi. I would not like to use my two minutes. Thank you though. You're muted. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes. Uh, I would not like to use my two minutes. Thank you, though. Our next speaker this evening is

110Jenna Milot. Jenna appears to not be here this evening. We will move on to James Shrek who has four minutes. Two minutes given from Haley Bavo. First and foremost, thank you for taking the time to hear our concerns. Since May 2024, our parent group has consistently reached out to Broomfield High School and BBSD leadership regarding the treatment and support of our children involved in the Broomfield cheer program. Despite sending more than 100 emails over the past 12 months, we've received fewer than 10 responses. This lack of communication has left us feeling dismissed, ignored, and deeply disappointed in how the district has chosen to handle this matter. Unfortunately, this neglect has had a significant and negative impact on our children's well-being. On April 9th, the Broomfield cheer community was informed via an abrupt email during second

111period that Coach Bailey, our program's beloved leader and mentor, had been dismissed. This deeply affected our student athletes, many of whom were visibly distraught during the school day. Coach Bailey not only led this team to national recognition, earning seventh and ninth finish uh seventh and ninth place finishes, but is also widely regarded as one of the top coaches in Colorado and is recognized nationally for her commitment to youth athletics and mentorship. On April 10th, cheerleaders and parents met with Ginger Ramsay to advocate for Coach Bailey and seek clarity on what on the future direction of the program. At that time, we were promised swift follow-up by Monday, April 14th. Unfortunately, no communication came. Despite our continued outreach, we were met with silence. We were eventually we eventually were granted a meeting on April 30th with

112Ginger Ramsay, Tyler Zappia, Dan Ryan, and Harry Waterman. Ahead of that meeting, we submitted a detailed list of questions and concerns. Sadly, we were only able to address three of the 12 questions, and the meeting was marked by dismissive tone and a particular troubling display of arrogance from Dan Ryan. To date, there has been little to further or to no further communication about the program's leadership or direction. Our students feel they are being punished for supporting a coach who has remained a source of light and encouragement to them during this difficult period. The emotional and mental toll this has taken on our children cannot be overstated. Many no longer feel safe or supported at school. They've sought help and voiced their concerns repeatedly. Yet, those pleas have gone unagnowledged. We are deeply concerned that our

113advocacy for our coach has resulted in being silenced and our children are being asked daily by peers about the situation with no answers to provide. With competitive national deadlines quickly approaching, we are at real risk of losing program losing a program that these athletes have dedicated their lives to and with it the college and career opportunities they've worked so hard to earn. For juniors and seniors especially, this is devastating. This situation is entirely was entirely avoidable. We have been consistently asking for follow-up, support, transparency, and direction. The failure to engage meaningfully has with us has denied our children access to critical athletic and developmental opportunities. We feel the district's handling of this matter has been dismissive at both school and the district levels. We want to express concerns regarding the investigation that led to Bailey's

114dismissal. Despite being active and vocal in expressing our concerns, not a single parent in our group was contacted during this process. The invest the investigation appears to have been one-sided and lacking in thoroughess. We respectfully request the comprehensive review of this investigation, including how it was handled, conducted compared to similar cases of coaching dismissals in the past. We strongly believe Dan Ryan has not handled this matter appropriately, and we are calling for further oversight and accountability. The broader impact of this decision is significant not just to students and families directly involved, but the Broomfield High School community and its long-standing reputation, which is well known as a school of excellence, attracting students both within and beyond the district. Many cheerleaders came to the school specifically to be a part of this program under Coach Bailey's

115leadership and her sudden removal has ripped them from that experience and left them left with a program in disarray. We urge the district to take a step back and look at the totality of the situation. We ask that all voices be heard, transparency be restored, and the steps be taken to begin healing and supporting the emotional and mental well-being of our student athletes. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker this evening is Mel Pizzole, who has been given two minutes from Kim Pizzole. Can I have you push the little button with the person on it? right there. Great. Ah, good afternoon board members. Uh, my name is Mel Pasle and I'm here to talk about our cheer program at Broomfield High School. Uh, some highlights and some lowlights. Uh, just a quick history of the

116Pasel family. Uh, we've had a total of six Pasel kids from three families that have gone through or still attending BBSD uh, schools over the last 20 years. Uh, Aspen Creek and Broomfield High School. Uh, we've always been involved with sports, activities, community, school events, fundraising, you name it. our p our family has done it. Um my daughter Hannah Pasle is a junior currently at Broomfield. He's been a member of the cheer program since her freshman year. Um a little bit of history going back on the cheer team. The last time Broomfield High School won a state championship in cheer was in 2013. Uh there was a senior captain who was on the team that year by the name of Bailey Morton. You all know her now as coach Bailey Turner. Uh she went on

117to cheer at CSU with the Rams and then she got her first head coach job uh out of college with Pinnacle High School and ended up becoming the youngest coach in state history to win a championship. Um and then in the last three years she's taken over the Broomfield cheer program and completely rebuilt the team from the ground up accumulating 13, I repeat, 13 first place finishes in regular competition. uh and took us also to a second place and third place finishes at the state championships over the last two seasons. Um and then in February of this year, she took the varsity squad to a historic uh seventh and ninth place finishes overall at nationals in Orlando. Quite the resume. Um but let's put all aside all the accolades for just a minute. The main

118thing she built was a diverse, equitable, and inclusive team where she brought she brought in girls from all socioeconomic backgrounds. She taught them to have a sense of selfworth, determination to succeed. She mentored our daughters, all these girls right here, some of them. Um, she mentored our daughters to have respect and integrity and to give back to the community with events like Broomfield days, Daniel the Lion Days, the Elizabeth Walk downtown, uh, many fundraising events to help out with team expenditures. Um, Coach Bailey has set the standard for all other cheer teams to follow. And because of her and the team's success, there's many open enrolled students coming to Broomfield from other districts to be a part of a successful cheer program, which obviously brings in more funding for the district. Um, over the last

119three years, uh, let me skip is it's absolutely possible to have a highquality yet affordable cheer program that is state and nationally recognized and also have opportunities for those that are less fortunate. It is possible. Um, I want to ask a rhetorical question. With all the success that Coach Bailey brought to our schools and community, with all the incredible values she has instilled in our children, why on earth was her contract not renewed? Um, over the last three years with, you know, there's been a controversy uh and scandal within our cheer program. Many grievances and complaints have been brought for forth to the school, the district, the board regarding team costs, purchasing, accusations of harassment and bullying, accusations about the coaches, and has virtually destroyed our cheer program. And now with Bailey gone, these girls

120are lost, and they're looking for answers. They don't fully understand what happened. So, I would respectfully ask the board members to please investigate this situation, how it was handled at the school and the district levels. um because it seems that a sweep it under the rug and kick the can down the road mentality was the theme and I ask you to all dig into your hearts and please please find a way to bring our dear and amazing coach Bailey back to this program. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker this evening is Leah Sarno. So, I push a button. Okay. Board members, administration, administrators, and community members, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I come before you not just as a parent, but as a representative of many families, alumni,

121and community members deeply concerned about the recent termination of Broomfield High School's cheer coach, Bailey Turner. From the beginning, the situation lacked collaboration and transparency. Rather than engaging in constructive dialogue or offering support, Goch Paley was bit was placed on a defensive position facing scrutiny from a single family without significant administrative backing. Instead of working towards resolution, the issue the issue escalated throughout this process, Coach Bailey has consistently sought guidance and operated in alignment with school leadership. Her decisions were thoughtful and to our understanding made in in consultation with administrators. The decision to terminate her came as a complete shock not only to Coach Bailey, but to the athletes and their families. Coach Bailey's influence went far beyond the mat. She built a nationally and locally recognized program and more important importantly a culture of

122pride, service, and community. Under her leadership, the team actively participated in local events, supported meaningful causes, and represented Broomfield with spirit. She inspired athletes to be engaged, compassionate leaders, and they were proud to represent Broomfield cheer. The administration and district seemed to have seemed to have lost sight of the most important stakeholders, the student athletes. Every parent, every family, except one, and every alumni has spoken out and expressed unwavering support for Coach Bailey. Their testimonies are heartfelt and con consistent. I've brought a copy of Coach Bailey's farewell message from social media. I urge you to read it along with dozens of the dozens of comments from alumni, parents, and coaches. They speak to the character and impact of a coach who shaped these kids' lives. This moment requires more than vague justifications. It calls for

123transparent pararency and accountability. Was coach Bailey held responsible for circumstances beyond her control? Was she made a scapegoat in a situation that needed stronger leadership? I have one more sentence. You can finish your sentence. Okay. We respectfully act. We've respectfully asked for the board to please examine how this was handled. Our students deserve better. Our coach deserves fair treatment. And our community deserves some answers. Thank you. Um if you bring them to the board secretary, Laura Schaeer, she can hand those out. Our next speaker this evening is Jennifer Douglas, who is given two minutes from Jennifer Klein. Good evening, President Rajpal, members of the board. Thank you for the opportunity to speak as part of public comment. My name is Jennifer Douglas and I'm the executive director of operations for Peakto Peak Charter School in

124Lafayette. I'm here to address a topic that I believe you will be addressing during executive session later in the meeting. While there are a number of pending issues related to our charter contract, I'd like to speak specifically to the 2005 transportation mill levy. I'm advocating that peakto peak continue to receive the 2005 mill levby funding on a per pupil basis as this funding is essential for us to continue running our transportation program. Peakto peak has been receiving money that has been identified as 2005 mil levby revenue on the charter summary document we receive annually from the district every year for the past 20 years. We initially used that revenue to rent buses primarily from BBSD that would transport students on field trips to athletic events etc. Then in the 2021-22 school year, the BBSD transportation

125program notified us that we would no longer be able to reserve BBSD buses as the district did not have the capacity to keep up with transportation demands from peakto peak. As someone who's now spent two years managing a transportation program, I understand and can appreciate the reality of bus driver shortages and other constraints that led to this decision. When we learned that we would no longer be able to rent BVSD vehicles, our leadership team made the decision to build our own transportation program. We considered different transportation options, but ultimately decided to enter into a partnership with Highland Electric Fleets. Peak Peak paid for much of the infrastructure, charging stations, and a busing a bus depot. And Highland worked to secure grants that resulted in more affordable lease rates. In the spring of 22, we entered

