001You see a testing testing. We can hear you. [Music] testing. Alex, can you hear me? I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Thank you. Excellent. No one's in the room yet from the city or the board. It's only um Laura, Kathleen, Amela, That's Test test test. Hey Fab, can you just What do you need? [Music] Good evening everybody. I would like to call to order this special meeting of the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education for Wednesday, May 7th, 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? here. Medler here. Laura here. Nisnik here. Quinn Linawa here. Raj Paul here. Sergeant here. Anger here. Thank you. And now if everybody
002would turn their attention to the screens, we will listen to our land acknowledgement for 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, Puebloin, Arapjo, Cheyenne, Apache, Navajo, and 48 other tribal nations historically tied to this land who have called this land home since time and [Music] memorial. We acknowledge the 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. [Music] 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
003of 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 land together. I would like to remind everybody that the mission of the 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. Thank you for our city council members who came out um to the Ed Center this evening to to chat with us.
004At this time, is there a motion to approve this evening's agenda? Moved by Kitty, seconded by Beth. Laura, can you please call the role? Chavez, yes. Medler, yes. Nisnik, yes. Quinnland Aea, yes. Raj Paul, yes. Sergeant, yes. Anger, yes. Motion passes. The first item on this evening's agenda is a work session with our colleagues from the Boulder City Council. We will delve into topics that have an impact on both the city and the school district. And from here, I'll turn it over to Dr. Anderson um and Nurio to lead this conversation. Thank you board president, President Raj Paul and welcome everyone. It's so good to see you all. I was really nice to have a chance to have dinner before our meeting today. Um we have uh Nuria and I have been uh connecting on
005what might be some topics that council might uh benefit from hearing uh in terms of of the progress we're making at BBSD and then identifying some topics of common interest to open up conversation. I have way more slides than I probably should have just to let you know. Um and uh we can abandon the slides. We can open up conversation. Uh here's here's what it is that that we've talked about. Would love to give everybody about a 10-minute overview around some of the progress happening in BBSD if that would be okay in terms of student performance and some of the really exciting work that's happening around career and technical education. Um and then uh the topics that I think that that we uh um settled on that that might have but there may be some
006benefit in discussing is around transportation sustainability declining enrollment housing and student safety. Uh and if if that works for everyone um I'm happy to begin to proceed. Uh again about 10 minutes and I could stop and answer any questions in terms of the the progress update from BBSD and then we can move forward with conversation. How does that sound? Great. Sound okay? Wonderful. Would it be possible for us to go around and introduce ourselves first, please? Yes, that would be great. I'm Rob Anderson, superintendent, Boulder Valley School District. We'll head this way if that's okay. Good evening, everyone. I'm Rob Price, assistant superintendent of operational services. Good evening. Laura de la Cruz, deputy superintendent of academics. Tina Marquez, Boulder City Council. Jorge Chavez, Polariz School District, Board of Education. Kitty Sergeant, BBSD board member. Oh,
007sorry, I should have turned it on. Uh, Kurt Fernhour, Housing and Human Services for the city of Boulder. Mark Wallak, Boulder City Council. Matt Benjamin, Boulder City Council. Ryan Shuhard, Boulder City Council. Elena Quinnlanda, BBSD board. Tara Winer, Boulder City Council. Mark Wolf, assistant city manager with the city. Beth Nisnik, BBSD Board of Education vice president. Jason, BBSD Board of Education. Nur Rivera Vandermide, city manager. Erin Brockett, mayor of the city of Boulder. Alex, would you like to introduce yourself? Uh, sorry I can't be there in person. Alex Miller, board member and treasurer for BBSD. And I am Nicole Raj Paul, school board president. Thanks for that recommendation, Kitty. I think that was that was really important way to to start our meeting. All right, so uh we'll start with a little bit um in
008terms of uh student performance in Colorado. schools are um are uh are judged uh based on uh test scores and a and a variety of other factors um that come together um through the this uh this measure right here. As you could see uh in the Colorado school performance framework that BVSD outperforms every district on the front range. you'd have to go an hour, hour and a half potentially to get a school district that is um that is preparing students for college and career in the ways that that we're doing here in BBSD. This is a culmination of years of work through our all together for all student strategic plan where we focus not on the averages but also the aggregate data to make sure that our most vulnerable students are getting all that they
009need uh within within our school district. I'll dig into this data a little bit more. Uh there's there's five ratings uh in the school performance framework, district performance framework in the state of Colorado. Uh we're one a handful of districts across the state, maybe 10 uh no districts looking like us uh that were accredited with distinction. And so this is a pretty significant honor. Uh also uh we there's other areas in which we've been recognized not only locally but nationally. Uh we're the number one school district in the metro by an organization called NICH. uh best uh high schools, US News rankings. We have three high schools in the top 20 in the state. Uh and uh I think that our reputation as as an excellent school district uh is not a surprise for for