126into 10-year leases for four buses and began offering transportation in the 22 23 school year. The next year, we added one more bus. The total cost of the annual lease plus staffing costs was fairly close to the amount we've been receiving annually through the 2005 mil levy. So, we felt confident that the program would be able to be sustained and would not impact our other core academic programming. I'm proud of the program we've built. We have a small but mighty transportation team who often work long days in service of our students. We offer morning routes and the buses are used most other days for field trips or athletic events. I do want to acknowledge and thank the members of your transportation team who have provided a ton of support and guidance as we built our

127program. Specifically, Heather Burke, Dale Carr, and Christy Endrris. On March 21st, we learned that the district wanted to handle the 2005 mill levy on a reimbursement basis. We were not concerned because we have transportation expenses that are fairly comparable to the amount received under that mill levy. We asked for additional detail on how that reimbursement would be handled. On Friday, April 18th, less than a month ago, we received the district's proposal for the reimbursement methodology. The methodology relies on a calculation that if applied in the current fiscal year would result in the funding being reduced from almost 388,000 to just under 27,000. This amount is approximately 0.4% 4% of the 7.2 million in funding received by the district for the mill levy. While this potential loss of 361,000 might not seem significant when considering the

128district's budget, it is a substantial loss for a school of our size, particularly in light of all the other potential financial impacts resulting from our contract renegotiation. In short, this potential cut to the 2005 transportation mill levby creates an existential threat to our transportation program. Our transportation program creates access for many of our students who rely on the buses to get to school. And it opens up experiential learning opportunities for literally all 1445 K12 students we serve. And for many of our student athletes whose parents cannot drive them to games or athletic events in the middle of the day, it allows them to participate in a sport. The vast majority of our families are BBSD taxpayers. And so having the funding distributed equitably is an important way the district can show our families that you

129see them as partners in education. We are advocating that funding continue to be distributed on a per pupil basis so that our transportation program can remain intact. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker this evening is Aaron Connelly who received two minutes from Demetra Peton. you. Oh, can you push the little Thank you. Got it. Great. Uh, my name is Aaron and I am a parent of a fireside third grader. Two weeks ago, I was informed that our fourth grade teacher will be let go. Uh, one of our beloved fourth grade teachers will be let go. And my daughter's class size will be going from 22 students to 33, could possibly be 34. 34 9year-olds in one elementary school classroom. And that I can tell you is at a school that was

130not built for large classes. BBSD is supposed to be the place to be. But if I were a child walking into a classroom of that size, I don't think I would feel that way. I think that I would feel more crowded than cared for. I think I would feel like I am in a sardine can. I come here tonight because I believe that if we are considering this number of children in a small classroom acceptable, then we need to speak openly and urgently about how we are prioritizing BBSD's budget. We all understand that BBSD is facing difficult financial headwinds. District enrollment is down. State funding is declining and remains inadequate. These are real and difficult pressures and they do deserve or they do demand difficult decisions. But you can't save a patient by amputating the

131heart. Our students experience experience in the classroom is the heart of education. And if we are not doing everything that we can to preserve it, I think we have to ask ourselves what we are doing. When we pull teachers from our classrooms, it may be tempting to call it fair. It may be tempting to point to negotiations and how the classroom sizes fit within negotiated settlements. But this is not about negotiations. It's not about what's fair. It's about what works. VBSD's stated goals include supporting and challenging all students so that they can to ensure their success. But decades of research point to the fact that students in overcrowded classrooms, especially those who need more support, struggle. Teachers are unable to provide individualized instruction. Behavior issues escalate. Stress rises. learning suffers. What is especially hard to

132accept is that cuts are happening in classrooms while spending outside the classrooms continues to rise. I urge you to reanchor this year's budget around the classroom. Protect student teacher ratios above all else. Preserve essential support staff. Re-examine areas of administrative growth that can be paused or scaled back. Don't do anything fancy. This is a call to lead with courage, clarity, and a firm grip on what matters most. Our kids get only one year in each grade. One year to fall in love with learning. one year to build confidence and curiosity in a classroom that they feel safe, supported, and seen in. That is the heart of education. That is where your leadership is needed the most. Let's make our budget reflect the values we put in our mission statement. Let's make sure BVSD really is

133the place to be. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next speaker this evening is Justin Ross who's been given two minutes from Elizabeth Ecowski. Hello everyone. Okay, you just turned the mic off cuz she left it on. Sorry. Yeah. Thank you. Good evening everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to speak before you this evening and for your commitment to BVSSD and the broader BVSD community. After my family lost its home in the Marshall fire, like many others, we had an important decision to make. Do we pick up and relocate? Or do we double down on our commitment to Boulder County, to Lewisville, to the community of individuals, businesses, and institutions like our public schools that lent so much more than a hand in the face of circumstances we never contemplated confronting. The answer was

134never in doubt. Of course, we'd stay put. Of course, we would put down roots. Of course, we would invest in the community that invested so much in us without being asked simply because it was the right thing to do. Fireside Elementary was central to our decision. The stability, continuity, and support that Fireside Classrooms lent our children and so many others in the days, weeks, and months that followed the Marshall Fire is something for which we will forever be grateful. The care and attention that our teachers provided helped our children navigate complex challenges that impacted each of them and each of us in different ways. Those teachers were the village we so often hear it takes. The care and attention our teachers provided helped our children manage through the Marshall fire on the heels of managing

135through a pandemic. And if that care and attention is maintained, it will help our children manage through whatever challenge this increasingly complicated world presents next. Such care and attention is meaningfully diluted as class sizes increase. And no matter how dedicated, how talented our teachers are, and they are both at fireside. The reality is this. When class sizes get too large, the quality of education suffers. Those teachers who gave and give so much burn out. My third grader and my first grader, she asked me to make sure I mention her as well. Uh they love school and what a gift to be able to say such a thing. Thank you, Diana Blau, Suzanne Spruce, Elena Scott, David Kaufman, and so many others. My third grader's largest class in nearly four years at Fireside has been 22,

136maybe 23. Next year, however, Fireside is slated to have 65 or 66 fourth grade students and only two fourth grade teachers. As much as a 33 to1 teacher-to- student ratio, 33 to1, that's not a learning environment. That's crowd control. And in those conditions, it would become nearly impossible for a teacher to provide the care and attention necessary to help those children flourish. Research and common sense tell us that smaller class sizes lead to better academic outcomes. And with that in mind, I'm here to advocate for our finding a way to support Fireside the way it has supported us to ensure its classrooms are properly sized and staffed, our teachers are set up for long-term success, and our kids are provided with the foundation for taking their next steps through good times and bad. Running an

137organization as complex and large as BBSD is a challenge. No doubt it requires collaboration, difficult decision-m uh and and budget management, and I'm grateful to those who raised their hands to do it. But that said, many of the more difficult spending decisions should become easier when grounded in the first principle that smaller class sizes lead to better academic outcomes. And if that's not enough, I'd encourage this group to consider the following when evaluating future BBSD budget proposals. This community will seek transparency and dialogue regarding the spending cuts the board chooses to entertain. It will ask why and it will do so hoping for answers that demonstrate the same sort of care and attention that our teachers have shown over the years. So, in closing, I'll finish the sentence. I would ask that the board find

138a way to rightsize our classrooms and invite the broader community to partner with it where it might be helpful to achieving that shared goal. Thank you. Thank you. Our final speaker this evening is David Stewart. Good evening. Tonight, I want to acknowledge that we here in BBSD are facing difficult times and significantly less funding increases into the future. For over 13 years, BVA and BBSD have worked together collaboratively to serve our community. While we haven't always agreed, we've resolved our differences professionally. Now more than ever, we must decide whether to come together to find a way forward or allow division to pull us apart. Unfortunately, BBSD has recently signaled a break in our long-standing collaboration. I'm referring to last week's article in the local and metro newspapers. Deliberately using small straw man tactics by falsely

139attributing to BVA a demand that we never made ultimately harms BBSD's own credibility. Moreover, it makes it harder for me as president of my local to assure our members that BVSD remains a trustworthy partner. To be clear, when the reporter approached me about these false claims, I did in fact respond, explaining they were misrepresentations based on a false assumption. Unsurprisingly, that response was not included in the news article. I was also unsuccessful in obtaining a meeting with BBSD to discuss this prior to publication. Still, I reaffirm what I said to you all at the beginning of the school year. BVEA remains a committed, collaborative partner in working for solutions to the challenges we face. We cannot afford distractions. Our focus must stay on finding a way forward together. That's what our community deserves, especially now.

140I thank you for your time and thank you for your service. Thank you. This concludes public participation for today. On behalf of the board, I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to show up in person and virtually to share your thoughts and experiences with us this evening. Board members, I'm going to have a brief conversation with Dr. Anderson about a potential change in our agenda for this evening and then we'll reconvene or we'll um move on to board communication. Welcome back everybody. Thank you for allowing that brief interruption. Our next item this evening is board member communication. Board members, who would like to begin? Kitty. Um, well, even though everyone who participated in public participation has left, I just want to thank folks for taking time out of their evenings to come and

141speak to us. Um, I got to go to the Seal of Climate Literacy event last week and it was really cool. All of these students had their presentations. Some had, you know, the standard, you know, threepart cardboard. Some people had slides, but they all had really interesting projects that they'd worked on. And it was just an exciting time to be able to, you know, recognize these students for the work they've done. And it's also really heartening to see how much our kids care about climate, about what's happening to the earth. And you know, I told them their generation needs to beat my generation over the head because, you know, they're the ones who are going to um have to deal with all the impacts of what we are doing to our climate. So, I'm just

142so proud of them. Um they did great work. They are passionate and several of them I know were going on to major in something to do with environment and some who weren't said, "Well, I really not going to do that." as if they were apologizing for not. But what I told them was, it doesn't matter if you study it or not. You've learned how to think about this. You've learned how to gather accurate information and you care about what's happening. And I know you're going to continue to work in the future to make this a better place for us all. So, I'm just excited I was able to be part of that and and talk to some of the kids. Jorge, thank you. Um, it is an exciting time of year seeing what our students

143are doing, the celebrations. Um, I was able to participate in the um, proud to be bilingual um, celebration and got to meet some fifth graders who are progressing on that track and are doing so well as well as our eighth graders who are doing that and a few of our graduates who are getting recognition for this. I saw a great presentation on ASL, another on Spanish, but I know there's multiple languages that are being addressed by this. Um, and there's so many kids are advancing this. So, it's just very exciting. I'm really looking forward to all the graduations this year. Thank you. One more thing. Sorry, I forgot to give a shout out to the Bllorico from Casey Middle School. They put on a performance. They were dancing. It was just amazing seeing these kids

144um do these traditional dances um fully dressed. Um it was just a a lot of fun. Thank you. Since we last convened more board members, I was able to attend the final DAC meeting of the year. I was and we had our quarterly meeting with local leaders on Monday. Last Friday, I was able to attend the BVA another round of BVA negotiations. And one thing that really struck out for me from that conversation is was a conversation around expectations and how h how it can be challenging when you've come to expect something to to to shift with that as conditions shift. And I've been thinking a lot about that as as our community is has been also having to shift as the conditions shift. We heard from folks from fireside this evening around their expectations

145something that they had expected to be no longer being because of changing financial situations and declining enrollment. We've had bus routes change. We've had substitute PE teacher change. We've had math in advanced math classes for go from inerson to online. So we are continuing to our community is continuing to shift their expectations as and conditions evolve. And I just want to appreciate how challenging that can be for everybody. And that that that really is the source of the bulk of the emails that we get as conditions change and they don't align with existing pre-existing expectations. Having those expectations come along um can be a challenge. So that's something I've really been thinking about since negotiations. The other thing I want to bring your attention to is the city of Boulder is engaging in a child-friendly

146cities initiative. And this came to my attention. It's on the their agenda for this week. They engage with a local youth advisory board of some type that came up with challenges they're facing in the community. And one of the challenges was around bullying and mental health. And some of their recommendations are around programming both inside and outside of schools, which caught my attention because we're also working on that. And in the spirit of our meeting with city council last week, I thought, well, if you're tackling something potentially related to us, we should probably have a conversation. So, I'll be watching that meeting on Thursday to to better understand, but it might be something we want to reach out to our city council members about if that really is something that they're going to tackle that

147impacts us and our students. I just want to bring that to your attention and I'd be happy to share the information I've received um as I've reached out to city staff to kind of ask some questions what what exactly that is. So, just wanted to bring that to your attention as well. Seeing as there are no further public or board comments this evening, we I would like to request an addendum to this evening's agenda. Our next information item is supposed to be a legislative session recap from our lobbyists at Policy Matters. They had reached out. There was a miscommunication on whether they were supposed to be in person or remote. And now they're no longer here to provide an in-person update. So, we'll be rescheduling that meeting to later this month, but we need a

148motion to adjust this evening's agenda as a result. So, moved. Do you want to state? Can you I move that we adjust the agenda to delete the legislative session recap and for that to be rescheduled to a later meeting. Is there second? Seconded by Jason. Laura, do we need to vote on this? Okay. Chavez. Yes. Medler. Yes. Muted. You're muted. Medler. Yes. Yes. Do you hear me? Yes. Yes. Nisnik. Yes. Quinn Linua. Yes. Raj Paul. Yes. Sergeant, yes. Anger, yes. Motion passes. Thank you. And thank you for the everybody that witnessed that awkward interlude as we try to figure out a solution to that that problem. Our now first item information item this evening is an update on Title N and athletics. We'll turn it over to Dr. Anderson for the introductions. Thank you, board

149president Raj Paul, members of the board. uh excited to have our team here today to provide the board um a bit of a followup to a conversation uh that we started having um last fall um and then kind of merged into an overarching update on the work that we're doing, the great work we're doing around Title N and athletics. I would say that this is a a big priority for us as a school district. I know it's a big priority um for us as as a governance team. Uh and so tonight we have uh several people who will be presenting. We've got Harry Waterman, Liz Lundelle, Rob Fernandez, and Kathleen Sullivan. And they're such a good team. I don't know who starts. So I think any of them can just take it away. I'll start.

150So good evening, President Rajpal, members of the board, and Dr. Anderson. As Dr. Anderson said, "We are here this evening to provide an update on our work in the area of Title 9, to share information about athletics and activities fees in BBSD, and of course to align this information with the board's ongoing policy work. And to that end, joining me this evening is Equity Council and Title N Coordinator uh Elizabeth Lindell and Harry Waterman, District Athletic and Activities Director. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Liz. Thank you so much. It's so nice to be presenting in front of all of you. Um Kathleen will also be participating and joining as well. Um, so we know this board has significant expertise in this particular area. So, and we were here a few

151months ago talking about uh, Title 9. So, just as a refresher, this is a federal civil rights statute that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any education activity um, or program. The federal administration has taken several actions in this area that have made headlines recently and may have raised questions for schools and for families. A few of the most significant actions are listed for the board here on the presentation. The first two are items that we've already discussed um from more recent headlines including the announcement of federal investigations into state and local school district policies regarding athletic participation. BBSD um has long had an active focus on Title 9 and an articulated commitment to productive and equitable learning and working environments. And as part of this commitment, we have a few small but

152very very dedicated groups that advise staff and the school district on this particular work. I'm going to start with the Title N student council. That's a group that I have the honor of meeting with on a monthly basis. Um, these are students that are middle school and high school students. So, this year we actually expanded participation to middle school students. In the past, it was high school students. Um, they meet monthly and they provide input on BBSD's policies and practices relating specifically to Title 9. During the 2425 school year, the council's focus was to provide input on our resources specifically and also to host a culture of respect event in the month of April. the council um provided specific input on particular resources that we curated together in community. So the students identified different types

153of resources that they wanted to make sure that we we heard their voice. Um that included our Title 9 web page. They reviewed the website. They provide specific um feedback on um what they perceived as information, how they felt it was accessible. um the reporting form, which is the AC2 reporting form, our flowcharts, our supportive measures menu, and handouts that explain the Title 9 formal complaint process. They also provided input, really significant and material input, in my opinion, on the health course content regarding sexual assault prevention education that takes uh place over the summer. The students also redesigned the Title 9 poster. That's we're currently working on finalizing that. That's a poster that hangs um in all of our schools in places like highly trafficked places like bathrooms and cafeteria, libraries, counseling offices, things like

154that. Um, with regards to the culture of respect work, that's a collaboration between the Title N student council and the Boulder High Panther Z Club, which was recognized last year by this board um for that amazing work. And that work continued this year, and we expanded school participation. Approximately seven schools participated in an event this year, which is five more than last year, which is great. Uh, students intentionally chose to host their events in April, which is sexual assault awareness month. And to quote our students, respect plays a determining factor in how we interact with others and how others come to treat us. It exists everywhere, but it is often forgotten or overlooked. Therefore, by creating a culture of respect, students remind their community of the importance of respecting each other, the school, and ourselves.

155Reminders such as these play a critical role in ensuring trust, safety, and security. This group of student advocates worked diligently in community to seek pure commitment to create and to maintain an environment where all individuals are treated fairly and indiscriminately. They did a great job this year and we're really proud of their work. We also for several years have had the Title 9 Advisory Council which is really the adult counterport to the student council. and I feel really lucky actually to have been able to attend this year's um meetings of this council. So, it is made up of adults from both inside BBSD with our staff and parents as well as community partners. This year, Peg Shippert and Maria Anderson, who also long-term subbed in middle school. Thank you, Maria. Um, have acted as the

156co-leaders of our advisory council, collaborating with staff with with me and with Liz to create meeting agendas and to facilitate the meetings. Um, the council provided a lot of feedback on many of the items that Liz mentioned, our students gave us feedback on. We spent a lot of time with the council working through the policies. And then in January when um we received the court order that reinstated the 2020 guidelines, we shifted our attention to some of the other work that really needed to be done, especially including athletics. This spring, the council has been working on an annual report that Liz is going to talk about in more detail in just a moment. Information about this group is now on our website under get involved and district committees so that we can invite other voices

157and perspectives to join that amazing council. So, a few board meetings ago, the student moment featured students from BBSD's student cabinet who discussed their identification of Title 9 issues as one of their areas of focus. Specifically, the students wanted to understand the role of school safety advocates and law enforcement when BBSD schools receive reports of sexual sexual misconduct that may also violate Title 9. In addition to answering student questions, and there were really, really good questions that they asked, we reviewed the supportive measures menu, which I know I mentioned before is something that the student council gave feedback on, but just for more information, the supportive measures menu was a project that was initiated by the student council in previous years. So, it's a menu created by students for students. And the purpose of the

158supportive measures menu is to identify specific emotional, academic, and mental health support that's offered and available to students after a report is made. And we did this because we know that when a student comes and they report something, it is wildly impacted impactful to their nervous system and to their ability to identify and you know like you disassociate because it's such a traumatic experience to come to an adult and really and and talk about something that had such an impact. And so to say to someone, how can we support you when you're in that experience? Students didn't know how to respond. And so this supportive measures menu is designed to provide them with some written down offerings to help the conversation get going to help students start to know, oh, okay, maybe these are some

159of the things that might be helpful for to me for me in the future. And then also when they do come back online and their nervous system is back and they're able to access support, they have some ideas on where to where to get going with their administrators. Um, so in addition to the supportive measures menu, we also reviewed some specific written feedback on the email that administrators sent to caregivers after a report of sexual harassment is received that impacts their students. And all of that feedback is being incorporated into our communication tools. Now, there are a few items to highlight of work that was conducted in the school district this year. work that truly is a model for K through2 public schools. First, our community partnerships. We're currently working with the Renee Crown Institute