010many of you, especially if you've been here for a while. But uh it's good to get these accolades to know and understand that uh we're incredibly uh um competitive, not just locally, but nationally in terms of our performance and the support that we provide for our students. Uh just to give you a snapshot, in two weeks I'll be going to the Colorado Department of Education annual awards ceremony. We traditionally have the most schools awarded at that ceremony. I actually we joke uh every school gets a banner. I have to bring somebody with me to be able to to to bring them home with me. Uh so uh not if it whether it's improvement, growth, or achievement, you can see that that our districts uh our schools within our district are performing just at incredibly high
011levels. I'll say one of the things that that isn't on this slide, but I know that our our team is very proud of is the work that we've done in making sure that all schools are high performing here in BVSD. If you were to look at our data from seven years ago, we had several lower performing schools, one school that was identified for turnaround by the state. Uh this past year, all but one school were rated at the highest level uh in the state of Colorado. So, that's a huge uh improvement. Again, lots of effort has gone gone into those improvements, but uh I'm proud to say it doesn't matter where you live in BBSD, uh go if you want to go to your neighborhood school or any other school, you're going to get a
012great education. And I think that that that that consistency of quality is is is unique um in districts that that typically look like us. This last year, we our students our four-year on-time graduation rate for our seniors was the highest it's been in eight years. And so, not only are schools performing, students uh performing in in literacy and math, uh but kids are graduating at a higher rate uh than they have in in quite a long time. Uh quite in in addition to this, uh most of our metrics, if not all of our metrics, are above prepandemic levels. And so, I know that you hear a lot about schools are struggling to recover from the pandemic. Not in BVSD. We've exceeded um um our performance uh from pre- pandemic. And so we're very proud of
013that. And then the last thing that that I'll dig into well in in terms of just uh just student achievements and then I'll I'll dig into uh some of the work around college and career. Um about a few the four years ago uh we uh we developed the grad plus framework. The big idea for us is that it is not enough if you're graduating high school in 2024, 2025 uh to just have a high school diploma to be ready for the world of work and of higher education. And so we created the framework to uh give students um opportunities to earn credentials beyond just a high school diploma. So, uh, industry certification, uh, college credit, a work-based learning experience where you get experience at a job or through the seal of biiteracy. Uh, we, um,
014over the course of this past year have prepared 86% of our students to earn one of those credentials of the 2025 graduating class. That's up from 50ome percent uh, just a few years ago. And so, uh, we're preparing kids in ways that certainly academically are important, but for kids who know they want to go right to work or or or that they have other plans for their lives that we want to make sure that they have those skills um and those credentials to make sure that they're successful there as well. Uh, one of the the the programs that that has been growing rapidly and and we touched on it within that grad plus framework is this idea um what we used to call votech or college and and or college CTE career technical education. Uh
015we've rebranded that as accelerate. Um, and what you'd see here is work that is happening underway with our 2022 bond program to make sure that at every school within the Boulder Valley School District, every middle school and high school, that we have learning labs and spaces that support this type of work for kids who want to move on um and and get these these work-based experiences, industry credentials, um many of them college credits in these programs. Uh and so uh as opposed to calling it VOTE or career technical education, we've reframed that as Accelerate. Uh these are just a sampling of the pathways that you would find at any of our comprehensive high schools. And we worked um closely with with our business community to find careers and and jobs and pathways that align not
016only with a high wage but high need within our community. And so these are the pro the the programs that that are offered at all of our comprehensive high schools. I think we have a video. Um and so many of you if you were driving in uh just right here on our campus you would have seen Boulder Tech and uh we're proud to announce that we are expanding those programs which are are some of our more advanced uh career technical education programming and uh renaming this campus our Apex campus with the idea that this is where students uh are going to come to to really meet the apex um of their college and career interest. So, I believe we have a video to share with you real quick on this. Let's see. Bulgar is going