160on a project designed to gather and analyze information from different platforms and this is specific to Title 9 work um including through conducting focus groups for the purpose of shaping this work and informing this work in the future. Our goal is to have informed priorities that are identified through this work that we can continue to evolve as the needs of our community evolves. As well, the inaugural Title 9 annual report, as Kathleen referenced, um we had a a big summit which was um comprised of both the student and the advisory councils. They came together and we we did a workshop on what should the report look like? What do you want to hear about? what do you want to learn about? What what what's the scope? What's the content? Um and together we built out

161the skeleton of the report and it will serve to increase transparency and to community to communicate to our community information addressing our title n work in the district. Um what we're going to do is it will address all of Title 9. So it will have um athletics and sex-based discrimination and it will identify relevant policy outline the reporting process and student access to mental emotional academic support and like the work we're doing with the Renee Crown Institute the intention is to take the information that we gather and that we put together in the annual report to then use it and inform the work moving forward so that we're ensuring that time is spent assessing our work and that we're meeting the commitment that we've made to our students. Um, athletic directors are now moving into

162their second year of conducting an annual athletic director audit. They're asked questions and given examples that facilitate an evaluation of whether the school's programs are providing equitable opportunities, benefits, and treatments for the boys and girls teams. Um, and to make sure that the programs are meeting their athletic interests and abilities. And to that end, um, those results will also be incorporated in the Title 9 report. This past school year, we've expanded Title 9 specific office hours and trainings. In addition to working directly with school administrators on a case-byase basis, I've been going regularly um to schools in person to provide office hours, which have provided an opportunity for me to connect directly with my teams and offer any support that they might need with regards to really difficult reports that they've received, investigations that they're

163trying to navigate. Um, I've also offered smaller, more specialized trainings to individuals throughout the district to further support our best practices. So, more specifically, um, I've conducted some, um, really small trainings for our student support services teams, our school safety advocates, and various building administrators. And finally, BBSD also has an internal practice with a data team that reviews all allegations of discrimination and harassment, including on the basis of sex, to asssure that these incidents are appropriately identified and addressed consistent with our policies and our practices. Notably, all of this amazing work is in addition to ongoing policy and practice updates, especially as the law changes and related training efforts are needed in order to implement these different changes. I can say this with all of my heart and with all of my knowing in BBSD,

164we are not looking just to comply with Title 9. We are looking to be a model and I feel that very deeply and I thank you all for the support that you've given in order for us to make that work happen. So turning back to talking about compliance for a moment. This is something that we spoke about with the board just a few months ago when we were present under Title 9. There are really three areas. There are three ways to demonstrate compliance in terms of athletics. So, we're going to talk about what that means and then Harry Waterman will reference that test as applied to BBSD data before he shares some of the highlights of the athletic season. So, the regulation around Title 9 compliance and athletics is on the slide. I shared last

165time with the board that there are really three methods to determine compliance. There's the substantial proportionality to enrollments. there's a historic look back and then uh the third way of testing is to show that the institution is fully and effectively accommodating those existing interests. We're going to focus today really on the first and the primary because it's the clearest way to demonstrate title n compliance. And that test is really that the number of male and female athletes is substantially proportionate to enrollments. Substantially proportionate is both a legal standard and a benchmark of fairness that evaluates whether the percentage of male and female athletes closely reflect the percentage of their enrollment. It doesn't have to be exact. That's why we use that term substantially proportionate. Also recalling board members that the sports to be considered when

166we look at this metric are set by the office for civil rights. This is where we talked about the fact that cheer has not been included in this metric for substantial proportionality and we can talk about uh the reasons for that if the board would like to revisit that issue. So uh OCR has not fixed a numerical threshold. So what we are looking at then is substantial proportionality and Harry Waterman has our most recent data. Good evening. It's good to see you again. Uh this first slide is around athletic participation data as you can see up there and this slide compares the last three years of gender proportionality data in the 202425 school year. You'll see B well you'll know that BBSD offered 28 chassis sports uh AC districtwide 14 of those being male and

16714 of those being female sports. Uh as this slide demonstrates our student body percentages across the district as well as our gender numbers remain steady and substantially proportionate over the last three years. Any questions on that slide right there? I I have a question. Yeah. How many female athletes or athletes participate in cheer? I know it's not included, but it is an interesting it's a it's predominantly females and it's a as we saw tonight, it's not an insignificant number. So, do you have a sense of how many of our students participate in cheer? I don't have that off top of my head, but the teams can be up to 25 uh athletes cheer and for palm. I don't know. All of our schools don't have the maximum athletes that are permitted. Uh but some of

168them are are pretty large. I could I certainly could get you that data. I just don't have it off the top of my head. Thanks. Alex had his hand up. Sorry, Alex. Yeah. Can you go back to that graphic, please? Um can you explain uh what the darker line means? you've labeled it as proportionate, but is that the male or the participation? Um, and so equal to the light blue, we should say it's proportionate, but if it's sticking out a little bit, it might be a little bit unproportionate. What's how do I interpret that? What are those lines? Good question, Alex. Um, so in the the darker line on the inside is the actual number of athletes that are participating. uh the lighter the lighter blue line is the the district proportional proportionality number district-wide.

169So if you look at the females 2425 there um there is about 47 and a half% districtwide of um females and there's uh 45% it's about a 2% difference in athletes. So there's 2% less females participating than there are district-wide average. And it's the same on the male side. It's about 2% higher for male participants than the district average of uh about 52 and a.5%. And it's about 54 and a half% of participants. Does that help answer that? It it does, but I guess I'd be interested in maybe seeing this data in a table format where you could actually um compare the percentage changes because it looks graphically as if we have a slight increase in trend over time of male participation relative to female participation. And it would be I can't really make heads

170or tails of what that is from the graph that's there. Well, do you know what the percentage um and I don't know what the percentage is to count as um substantially proportionate, but it does look like we have a increase from the amount of male versus female overage in the last over the last three years. That's that's a great uh point and question, Alex. I guess the question I would I would ask is is what is how many percentage points do you have to be part does participation have to be within the population to be considered uh proportionate for for title nine and then you know I I do think we need to to fix this graph a little bit because you know the proportionate as defined by title nine but uh I do think

171that that's a little bit confusing but what's that percentage what's like what's So the office for civil rights has not set a specific threshold. It's a casebycase determination. I think that when you look across the decisions that we've looked at, we've reviewed some law review articles and other sorts of analyses that generally find around 3 to 5% is within that acceptable range. But there are other factors to look at also which you do see in BBSD. Efforts to increase participation, new sports coming online that offer additional opportunities that really reflect what your current student population is seeking. So the board had identified athletic and activity fees as a policy priority for this semester. We really are stepping now from that title 9 conversation to really looking at the issue of athletics in BBSD. So the

172board had identified um what we're now going to be coding as JJF. You may remember we talked about this in October. We talked about it again in February. Tonight in the policy study section of the board agenda, we'll be looking at this policy in more detail. The updated red line provided to the board this evening reflects the board's prior discussions in a few important ways. First of all, the red lines are intended to reflect the board's interest in making sure that all students in BBSD have the opportunity to participate in athletics and activities. Also, just clarification around what fees can be expected, really putting into policy that participation fee and recognizing that teams also have additional fees. We also uh increase the language recognizing the importance to our programs of donations and community support. Certainly,

173as the budget gets tighter and things are more expensive, we will continue to rely on the community and to our donors. And then the final step that we really took with this red line was to reflect the board's clear priorities to collect more data to permit monitoring of participation fees, fee waiverss, and to enable the board to identify system systemic barriers and necessary improvements. Okay. Funding and fees. We, this is a bit of a review from our February meeting, but athletic funding for our 13 middle schools and six high schools consists of a combination of do uh district dollars and fees. As we discussed in February, there are two types of fees, participation fees and team fees. Participation fees make up about 25% of the athletic budget or around a million dollars. Uh gate fees

174consist of about 6% of the budget which is around 240,000 and the largest portion comes from our district uh support around 68% of the overall budget or or just under $3 million. Give you a frame of reference. But over the course of the next year, we will be working to identify ongoing funds to help fill the gaps and to create and sustain equitable an equitable structure. board members. Just a point on that because I do want to reflect back to our last conversation around this and I know that uh that as a governance team, we've really talked about the importance of all kids getting this opportunity to participate and have this great experience. And I do think that as we think about fees and inind donations and dollar amounts, you know, how do we create

175uh how do we create a fund? uh and I have some ideas that that I'll be bringing forward I think at a later time where we would be able to uh create some equity amongst programs amongst schools if we feel like that there are uh certain sports um certain schools that aren't getting the opportunities because of a lack of funding whether it's increased waiver fees and just really digging into this idea of let's figure out everything that we can do to remove barriers years so kids can get involved and be active and be involved in their schools. You know, it is, you know, we just for an hour and 15 minutes listened to um uh Renee Crown and and they put their finger on this this idea of getting being active and being involved and

176having coaches that can mentor and and you can trust. I I I do think that this is a big lever that we can pull, but we don't have a system right now. And we've been working on it, right? This past year, I think that we've done a lot of work trying to clean up trying to track down who's getting what and making sure that there's um a dist a distribution that allows all kids to participate and be competitive. And so that last bullet refers to that effort. uh you know, how do we how do we real how do we analyze what sports are are or at what schools need more support and then how do we identify a funding source that allows us to to to equalize some of that. Okay. Setting the fees. So,

177at our at our last meeting in February, we engaged in a thoughtful and in-depth discussion regarding athletic fees. Since then, I've revisited the recording of that meeting to carefully review and reflect on the board's questions and concerns. This has helped to ensure that our ongoing efforts remain aligned with our shared commitment to providing all students ac uh athletes across the district with equitable and enriching opportunities. The following slides will offer additional clarity on the questions previously raised, outline the implementation of new data tracking procedures, and present plans for future research. Starting with participation fees, we will continue to establish uh these by the uh by the district to help offset the operational costs associated with middle and high school athletic programs. These fees are the essential items that include but are not limited to transportation,

178officials, game workers, salaries and benefits, equipment, uniforms, and entry fees to name a few. Now, the difference is in the team fees. the team fees. Um later this month, I'll have a meeting with our our high school athletic directors to establish a reasonable threshold and clear guidance for team specific fees. Once the district-wide guidance is established, um athletic directors will meet with each of their head coaches to communicate the expectations and outline the required approval process. So to differentiate between participation fees and team fees, team fees are items that are typically staying with the athlete that are non-essential and included but not limited to travel, lodging, pre- or postgame meals, socks, belts, hats, undergarments, personal warm-ups and backpacks, accessories, choreography camps, etc. So those are the two the two types of fees. Now moving on

179to uh our waiverss which was a big discussion in our last meeting. Um understanding that these items are a part of the competitive high school experience and culture of each individual sport costs can be a legitimate barrier for some. As such we remain committed to removing financial barriers from anyone wishing to participate. Any student with financial need will have the ability to have both participation and team fees waved upon request. This option will be communicated to families through district and school athletic websites, at preseason parent player meetings, and on our athletic registration platform. Our teams must provide scholarship opportunities for those students that request financial assistance. As requested by the board, our athletic review committee will conduct a more in-depth analysis next year comparing the number of FRL waiverss or those citing financial hardship to

180the actual team rosters. And this will give us a closer look at how many actual participants are are requesting a waiver. Additionally, we will continue our focused efforts to identify both controllable and uncontrollable barriers that prevent students from participating in extracurricular opportunities. In our athletic review meeting last month, we began to identify some of these barriers for to participation. Our next steps will be to focus on variables that are within our control and begin to develop and implement strategies to complete to create a more welcoming environment and open doors for greater student participation. I see Alex has his hand raised and Kitty does too. Can we stop there for a question? Is that okay? Thanks. Uh, thank you. I'm I'm really excited about this and looking forward to more data as well as the um

181policy study we have coming up. I just want to be clear that I'm I'm looking forward to maybe amending our policy that we'll be studying later to include explicit um language about our encouragement of the pro of providing the waiverss and to have something in the policy be clear about the district's commitment to participation uh and to overcome obstacles that would be there for participation. So, I'm looking forward to slightly amending the red line we have for the policy to get to this point about encouraging the provision of waivers and communicating um to the students and families about how the waivers work and trying to facilitate their use and in a way that incentivizes encourages more waivers especially as I'm concerned that with budget issues our teams and activities will face budget crunches and the

182obvious solution will be to ask parents to pay more which is a reasonable solution. to these problems, but exacerbates any equity problems that we want to have. So, as we potentially increase the amount that we uh have teams charge, um I think we're going to want to make sure to also increase our attention to the waiver process. Kitty, so I just want to make sure I understand the difference between the two fees. So the participation fee is for anybody who's participating in any what competitive athletics? Yeah, any chess sanctioned athletic. And is that just one fee for the year or is it a a participation fee per sport? It's a per sport fee for high school. It's $200. Right. Currently this year it's $200 per sport with a cap of 500 for a family. So

183then if say a kid is on the football team and the basketball team, that student would pay two participation fees and two team fees. Not everybody has team fees, but I mean assuming the team had a fee. If the team had a fee corre correct you could be paying additional team fees that are and what is the reason for distinguishing between these two instead of just if you play this sport it's you know you have your participation fee plus whatever the team would charge and just have it be that. So the participation is the essentials. So the things that have to be done be used to to make the make it operate. It's their operational costs that without those you you can't conduct, you can't have officials, you don't have a bus, you don't have

184any of those essentials. The team fees that the team fees are more again if you want to have a meal if if you know you don't eat, you eat lunch at 11:30 and then you have no chance to eat, you're on the bus and on the road and so you want to eat on the way home or on the way to a game. Those are pre- or postgame meals often are are done with with the teams. Um there are choreography that you know those are additional costs for certain for particular sports. There could be um fees, you know, a warm-up. You'll see a lot of teams they have their their game work workout gear, but then they don't they want a warm-up shirt to come out and warm up in. They keep that. And so

185that's an non-essential item that they would pay for because they get to bring it home. socks, um, ribbons for for, you know, cheerleaders and and palms or any accessories that you're not going to reuse the next year for someone else that you're going to keep, you would pay to keep that and that would be an an non-essential item. Does that help? Yeah, I guess I still don't I mean, I get that they're funding two different things. Well, never mind. It's I do understand it. Thank you. Okay. Okay. The next slide is athletic activity budgeting and tracking to enhance our data and ability to monitor and effect uh the effectiveness of our policy implementation. Annually, building athletic directors require each head coach to complete a needs assessment for the upcoming year. This list serves as a

186valuable tool for identifying the overall needs uh of each athletic program and will help them to guide the equitable distribution of available funds. SL Yeah. Thank you. Beginning July 1st of 2024, this last July, the ads and coaches handbook included a section titled equity and allocations. This document outlines new guidelines and procedures for routing all booster club donations, private donations, and fundraisers directly to the athletic director's activity account. This process allows building ads to capture all additional revenues collected in one place and review the needs of each sport prior to allocating resources in an equitable manner. Athletic directors are expected to meet with their respective booster clubs prior to the start of school uh each year to communicate current BBSD funding policies and procedures. This information uhformational meeting will inform the cha them of CHASS

187and regulations as well as district policy and title 9 equity amongst the programs. Our athletics directors are also working with their school treasurer to monitor their activity in the uh athletic director account. Prior to distribution of funds into individual team accounts, ads must review needs and costs, assess available funds, and approve an equitable dispersement. And finally, each building AD will meet with myself, the district athletic director, to review the funding needs and dispersement during an annual meeting to ensure that equitable distribution is met across all sports. We good? Hey Harry, can you tell me how we deal with inind donations for budgeting and tracking? Yeah, in the equity for allocations document there is a tab in there for uh the inind donations. So those are also attracted in that. So when that report is printed

188there is a uh those should also be captured. Okay. All right. Now for now for the fun. All right. We're going to end on some some good stuff that has happened uh this throughout this year. Um right here's the first highlight slide. Uh the next four slides highlight the important role of intercolastic and extracurricular activities and what and the role they play in supporting the physical, mental, and social well-being of our athletes, these and students. Uh these opportunities are essential in shaping well-rounded individuals and equipping them with the skills necessary for lifelong success. At our most recent superintendent's honoral meeting, the state champions listed on this next slide were we're celebrated and their remarkable accomplishments are worth revisiting and celebrating once again. Uh of special note in this background in that the last slide you

189saw uh Shayla Martinez from Broomfield who became the first female state champion in BBSD history. That's incredible accomp accomplishment. And so the rest of these uh we recognized at the honor role in the winter. Um and all of those are those individuals and that teams are commended for the outstanding accomplishments of their state championships. Now this next slide, we're we're certainly not done. So we're in the midst of spring. Uh spring sports are upon us and the accomplishments keep coming. This past weekend, Monarch swimming and diving team made waves by breaking both 4A records and Colorado state records, all on their way to claiming the 4A state championship. Congratulations to all of our incredible athletes for continuing to raise the bar. Further recognition for these folks will be forthcoming at a future super uh attendance

190honor role and we're proud we'll proudly celebrate these spring outstanding achievements. And with more competitions on the horizon, we're hopeful that even more state champions will join the ranks in the coming weeks. And for this slide, showcasing our unified sports. Our BVSD unified sports team program uh continues to thrive under an outstanding leadership of Jen Dixon, our unified coordinator. We also want to recognize the incredible efforts of our building level special education instructors and peer helpers whose dedication makes these opportunities possible. This year we celebrated our unified students at three fantastic events. Fairview hosted a flag football contest in the fall. We held a bowling contest in the winter and Centurus hosted the basketball contest in the spring. This slide features some fun uh photos and a video from the basketball event. [Applause] just one

191snippet that it was several hours long and that was happening all throughout. It was an amazing event. The parents and community were able to to come and watch even uh during uh lunchtime. Some of the kids come down and watch and cheer them on and it's fantastic. It's not like a typical game where you go to and you've got rival sides. Everybody's cheering for everybody out there and it's an amazing amazing event. So, uh we continue to to highlight those individuals. And the final slide. This final slide highlights the exciting addition of girls flag football in BBSD. Girls flag football is a rapidly growing and emerging sport nationwide and was recently sanctioned by the CHASSA. We've seen a surge of interest from our girls across the districts and thanks to strong district support, we're launching

192a CHASSA sanctioned program at Monarch High School beginning in the fall of 2025. Preparations are already underway, including hiring a coach, securing facilities, developing competition schedule, and ordering equipment and uniforms. We're thrilled to kick off this new opportunity and look forward to watching this new program grow. So, that concludes the slide presentation at this point. If there's any other questions members, any questions on this presentation? Kitty Yes, this is really exciting about the girls flag football. Um, so it's going to be at Monarch, but is it open to um girls enrolled throughout the district? Yeah, thanks for asking that. Um, this is a district-wide program and we have several across our district and this is be one team starting with at Monarch High School where any of our schools will be able to participate by

193state statute. Anyone that doesn't offer a program has the opportunity to participate at another district that program that does. And then is there the hope that that could expand in the future? Certainly. Well, I guess it can't expand in the past. So, yes, certainly. Certainly. And it is growing across the country. I expect that it probably will. Yeah. You previously mentioned we're currently at 14 sports for males, 14 sports for females. We're adding the girls flag football. Two-part question, was the the flag football included in that previous count? And follow-up question, are we having to turn off any programs to allow the accommodation of this one? Any sports? So, good question. So, this does not include the 14 and 14 I mentioned earlier. We will next year be 14 and 15. So it'll be 15