017to become Apex. I think the rebranding is so cool. Apex implies a certain level of excellence. Apex means like reaching a peak. This school is about reaching a full potential because you get to explore all the things you're interested in. We're just getting bigger and better year after year. And then finally, and Kirk, I know that you're going to enjoy this last slide. Um, well, or you're going to enjoy the video again. Uh me many of you were here for this event that happened earlier this year as we opened up the Boulder Mod which is a partnership with the city and Habitat for Humanity. first first type of a of a of a partnership like this in the country where we've partnered with the city to develop a program that allows our students who who
018provide most of the labor uh to partner with the city and Habitat for Humanity to be building modular homes that will then be redistributed through our community starting in Ponderosa neighborhood um in North Boulder. Uh I've had the opportunity to tour this facility multiple times. If you haven't had a chance, uh, please connect with us. It is, uh, not only life-changing for the kids that are participating in this program, which is just truly amazing, but it's going to be life-changing for our community. And I don't know if there's a better partnership we have going on right now than our Boulder Mod. I was able to walk a few superintendent through it a few weeks ago. They just couldn't believe uh the partnership, the the real world learning experiences, and just the meaning that kids are
019getting out of this program. So this is a kudos to the city human habitat for humanity in our school district to have what I believe is is one of this the coolest most realistic authentic learning experiences and and meaningful opportunities for service and learning uh uh in the state of Colorado. And so um I'll stop there. I think that's around 10 minutes. Happy to answer any questions you might have. But again, uh, proud of our our partnership with with the city, but also really proud of our team, our teachers, our educators, our kids, and our families who've come together to really make BBSD what this our tagline BVSD is the place to be. And so I'll stop there. Dr. Anderson, can you let remind us all when the first completed house will be rolled rolling
020out of Boulder Mod or Rob Price? Kirk or Kirk? Yeah. Um the the the first duplex will be delivered on uh August 14th. Can we count on a big party when that happens? Yes, I look forward to it. This is a work session. It's casual. If you have questions or comments, feel free to just jump right in. and thank you for sharing mics tonight, Kitty. So, I know before the mod was built at Broomfield High, there was a construction project in math class. Is that still going on or is that part of this now? that's going that's going on where um it's um called I believe construction geometry where students are able to earn their geometry credit while they build um a modular unit that they take the entire year to build and then they
021um they have partnerships where they where they um deploy those as well. Yeah. Aren't they aren't they partnering with Habitat in Broomfield County? I I believe so. Yes. Any questions afterwards? If you think of something, curiosity again, you know, we we value our partnership with the city. Uh Nuri and I are in constant contact in in terms of there if there's issues with constituents with questions, concerns involving the school district. Um she routes those to to me. I route those to our appropriate staff and then circle back to make sure that that folks know that that we've closed the loop on that. Sometimes the work of the city and the work of the school district, you know, folks just kind of go to who they know and so happy to continue to do that. Um
022but uh but with that, if there's no other questions, I think we could dive in. Oh, Erin's got a question. I I did think of a question. Um which is I wonder if you could give us an update on the new Vista status, the new building and the old building. I I'll let Rob talk about the old building. uh where there's no more kids and we're in the process of of of demolishing that. The new building is uh I was almost brought to tears the first day when students were able to arrive in the beginning of this semester. You know, for for the for for so many years, the program that was being offered uh was incredible and the facility was horrible. And uh not only did this board, but previous boards where Tina, which
023Tina was a member, um have prioritized New Vista to make sure that we made that facility right. And uh and it is more right than I could have ever dreamt. Uh the the learning spaces are incredible. The to see the kids when they came in on that first day uh was truly inspiring. Um and for a lot of those kid, you know, the kids who had been there for a very long time, the um you know, a life-changing facility for them and for our educators and uh it's a beautiful facility and the facility finally matches the education that the kids are getting inside. Thank you for that question and one thank you for the partnership because I hope that as you're driving by it's something that everybody's extremely proud of as we um went through
024the process meeting with the city of Boulder etc. Uh right now the building is open. We have kids in there since January. Um the old existing building will start demolition here in the next few weeks. We're waiting on a couple permits uh from the city of Boulder. And once we have those in hand, you will see uh demo equipment on site pulling that building down. We hope to have the building down by about the second week of June. And then we will start shaping that site with everything being done by the fall. So sometime late October. Uh that whole site will be completed. We've got over a 100 trees going in. We've got a new field going along Broadway. Um landscaping, everything else. uh with a ribbon coming ribbon cutting sometime in the fall that