194opportunities for female sports which on that slide seven that we looked at hopefully bring that number a little bit closer um of opportunity our participation numbers from the from the gender side of things. Okay. So we're hopeful there. Um at this time we have no plans of I think this will determine watching how this goes this fall will determine if it does have an impact on other sports. Um it could that this will be a six program in the in the winter or I'm sorry in the fall of for females. So that's a lot of different options and um could definitely uh pull from some other sports. So we have to wait and see and keep an eye on that. Somewhat related to this and somewhat to some research that I saw recently that participation

195in youth sports is decreasing nationwide in part because of the cost to play at the earliest levels. the decreasing rates of recreational sports and the increase rates of club sports in communities and I'm wondering within BBSD as participation shifts across different sports as we turn things different things on is there a threshold for which we decide a sport has to be combined between two schools I know we do that like male boy swimming with monarch and centurus or or turning on like getting rid of a sport allgether do we have thresholds to help us make those decisions because it does relate to the participation data you previously showed. So, we've been monitoring some programs over the last couple years and talking through what is realistic uh in our final meeting that I talked about coming

196up with with the ads across our district. That's part of this conversation next this month is establishing some thresholds. So we do have a consistent clear number across the district other than just our conversations. So uh we expect to have some parameters around okay realistically what does it take to make sense to offer that and looking at all of the factors involved there and before we combine but we will be doing that this month. I appreciate that and just generally I appreciate the progress that this district has made throughout this entire presentation. I mean really being transparent with Title 9, really making some market improvements around fees uh with the sports stuff. So I I I thank you for the work for everybody that presented tonight. We are making really great improvements and I'm happy

197happy to see that and our commitment to continuing to do what's best for our students and putting students at the center of all of these decisions and including them. I'm grateful. We appreciate the support. Thank you. Board members, any final questions or comments? I think your next slide is questions, right? Or am I jumping ahead? Okay, Dr. Anderson, I'm really excited about this idea of a Title N report. I I have not I have not seen that type of of focus and transparency anywhere in any school district, right? I mean, I I just think it's it is a massive step forward. Um, I'm excited to dig into, you know, some of the points that Alex was making on, you know, how do we just get some of these barriers out of the way? And you

198know, you know, maybe the hope is as folks get priced out of their travel teams, right, and all these other experiences that they come back to high school because there's been a trend for years where uh kids are choosing club travel over high school. And I think high school sports are really, really important. I think middle school sports are important. I think it creates a level of spirit and energy in schools that is uh that creates a culture of excitement. I think about uh kids who who get to be part of a team and the you know that that the what that provides for them. Uh I was I was a an athlete growing up and um I don't know what I would have done if I didn't have the opportunity and outlet to participate

199in sports and or had those people supporting me. um coaches included as a kid who grew up with a lot of needs. A lot of my needs if they weren't met in the classroom, they were met on the soccer field or on the football field or so I'm really really excited about about what's happening. Yeah. I have a question for Kathleen. Could you just summarize the diff the differences in the regulations, you know, the ones that were the the 2020 versus the 2024 that were then struck down? I can give you a high level and I certainly Liz can jump in. I think the major change that we saw when we um had a court ruling that sent us back to the 2020 regulations was in the definitions of what sex-based discrimination and harassment is

200in the investigation procedures and the hearing procedures that are followed to consider incidents of student misconduct. What else would you add, Liz? and what qualifies as sexual harassment under Title 9. So, what would trigger a Title 9 investigation? Um, under the 2020 regulations, it's severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive. Under the 2024 regulations, it was severe, pervasive, or objectively offensive. So, the scope of what was included as a Title 9 violation or constituting sexual harassment under Title 9 is narrowed significantly under the 2020 regulations. And who decides what's objectively offensive? It's a great question. Um, it's usually assessed by um by someone who would a reasonable person standing in that person's shoes. Um, so, um, that that's like sort of the the assessment that we make when we're thinking about what's objectively offensive. Community standards is

201another way of of considering it. Alex, uh, thank you. Um, in the case of a Title N investigation, um, with OCR changing its orientation at a federal level, does that impact us or do we do most of the Title 9 investigations ourselves? And what does any change within the way uh, OCR conducts itself? Um, how does that affect uh, what we do? So, when someone files a Title 9 complaint with the school district, it is student on student. So that is a student is filing a report because they have themselves experienced um what what is a title n violation. When you file a complaint of a title n violation with the office of civil rights, you're stating that the school district failed to satisfy its obligations under title 9 in so far as it failed

202to conduct an investigation in accordance with the regulations or that it was deliberately indifferent with regards to the report. So, the Office of Civil Rights enforces Title 9 with regards to BBSD's obligations, whereas an internal BBSD report that's filed by a student relating to Title 9 is a student on student investigation. Thank you again for that thoughtful presentation and for all of your efforts in both Title N and athletics. Our next information item this evening is a legislative update. Dr. Anderson, do you have anything? Well, um, you know, sessions wrapped up. Uh, I do have a federal, uh, um, legislative update. And I don't know who saw this, but, uh, there's now a federal school voucher proposal that has been introduced as part of the budget reconciliation process. And so, um, this this was a

203House Republican budget proposal, and it would devote $5 billion to federal vouchers for private school tuition, homeschooling, and for-profit virtual learning. Uh, so for states like Colorado where this has not been a threat, this becomes in this comes in play pretty significantly. The way that it would work, the way that it is, it is designed. Um, donors can donate up to 10% of their income to reduce their tax bill dollar for dollar for not money that they give to nonprofits to grant scholarships. And uh to qualify um any family who earns less than 300% of their area's median income. Uh so uh you know the threshold is pretty high uh to be able to to do a dollar fordoll um tax reduction federal tax reduction. Um so um this is a problem. You know not

204not to to ring the alarm. I think that I've been worried about this idea that this budget reconciliation process that things would start to um begin to unfold and this idea of a federal school voucher proposal which they only need um 51 votes in Senate to pass and Republicans hold 53 seats. This is a Republican budget proposal um and a priority of u of our president. So, we're going to see a federal school vouchers in Colorado. So, to the extent that um those federal vouchers impact our enrollment, remember hundred kids about a million dollars, right, in terms of revenue. So, a couple hundred kids would do would undo so much of the work that we've done in terms of of combating declining enrollment. Uh, now, you know, I do think that, you know, it's going

205to it's not going to there's going to be a bunch of back and forth on this for sure. Uh, but but I am pretty convinced it's coming. I just don't know when. Uh so another thing for us to consider um as we think about um our competition, a competition that exists today and will exist tomorrow. Um another thing for us to consider, uh not that I think that there's anything that any of us could do about it, right? Unless you know a Republican senator that that that you could influence. I I don't I I know this is something that's a little bit beyond our reach. They need a threshold of 300% of the federal poverty rate to accept people that can provide the 10% donation. I mean, they're really clearly asking for a very specific

206piece of the population to be able to qualify for this. It is it is interesting. And while it might be a threat, I will still continue to say that we provide the best educational quality experiences in the county. So while you might be able to buy a private education, it we I would argue that ours is much better. So hopefully people understand the value of their dollar regardless of who's providing the funding on the back end. Kitty, well, I was just going to ask because I didn't completely understand how it works, but I can don't need to ask it now. I well the big idea is um you know that that a lot of people will have access to this dollar fordoll tax credit to reduce their income as in in terms of taxes and

207then if you um any family who earns less than 300% of their area's median income. So if our median income is um $100,000. So if you make three less than $300,000 you qualify uh for these vouchers. um and then how they'll be distributed, how folks will get those dollars, what that means. I think you know it's this is an effort designed to dismantle K12 education as we know it be very very clear and um to your point Nicole I think that you know in communities like ours where our schools are second to none um and our education is is in many many ways um a more rich experience than you could get in in most private schools across the country. not just around here. Um, but this is this is an effort to dismantle K12

208Jason. Um, I don't I don't have a whole lot more to add to that, but I will say the same budget proposal that provides 5 billion vouchers also proposes to shift Medicaid costs to states. So, there's another additional pressure. Uh so as the federal share goes from about 90% to you know anywhere down to 70% 60% you know there's a whole bunch of numbers that are being talked about that then c that causes states to have to take on more of the Medicaid costs or drop you know thousands of people from coverage. And so that's another, you know, whether that passes or not, the the the um, you know, the the the reality of a Medicaid shift to the states, that's more of more of an immediate threat and that'll obviously impact us, you know,

209as state level budget decisions are made and, you know, we'll have to, you know, be pitted against Medicaid and healthcare coverage again. Alex. Yeah, I would just um reiterate my uh concurrence what with Rob's analysis of this. And I I would add um we're also like while Title One's main piece and IDA are proposed to be level funded, there's another like 4.5 billion being cut out of the Department of Education's uh K12 budget and other programs besides the biggest two. So, this is um this isn't just 5 billion coming from um a new revenue source. It's coming on at the same time that they're diminishing the Department of Ed's budget uh by about exactly the same amount. And um I would add that while we can't control um the Republican senators because we don't have

210any, um I do think uh it heightens for us as we deal with declining enrollment. you know, our understanding of the families that we do lose and how we make sure we communicate that we have better programs for them and how we ensure that we do have better programs. Uh, you know, for the particular families who are finding some issue where they're frustrated. Um, I suspect that as it actually unrolls, it'll primarily go to people who are already outside of public ed who've been paying for private ed uh already. So, um, just more things to keep in mind as this these as these bad things unfold. It's part of a constellation of, you know, trying to undermine equality and equity in public education. Thanks for that exciting update, Dr. Anderson. We will now move on

211to action items. Consent grouping 8.1 personnel items. 8.2 approval of minutes, April 22nd, 2025 regular meeting. 8.3 approval of minutes May 7th 2025 special meeting 8.4 acceptance of donation Foothill Elementary 8.5 acceptance of donation instructional services services and equity 8.6 acceptance of donation metal school 8.7 amendment number three for construction at bullet 8.8 approval of adoption contract purchases of instructional materials to imagine learning for K5 math 8.9 change order GH Phillips construction 8.10 10 contract renewal with Caro school district self- insurance pool and the joint school district's workers compensation pool 8.11 contract renewal with D&D transportation 8.12 contract with Edmonton 8.13 contract with hub international 8.14 contract with legacy meets 8.15 contract with Royal Crest Derry 8.16 contract with what chefs want 8.17 Frontline contract renewal 8.18 liquid propane gas purchase and delivery 8.19 resolution