025we'll make sure everybody's invited to. So, thank you for that. Fantastic. Thanks for the update. It is very exciting. My kid went to New Vista for a couple years and and loved it there. So, it's great to see the building match the quality of the education as you said. So, as teachers, we do this thing called wait time where you it's like three to five seconds is like the optimal weight time. So, um uh no, no further question. Oh, Lolina has a question. I don't have a question. I have a comment. Perfect. And I think it's a good discussion point. Are we at the point where we're going to just do discussions or do you have any more further presentation? I have way too much presentation. Could you trying to establish that. Rob, let me
026um wondering if you have any presentation on our current budget. Woes. I sure do. Uh if I I'll save my commentary if you could just give us a just a touch of that and then I have a couple of questions based on our budget wos. Is that okay with everyone? Um and I'm sure that the city as as as I was sh Nura was sharing you're going to be um talking about your budget uh here pretty soon. Um our financial situation uh has has become more challenging. uh last session 1448 school finance act was changed uh and so the ways that that our school district was receiving funds fundamentally changed uh with less of an emphasis on cost of living adjustment right in an expensive place to to to live and do business like like
027uh you know Boulder Valley uh that has had some impacts on us as well uh but you're seeing pressures across um AC across government and and certainly across school district 90% of our budget is people. Uh and so what do we spend our money on? We spend our money on uh first and foremost making sure that we have great teachers in each and every classroom, the supports that they need, the leadership. Uh and then uh we we tried to be incredibly lean from an administrative and operational perspective. Uh and you know, everybody supports what's happening in classrooms as as part of a kind of a budget principle. The way Colorado education funding works is a little counterintuitive. And I've been sharing this slide throughout the community over the past few years. Uh and so as
028local taxes go up uh and and your property tax bills go up, uh it's it's intuitive to think that the school district budget goes up, but not necessarily. Um what happens is when you have more local sources, if you look at the two faucets, the faucets on the left, um then what happens is the state backs out of some of the dollars that they were providing for the district and they reroute those to um the state budget that then gets rerouted to other priorities. And so we um there is uh there that at at some point that bucket would get filled with all local resources and at that point we wouldn't get to keep the excess money. What would happen is based on the school finance formula then we would start to dial back to
029dial back mills. Uh you could never get more than what's in that bucket. And so, um, I would say that this is this is kind of challenging because as we go out to the community and say we're having budget challenges and issues, not everybody understands this dynamic. And if you're moving from somewhere else and in a lot of states, and I've worked in multiple states, uh, where, you know, what you collect locally is and is is what you have to run your schools. And school boards actually have the authority to decide whether mills go up or down. And taxpayers locally within a like the city of Boulder would have the ability to do that. city of Lafayette, you know, some, you know, some states have a thousand school districts and so that's just not how
030it works here in Colorado. Um, two years ago, legislature commissioned a study to take a look at how adequate is funding in the state of Colorado. Um, and and in Boulder, Colorado, uh, based on that adequacy study, which was like I think 1 to2 billion dollars where K12 education across the state is being underfunded. here in BVSD, we're $40 million below being adequate in terms of funding. Let that number sink in for a minute. Um, and so, as we've been advocating throughout our legislative session, our our motto, as we were trying to to advocate for funding for school districts, uh, when you're in a hole, don't you don't keep digging. Um and uh and so in any event, you know, we we advocated uh pretty I think successfully in terms of some of the formulas
031that are out there that were going to change the way that we count students. That would have basically kept us at even funding. Uh the new finance formula that's being kind of finalized I think this week um has us at about $5.1 million in new dollars um which is better than zero but a far cry from the $40 million where we're where um which would would really qualify us as being adequately funded. So that's that's the five minute presentation on budget. Happy to answer any questions on that. Um, I will say that you will re we we've passed our, you know, we've we've presented our preliminary budget. We're trying to finalize our budget. We've entered into negotiations with our teachers association because we have serious doubts that our um that our that our salary schedule's
032sustainable and that we have the ongoing dollars based on the way that's structured and the way that employees are moving through that that um we won't be able to afford the salary schedule and cost of living adjustments moving forward. So, we're in those negotiations now and just like negotiations with all um all of our associations that you know these it it's not getting cheaper to live and uh and it's it's really there's a lot of tension and I know I see Nuria smiling because I you probably be faced a similar situations. I do and I you know we were just talking about this earlier Rob and we feel your pain. We're going to be discussing this with city council tomorrow. We have see you joining us and invite you all to um join in virtually.
033uh they will be sharing our little financial forecasts not just for Boulder although primarily for Boulder but they will talk about the state and what they're seeing and we will be discussing a little bit about the impacts to our budget uh and sharing that with city council tomorrow but no shocker uh that the prospects are um more bleak than we anticipated um I think the same is for everybody um as as we're looking at it we will be taking similar steps uh as as we're thinking about it we too are negotiating meeting um with two of our unions this year and having serious conversations as we um figure out how do we move forward. And um for those uh that know my financial phrase financially constrained, you should be very thankful for the past two
034years of that phrase uh in our city as we think about what that looks like. But um we are thankful to um being in a position that we have taken some steps to be um really conservative in our modeling and I know you've been thinking about that as we move forward. Um but I join in you in thinking about those hard conversations that we are about to have as we continue to think about what volatility we're seeing in the marketplace with financial decision with federal decisions that are coming down. Um because the problem is that it is hard to budget when you don't know what the impact um is happening and it changes it seems like every week and every month. Um and so what we are learning from our folks at CU is that
035what we will be talking to council uh and community with tomorrow. We may be continuing to talk with some different numbers in June. Um and so happy to continue to have those conversations with our partners as we move forward. But it is a very difficult year. Yeah, I didn't even talk about the federal challenges and federal dollars, uh, which is a whole another wrinkle, but uh, and to your point, Nura, whether it's the city, whether it's the county, whether it's the state, whether it's grants that we have, um, have went out and and and won, and those are compromised. I think all of those things create um, a fuzzy a fuzzy future for us uh, um, as a school district, city. Rob, can you talk about the 40 million versus the 340 million cumulative dollars?
036Certainly. So, in 2007 during the the great recession, the way that the state uh balanced the budget is they took money out of K12 and put something called the budget stabilization factor in place that tried to codify the amount of money that was taken out of K12 that would be repaid over time. And so it took them 15 years to get to the funding level from 2007. But between now between now and when that in that uh that was done in 2007 uh we were short we were short $340 million collectively. Uh I know those those times there was a lot of sacrifices made across agencies. But uh when we think about the budget stabilization factor this past year we were all celebrating because the budget stabilization factor was finally um was finally gone and
037uh now we're seeing with the new school finance formula some of these other factors continuing to be built in. So, uh um again, you know, right today we're 40 million a year under um away from adequacy and uh so we'll continue to advocate for funding for K12. And what I know is, you know, there's it's very competitive when you don't have your you know, government's only allowed to collect a certain amount of money and you have more needs than you have dollars. This brings up use tax for me, which many of you know is a hot button issue for me. Um, and I understand use tax is a shuffling of public funds from one place to the next. I also want to acknowledge it was important for the city to have home rule and to
038fight for that in courts. Um, I also feel that didn't mean that you had to levy the use tax that you levied on BBSD last year. If I remember right, we approved 2.2 2 million headed your way um last year. And Rob, you may know what we would be up for this year. Um perhaps a similar amount. And while that is your right and you also will have financial constraints, our financial constraints are very very dire in K12 education. uh we consistently rank at the very bottom for how we fund K12 education. Uh and you can see that our performance is very very good, but we cannot continue to do that with less and less and less. So my question to my city council members here is the $2.2 $2 million from last year. Is
039that being used in any way that benefits our students? If not, can it be? And will you continue to levy that use tax on BBSD? Sure. Um I can say that construction use tax goes uh directly to the general fund but when we um try to use that and I know we have had conversations about that um we are thoughtful to try to use that and we've talked about how do we use that for community benefit as well and try to tie that in. Um we do not ear mark those dollars. Those are not dedicated funds as we do that. In fact, if anyone has heard me speak about dedicated funds, um you know that that is not my most favorite um way in which to allocate our dollars. But as we continue to talk
040about what um those funds are used for, we have tried to think about what are the ways in which we can allocate those funds for um purposes that support that. So we have talked about can that be used to support um additional trails? Can that be used to for parks? Can that be used for um areas in which that'll support for example we have thought about we have needs in South Boulder wreck uh centers um recreational facilities and so forth. So we are being thoughtful about how do we use that particular um allocation to see if it can inure for a community benefit. So we are being thoughtful without specifically dedicating dollars. I wasn't asking about a community benefit. I'm asking about a benefit for BBSD students. I I hear you and I understand the