2121525-13 intent to participate in the coordinated election on November 4th 4, 2025 8.20 resolution 25-14, non-renewal of licensed contracts 8.20 on grant classrooms for climate action. Are there any items board members would like to pull from consent grouping? Seeing as there are none, is there a motion to approve? Moved by Kitty, seconded by Jorge. Board members, any discussion on items within consent grouping? I have a few. The first one is I am really excited board members that we continue to support our curriculum across our schools and math is on this adoption. I'm really happy to see that includes instructional materials including tangibles and Spanish materials. I'm curious how imagine learning complements the middle school math curriculum we adopted two years ago. if there's anybody that can speak to that. Looks like we have a team

213coming up to the podium. Excited to share on how uh how this decision was made. Great. Good evening. Thanks for the great question. We're really excited about Illustrative Math through Imagine Learning and the materials that the committee recommended. Um, and I think you're getting at something really important, which is, um, it is a curricular resource that's really deeply aligned with the shifts required by the common core standards and really puts the problem solving and thinking on the students and will really be quite deeply aligned with our work with depth of knowledge. That said, in middle school, we have a more traditional resource. And so we're already talk we're thinking about and planning for as students come up through K5 and go into 68 what that might need to look like vertically with the skills and

214abilities they're going to have as a result of this new curricular resource. I don't know if there's anything you want to add next question and then a followup to that. So I within the contract it outlines professional development that's included both immediately and ongoing uh for this and because you noted that it is going to be a significant change. It sounds like a significant change and how that math curriculum is taught and what's expected of students as as they learn those math concepts. Can you speak a little bit to that? It is a question I get from the community about how when we have and we are having a lot of new curriculum adoptions and I want to say kudos to our teachers who are taking on changes to literacy curriculum and the math curriculum

215and how does that all um unfold as as we have folks in cohort one and then co subsequent cohorts taking on and adopting this curriculum. Yeah, it is a lot. I keep looking back because our director of steam Jen Scorbella is behind me. But I'll start and then anything I miss she can add in. That's been a a long conversation that is ongoing, especially with our professional learning calendar for next year with all of our dedicated time up front and then the late starts. So, Jen and our team, our math team, have been really thoughtful about what do we need to frontload for schools and how is that going to realistically fit within everything else. So, for example, starting next week, Jen and Mora Dudley, our mathtosa, are leading some optional learning for leaders and

216a teacher leader from each phase one school pre all of the other things we're going to have just to start sort of talking through this is what it's going to look like. Here are some things to plan for. Um, then in the summer, Jen and Mora set up a teacher leader structure um that we're really excited about. So each school will be able to have a teacher leader come over the summer with principal if the principal would like to attend to really learn deeply about the resources. And our hope is that we'll be building capacity in each school for teachers to really own and share with other teachers. Then on top of that, Jen and Mora have built out a monthly late start plan. not only how are we going to capture our district late

217start time and what's that going to look like with unpacking the materials and planning for the materials, but they've also built in for our phase one schools a dedication of a second late start time in which they'll be providing turnkeys to schools that those teacher leaders will then be able to help their principles facilitate and lead in their buildings. So, it's a shift in practice. It's also trying to figure out how do we find the time to do it really well. Um, but I think the exciting thing is is there's a real eagerness. I mean, we we offered phase one and phase two, and we only have about 10 schools not opting into phase one. And there's a real excitement from teachers. I mean, we went into this with some options that were traditional and

218some options that were more aligned with the shifts and where we want to go in math. And the committee was pretty unanimous that it was going to be one of the two that was more aligned with where we are in 2025. So, I think that's that's pretty exciting. I don't know, Jen, if there's anything that was a great summary. Okay, that is really exciting. And I was going to ask who was going to be in the first cohort, but now that I know it's almost everybody, I won't um make you listen. I don't have it memorized, but I can get it to you. That's that's okay. Um I'm really excited about this. I know math is something that this district has been focusing on and really hoping to improve our student success in this area.

219So, I'm excited for this cre to roll out. Thank you for those answers. My other question is related to budget and the couple items that were related to the culinary services program and the dairy the meats. They're significant and I'm just kind of I'm curious. I know we have fees for some courses. The course fees would never cover the costs of some of the the food foods provided to our students. But what is long-term? Let me tell you those item numbers as you guys are flipping through. Uh 8.14 contract with Legacy Meats, 8.15 contract with Royal Crest Dairy. Are those aligned with what we would traditionally expect in a in a culinary program? And are those coming out of general funds or students need food spoke PL? They need those to be able to I

220don't believe this is uh Yeah, it this is for school lunches. I don't believe this is I misread that then. School lunches, not for the culinary program. Sorry. Thank you. And what's if I can just note one difference. So, all of these products have gone out through the full RFP process and they are annual contracts, but the amount looks larger here because we're asking for board approval to continue to use these vendors for 5 years even though we have the ability to um not to renew, but it the intent is to make this process more efficient for the board. That's great. And thank you for clarifying. I think I was just excited about what's going on over at Apex. And I was thinking about the culinary when it said culinary, I was just thinking of

221the culinary program, not just the food service operations that we provide. So, thank you for that clarify question and sorry for my oversight. That was all I had. Any other items, board members? Seeing as there are none, Laura, will you please call the role on consent grouping? Chavez, yes. Medler, yes. Nisnik, yes. Quinn Linua, yes. Raj Paul, yes. Sergeant, yes. Anger, yes. Motion passes. Moving on to policy action items. Consent grouping. 10.1 Board policy J Student Records and Regulation J-R. 10.2 Board Policy KMA Relations with military recruiters, post-secondary institutions, and protect prospective employers and high schools. 10.3 board policy JJFA student fundraising board members. Are there any items you would like to pull from consent grouping? Seeing as there are none, we need a motion to approve the items on policy consent. Moved by Kitty,

222seconded by Jorge. Board members, any discussion? Great work on these, Kathleen. Seeing as there are no discussion, there's no discussion. Laura, can you please call the role on policy consent grouping? Chavez, yes. Medler, yes. Nisnik, yes. Quinn Linua, yes. Raj Paul, yes. Sergeant, yes. Anger, yes. Motion passes. Board members, we have one policy to study this evening. It's board policy JJF, student activity and athletic fees and funds management. I I will turn it over to Kathleen Sullivan. Thank you. So, this is the board policy that we referenced in the athletic presentation that we just did. Um, I mentioned that the board has studied this or discussed it really twice. We had a fairly lengthy conversation in October and then another shorter conversation in February. I brought it back for study because the changes that were

223made in between drafts were significant. Um, and I think because there's been so much additional information that the boards received on this topic that I wanted to make sure that um, it really reflected all of the language that the board wanted. Board member Medler did send a message earlier today and I think shared some additional language that he was looking for in the policy around waiver. So, that's certainly feedback that I've heard. Um, and I stand ready for the board's discussion. Can you share the feedback on waiver? I just want to make sure I understand clearly understand what board member Medler was communicating earlier. In part because I'm not super eager to lock us in really specific language until we understand what Dr. Anderson's creative sources of funding might look like down the road given

224our current financial reality. Alex, did you want to share that? Sure. Um, yeah, I in the section on the waivers, I'm interested in inserting a sentence that indicates our support for waiverss as a trying to avoid obstacles to participation. So, I would propose at the end of the section on waivers, we say school principles um should are encouraged are expected some some I don't know what the verb is. School principals are encouraged to grant waiverss to ensure the fees are not an obstacle to any student participating in their chosen activity. And then in the communications section, I would like to add a sentence that says, "Communications regarding fees and activities shall include a statement that the district is committed to ensuring fees are not an obstacle to students participating in any in an activity or

225sport." And I think that way um people would be on equal grounds for knowing that they should should pursue the waiver if it's an obstacle. And the principles and athletic directors would know that it's a a a priority of the district, not to figure out how to be meager in putting out the waivers, but to be oriented towards um student participation as the goal of the waivers. not to be something that's, you know, discouraged from being provided, but that is used as a vehicle to promote equity. Thank you for sharing that, Alex Kitty. Yeah, that brings up a question for me. Are there waiver applications that are not being granted? I have not heard anecdotal stories, board member surgeon, about that. I think that we have not historically kept significant data around waiverss. So, it's

226a little hard for us to tell, which is why Harry explained um the efforts that we're already making to improve our data so we can give the board more accurate information there. And the the followup on that is is there any it wouldn't be overt but maybe tacic communication that would discourage people from applying for waiverss. I'm just trying to get at the necessity for the changes. And I I have no idea that, you know, I just um sometimes when you can't afford things, you don't want to say you can't. Uh you know, it it still feels like, right, I have to be the person on the waiver, right? Like I like, you know, I don't I don't know that there's anybody saying that folks can have waivers. Uh but just asking for it, I

227think, could be a barrier. Yeah, I'm just wondering how making a change in the policy what the impact would actually be on you know individual parents. I mean just just from my perspective uh I think it's a change in practice right it signals a change in like this isn't business as usual and you you go about you charge whatever and then if somebody wants to participate but says they can't afford it then I mean I don't know I I do think that there is some value in thinking about signaling um what our hope and intent is uh and to Nicole's point you know we do need to identify some some dollars and some revenues, but but also the other checks and balances that that Harry talked about around, you know, coaches have to be within

228a reasonable range to charge for a sport, right? I mean, you can't have a sport charging double like the sport next door um without a plan to backfill the kids who can't afford it, right? And I don't know that that's considered. Maybe it is considered. I mean, we can get Harry back in here. I think he's already gone. But um uh I do I do think that to to create a new expectation and new energy around it, changes in policy help help fuel that. Yeah, I'm not necessarily opposed to it. I'm just wanting to get more information. Jorge then Melania and then Alex's hand was up. I appreciate the point that um Alex raised on the question. And I think the destigmatizing I think is the is the issue here, right? And making it as

229easy and accessible as possible and communicating that so that there are no barriers and that it and that opportunities aren't um restricted. I mean, I know I was a free and reduced lunch kid growing up and there were opportunities I I could have taken advantage of, but resources and money made a difference and there wasn't information about, hey, you actually can get help for this, right? So unless I asked and many times I didn't ask cuz I was concerned about whether it was a possibility or getting a no that makes a difference. So the degree we can communicate that and say yes we want you to participate I think that's really important. Thank you Kathleen. I was wondering if we could look at page three. Um our second paragraph down. No BBSD athletic or activity

230program may accept donations directly from individuals. And then we go down um one, two, three paragraphs and then we say financial and inind donations from individuals and groups will be received in accordance with board policy. So I get what we're trying to do, but those two things kind of don't fit together. And I know we're saying that everything must be under the the financial policy, but just I find that a little confusing. Um, and the other thing under data review and reporting. I love the to monitor implementation of this policy. The board directs schools and the school district to collect data that allows the board to review student participation, program costs, fee wavers, and consider economic and other barriers to participation. Additionally, I would like to understand uh financing funds. I'd like to the board

231needs to understand boosters um in kind donations. We need to understand equity from the largest lens that we can. And I don't know if it's something we put in policy or I I do know I would like to add that here. But also, do we put in policy or do we include it in our annual report that we want that information to be something that we see annually? Because if it's in policy, it outlives us all and that's great. Alex and then Kitty. Thank you. Um I I want to re uh reinforce what Jorge said. I I didn't grow up in an a free and reduced price lunch family, but wasn't far above it and played a lot of sports and got the message pretty clearly what a stressful burden that was on my family.

232So, I think the key to the communications is try to I think the students are going to self censor and not pursue the activity and you'll never know that they were interested but then looked at the fee and said, "Oh, I'm not going to cost my family 700 bucks to do that. I'm I'm not going to ask them for that. So if the things about the fees even to the students are automatically explaining how encouraged they are to not think that way and to think I want to do that sport. I know it's a burden on my family. Um but I'm I want to do it. I think we're encouraging everybody to give it the try to participate and welcoming them. And I I really appreciate the extra data that's already being gathered and the

233attention to it. And I appreciate Lenia's point just now. I think over time like we will know anything about it from data two years ago but if we are advancing this we will have the data to adjust it if we like see it's being abused or manipulated um or that the teams are responding by jacking up the other prices exceedingly on the others. Um, I think we'll have more information, but we'll also be communicating our principles and our priorities. And that would be for more kids to participate, for kids to feel welcome and like they can do this stuff. And that that ties into our our mental health and our well-being and everything else, as well as just making school more fun for more kids. So, that's why I want to make the changes I'm

234proposing. And I I think we'll have information over time or future boards will have better information to evaluate if it becomes um something they need to modify further. Kitty and then Jason. Yeah, the it's actually about the the piece that Lania brought up and I'm trying to scroll back down to it where saying that um the fundraising and inind donations are received in accordance with board policy. So, if somebody or a booster group raised over $10,000 for, you know, whatever sport at at, you know, whatever school, then they're still going to be sharing the percentage with schools with high levels of free and reduced lunch. And it it's different than PTA. But it's still a financial donation, right? Yes. And I do understand why that language causes confusion. So I'll definitely reconcile that in the

235next draft. The but the language you're talking about, it used to be or we understand in some areas it may have worked where a booster club would make a donation directly to basketball or flag football or football. And that limits the amount of oversight then that the athletic director or the board can have because not all of the dollars are have always been required to be funneled through the school's athletic director. So that's the point of the language to make sure that it's all transparent. So, are are we saying that what we want is for if it's a if a donation comes in for an athletic program, it be it be made through the athletic director and then would it be shared if it's over $10,000? And if it were shared, is would it go

236to a same program at a different school or how would that work? So, you are bringing in our other K policy, I believe, the donations policy, right? And I need to look at that and follow up with you. Okay. Thank you. Cuz this to me that's what this is talking about and I just want to be sure we're really clear about that. Right. I have a I have a question or a comment on the costs um discussion. And so going to paragraph two on the first page. Um I feel very much more reassured after the presentation about you know the the changes that are being made as far as you know consistency transparency with costs and I just want to make sure this language reflects that trans that presentation and the direction and I think

237the conversation we had in February. Um, so the first sentence under costs and support just says, um, shall establish appropriate costs. And I feel like we really should beef that up with transparent, consistent, you know, where possible. um you know because I think that the discussion was around the kind of wildly different costs for each sport at different schools and you know again I'm not I don't have direct experience in this but just what seems to be a little bit of lack not because someone's intentionally doing this but lack of transparency into why those costs are the way they are. So I however that's phrased but um I feel like we need to add some language there to that first sentence Alex. Oh, sorry, Kathleen. Did you comment? I was just going to ask. I

238think Harry had referenced establishing some district-wide guidelines that are then used and I those aren't referenced in this current red line and I think that might be helpful to the point you're making. Yeah, Alex. Um, uh, I support Jason's point there. I would clarify. I am I I know we talk about lots of things and that Kathleen has to figure out what to do with it. I guess I would ask the rest of their board for their thoughts on my two suggested additions and whether we should direct Kathleen to include them in the um next version. I'm seeing thumbs up and I'm fine as long as it doesn't lock us into requiring us to prioritize funding for athletics over other things in the district. like I get really nervous around insure and somebody coming back

239and saying well you said I got this when we're rep prioritizing throughout the district. So that's my only I totally agree with your sentiment and the way it was phrased I agree with and I am we're in a tough spot and I just want to make sure we're not locking ourselves into a position that we don't want to be in in the future with budget shifting and uncertainty. Yeah, I would uh to that point if I may, Kathleen, I would I would suggest the alternatives. I suggested that use land lines like are encouraged rather than shall but you know express the desire without the commitment to Nicole's appropriate point. Other comments? Board members, I am really thrilled that we are getting one step closer to moving this off of our docket for policies this year.

240So, thanks to the work, Kathleen, um, and continue to try to reflect the will of the board in this policy. Alex, can I say one more thing? I think whenever we as a board talk about our desire to increase access to the fun things in our schools, we get a degree of feedback from people in the field who interpret that as some zero sum game, and the board is determined to cut the resources to some cool thing. And certainly my intention is not to reduce the resources that go into the things that make school fun and that are engaging. Um I think we can increase support for them, increase funding for them while also making them accessible uh to all the students that want to participate. So I don't think it's a zero- sum game

241and I think it's a a good way to, you know, have everybody excited about the program and then have as as much investment in it as we can possibly get for these great things. Thanks for that, Alex. We are now on to future agenda requests for members. It's that time when we can bring items to the attention of the board. We have a prioritization meeting scheduled for June 17th. Are there items for members that like to add? I see Beth hand up. Yeah, I might have one. from our previous conversation with Boulder City Council, they brought up the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan and I think it might be helpful for us to consider how are we interacting with that comprehensive plan? What is the, you know, district's role in that? Just something for consideration at

242our prioritization meeting. As I noted earlier, I have a couple policies I'd like to add for the consideration. our homework policy, IKB, our instructional goals policy, which was established in 1979, and our educational objectives policy, ADA, which weirdly feels redundant of instructional goals. So those ones I would like to elevate as part of our conversation around academic stressors and pressures and also because I think this board does have a really strong opinion on our educational object objectives. So something that I would like to add to the list. Other thing board members when we um last spoke about Dr. Anderson's review, we discussed adding a policy. There is a CASBY example policy on superintendent evaluations. I know we had hoped to maybe get that out sooner rather than later, but we have a backlog of policies

243that are currently in redline state that I would also really like to get through. So, I don't I I'm I'm entertaining the idea of given our tight timeline, we have yet to see a red line on the superintendent evaluation policy. Maybe we b we bump that to the start of next year so we can um take some things off of our t off of our and by our I really do mean Kathleen's list of items and then we can do the evaluation this year get the policy on the prioritization for next year because I know that is a board priority but I'm also it hadn't formally been prioritized before so I'm elevating it here tonight. So, that's just something I wanted to um add maybe for next semester so we don't have to tackle it

244this semester. Any other items? I'm seeing thumbs up, Alex. I don't think you can see those other board other items, board members. Okay. We will then move on to the executive session portion of this evening's meeting. As indicated on the agenda this evening, our first order of business, oh, not our first order, our final order of business um we have is to discuss an executive session. Is there a motion? Beth I, Beth Nisnik, make a motion pursuant to CS section 24-6-4024F to convene into executive session to discuss personnel matters pertaining to the superintendent's evaluation and pursuant to CRS CRS section 24-6-424A to discuss real estate matters related to attendance boundaries pursuant to CRS section 2464 4024B to receive legal advice on real estate matters related to attendance boundaries pursuant to CRS section 24-6-424E II for

245purposes of determining positions relative to matters that may be subject to negotiations developing strategy for negotiations and instructing negotiators regarding charter school negotiations pursuant to CRS section 24-6-40 24B to receive legal advice on charter school negotiations pursuant to CRS section 24-6-4024EI for purposes of determining positions relative to matters that may be subject to negotiations um developing strategies for negotiations and instructing negotiators regarding the negotiated agreement with the Boulder Valley Education Association pursuant to CRS section 24-6-40 O2 4E3 for purposes of developing the strategy for the school district for negotiations related to collective bargaining with BVA and pursuant to section pursuant to CRS section 24-6-424B for legal advice regarding negotiations with BVEA. Do I have a second? No. Seconded by Jason. Laura, can you please call the role? Chavez. Yes. Medler. Yes. Are you muted? You're

246muted. I unmuted. It just took too long to pick up. Yes. Nisnik. Yes. Quinn Linua. Yes. Raj Paul. Yes. Sergeant. Yes. Hunger? Yes. Motion passes. Board members, we will convene in the glacier room. And this concludes the regular business for this evening for the public. So the public portion of the meeting is adjourned.