041question, but I cannot commit to specifically saying that that those dollars can be allocated to students per se because it depends on any given year what the particular need will be um as a city. That is that is a hard difficulty to say in a particular given year if if the highest need will be to a trail that will be in New Vista or if there is a higher need at a recreation center that may need a a repair or maintenance need. So it may depend on the year I'm if I'm really being candid with you. And will you continue to levy that use tax on us? That is uh a policy choice and that is the right of a city to levy a construction use tax as per um the legislation. It is your
042right. It is a choice. So you are choosing to continue to levy the use tax on BBSD. Um that that is the case. I will note that we levy this use tax on ourselves. That's that's like a little let's put it over here in one account and it goes back. That's an accounting thing, Erin. It's not the same as when we give it to you. We don't get it back the way you get it back when you do it to yourself. Sure. Understood. My point is that the application of it is universal. So, we don't we don't carve out exceptions for other public entities um or ourselves. And well, I get that when it's ourselves, it's kind of going from one end to the other, but there other public entities also have that levied upon
043them. And are any of your public entities educating your school children? Uh I anybody know about our sources of use tax? I I don't know, but we can certainly But but I will note, Lenny, that that there are multitudinous city programs that directly benefit the students of BBSD, whether that be in parks or open space, our affordable housing program right there. Do do we have any estimates of how many BBSD students are in the city of Boulder affordable housing program? Um, we do, but I'm reluctant to pull a number um that may not be totally correct. But, um, a lot of our um, a lot of the students that go to the schools in the city of Boulder live in affordable housing. And if you take out the uh, the CU students out of the
044population of Boulder, about one in seven or one or one of eight people who live in the city of Boulder live in affordable housing. So almost by definition, a number of them are in in those homes. I'll continue to advocate for this loud and clear that we are providing excellent service, an excellent education that you are not going to find anywhere near us in any neighboring district in a very difficult circumstance. And frankly, and I will and I do not say this on behalf of the board. I say it on behalf of myself that I think you should be ashamed to levy that tax on us. That's $2 million last year and maybe another two this year that could be going to offset and help students be educated or get good, healthy school lunches. So
045I I am saying very loud and clear that I am not in favor of you continuing to do that. I want to say thank you for considering the multitude of ways that that you that tax is used and I appreciate you elevating South Boulder Rec Center. I know that's a topic that we have all received a lot of emails on maintain those facilities. I know our schools use those facilities. Our schools use the North Ber recreational facilities. So appreciate the partnership um in all of the ways that through housing, transportation, and our community use agreements that we are supporting students and it might not look ways it might not be obvious the way our partnerships apply across the board, but they they are deep and they are broaden. So I appreciate you recognizing that. And
046if I just might just and just to say that we are incredibly grateful and acknowledge the extraordinary quality of education that BBSD provides to our uh children here in the city of Boulder. You documented those statistics very well. So deeply deeply grateful um for that and for the relationship. But just note that I mean if we lose funding that's cuts in services to our residents in other areas. We're all public entities. We're working for the public good. So there's there there's not a no consequences way to talk about this. I was actually going to ask you had the topics of interest originally brought up. We talked about finances. It was sustainability, transportation, housing, public safety. Are there city council members that would like to pick from the poperri of choices? It we can share the
047back and forth of topics of joint interest. I saw Tara. I would be interested in your public safety um presentation and then Matt, your hand went hand went up. It did. Uh enrollment and housing. Do you want to start with those ones, Dr. Anderson? Yes, absolutely. Um I I may actually hand student safety over to to Rob Price. Rob, you've seen these slides probably a bunch of times. Yep. So, so why don't we get there and then we can go to declining enrollment. Matt, if that works. Uh, here I'm just going to turn this over to you, Rob. First of all, uh, great question and always appreciate this topic of conversation. So, when we think about safety in our schools, we think of it of a multiaceted approach when we look at it and broken
048down as follows. And a lot of this and I'll talk about it tonight. I cannot emphasize how great the partnership with the city of Boulder has been. Um I I think of the relationship with Chief Redern, the relationship with Ali Roads, Jay and Kurts. Um when we think about the work that we're doing right now with Brett Karn and others throughout the city, it I feel like it's never been stronger. Um so I just want to say thank you and I think that's a lot to uh Nura's leadership etc. But uh there is a lot of work that is happening and great work happening around safety and security. So all of these things when we think about it uh are that multi-dimensional approach. So training and exercises, doing a lot with the city of Boulder,
049Boulder County, physical security. We did a lot of work in the 2014 bond when we put in secure vestibules, uh door locks throughout all of our buildings, um uh video surveillance, some of those other things that we've done. uh security personnel. You might remember back um I'm trying to think when this was and somebody may remember we had a resolution uh 2020 um where we brought in what we call school safety advocates and we went through an extensive process and we did that in a number of ways but to look at discipline within our schools. Um schools resource officers were doing a phenomenal job. It was nothing of that. what was happening was within our our own um uh district is making unnecessary calls to law enforcement. Um so we brought our own staff in,
050we've trained those staff and it has been a phenomenal relationship that they have built with law enforcement as we've moved forward. So we have 11 school safety advocates, a number of them with uh law enforcement background um that work throughout the district. uh we have one assigned to every comprehensive high school. Then the other ones oversee elementaryaries and middle schools. So they are responsible for helping getting to know students working on that positive school culture along with teachers, counselors, others within the system. Um community partnerships talked about that emergency management again those are the tabletop exercises with our first responders. Uh now thinking a lot more about floods and wildfires etc. So, we've been doing a lot of work this year. Did a lot of work this year with our special education advisory committee just
051to make sure when we do have um uh incidents that happen in our schools that everybody is taken care of as we're thinking through that. Um so, this is the approach. It's not just one thing that we think about it, but it's a multiaceted approach as we approach every single uh day. um from a social, emotional, mental health perspective, uh this is the uh continuum of sports that we think about. So all students and staff um when you see that over on the left hand side, culturally responsive uh teaching practices that are taking place across all of our schools. Um doing a lot of work right now with schoolwide data. I believe there's a presentation coming up uh next Tuesday to the board on how well our seal components and supports are working. And then
052as you work further to the right hand side again that indivi individualized behavior intervention is not something that every student receives but those students that we have deemed uh necessary to receive that uh definitely do. um prevention and mitigation. As we talked about, this was a lot of the work that was done in the 2014 bond. A lot that is still occurring, but secure vestibules, you can see the electronic door locks, uh intrusion detection systems, um automatic lockdown response. We uh operate a 24/7, 365day uh security operations center here in this building. uh has been phenomenal working with our first responders because we all share the same radio network. That is something that just took place in the last year. Um a lot of times our first responders were reluctant. We have built that relationship.
053So now we have that immediate connection with them to be able to communicate in case of a crisis. um talked about our security personnel, but um security agents, we have a handful of security agents, again working around the clock. Uh campus safety monitors that we have those assigned at every single high school. Again, they're the eyes and ears. They're able to respond um to something if a principal or others in the building are unable to respond. And then as I talked about our school safety advocates, extensive uh hiring processes, uh extensive training, um and many of them again with law enforcement background. But what we are attempting to do is reduce the number of referrals to law enforcement. How can we handle a lot of that uh in our schools? And um a lot of
054that and it's rightfully on us disproportionate discipline. So we our data has changed significantly for the better. Um and we own that. But uh extremely extremely proud of the work that our SSAs, our school safety advocates have done. Really proud of the work the board did to put that resolution together. We worked with a number of committees, our district accountability committee, district parent councils, others to put this in place and I can't tell you I don't think anything has worked better. Um, this has been a model around the country. We're proud of a lot, but this is one that everyone should be extremely proud of. And and just to add on to that, Rob, uh, went from, you know, maybe hundreds of kids getting tickets or being arrested to, um, maybe 10 to 15 a
055year in a district with almost 30,000 students. Uh and and as Rob shared, you know, some of the things around safety and social emotional health and well-being have also uh resulted in significantly less exclusionary discipline for our students. In the past 5 years, we've cut the number of suspensions for Hispanic Latino students in half by 51%. Now, we're still disproportionate and uh and and uh and that is not that's something that we're continuing to work on, but the numbers of kids being excluded from classrooms for behaviors um and we're doing that through a blend of restorative practices. Um more focus on uh deescalation efforts and trying to be proactive in regards to social emotional health. Uh one of the things we didn't talk about is the wellness centers, our partnership with impact on education. And
056every one of our high schools has a wellness center um where if students are feeling uh that disregulated or they need somewhere to go, it just gives a lower entry point into accessing some of our our mental health services. And that's been a huge success. And we are excited. Next week we've partnered with the Renee Crown Wellness Institute at CU to really look at all of the investments that we are making around social emotional learning, mental health, what's working, how do we scale things that are working up and things that aren't working. How do we how how do we revisit those and either do those better or shift our efforts in other places? Alex, I saw you had a question. Then we'll get to you, Mark. Uh yeah. Uh if you can hear me. Um
057hey Rob, I think it would be helpful to give them a sense of how many intergovernmental collaborations it takes on our safety stuff. Could you just chat briefly about the number of like police and sheriff forces we interact with and how much coordination we're doing and the the proportion of our kids that actually are in Boulder? Yeah, Alex. Um, when I think about it, I it's we got what 11 different municipalities and when we think about police and fire um and everyone else. We recently just did a tabletop exercise with a Vista hospital if they were to evacuate and they needed our buses. uh similar to what the Marshall fire similar uh uh matter was like. But um this is the relationships that our safety and security team have built. Talk about Chief Redern meeting
058with our staff on a bi-weekly basis. Uh when we go through lockdowns, they just use New Vista for a training exercise. We want to make sure that we take advantage of every one of those opportunities. Um, but no, I I think Alex brings up we wouldn't be able to do this without um all of our partners as we think about moving forward. Um, the city of Boulder, one of the best to work with from that standpoint. So, thank you. Uh, the um the slide referenced the unique role of the school safety advocates. Can you describe what that role is for those of us who are not familiar? So, uh, back in 2020, our board passed a resolution to move away from having, um, officers in schools and to move to more of, um, of a
059of a of a different model. And so, we worked at the time with our district equity council. Uh, we worked with other community partners to really shape this role, define this role, name this role, create the qualifications to this role. So, at the time, our board invested about $2.5 million in staffing out safety staff within our school district. And um out of all this partnership and collaboration, the school safety advocate position um was developed. Uh we worked with with with community and really co co-created the role. What do they wear? What you know, what what types of training do they need to have? You know, these are experts in deescalation. as Rob said, many former uh police officers from from from our local municipalities. Um and so what hap what was happening, Mark, is uh
060an issue would happen in a classroom and a teacher would call police officer, school resource officer. Sometimes that would work okay. Other times, for for lots of reasons, things would get escalated and then things that were happening that should have been a discipline incident became um an interaction with law enforcement. And so, uh, we we have taken that that step out of the process, uh, where our school safety advocates will respond to situations and know and determine whether or not the police need to be involved. If there's if this is a school-based issue, can we get the parents involved? How do we deescalate? How do we begin to think about, you know, what would be the appropriate consequences to avoid recidivism, right? You know, unfortunately, you know, for somebody, I was a high school principal
061for eight years. you know, 90% of the issues is 10% of the students and uh you know, how do we break that cycle? Um and so we've been incredibly proud lot like Rob said, we've had a lot of national interest on how do you redesign and rethink what school safety can look like in a way uh that reduces student arrest, addresses disproportionate discipline, does you know treats kids the ways that that you want, but doesn't compromise on safety or order in your schools. And we haven't compromised either of those. and so uh really proud about that and but the school safety advocates are a key component of that. Um you touched on wildfire and I'm curious how you work with parents and the city on the strategy for evacuation in the case that the fire
062happened in school. We were really lucky with the Marshall fire, but we have a, you know, Fair View is large next to Southern Hills and we have Foothill by Iris and uh just curious how that all works and where people can get information. Um, right now and we've given a number of community presentations on this. I would say we have been working closely with Mike Chard and his team on wildfire mitigation. We just did a lot of work up in Netherland. Um, we probably had over 50 people sitting around doing a tabletop exercise. Uh, but this is a community, right? We've been working with Mar how would we evacuate students? We got really lucky during the Marshall fires to be honest with you. We, you know, the Monarch campuses, we had eight schools within those
063Marshall fires. Um, and I can't say we were prepared at the time. Um, out at the Monarch, we've put in some emergency access roads, but what would we do? Would we shelter in place? Would we evacuate? Having all of that thought through, where will we have buses? Right now on on high wind days, we are now pushing buses out to the schools, especially up at Netherland, Gold Hill, Jamestown. Um, and buses are sitting there on high wind days just in case we had a fire so we can evacuate immediately because if not, we don't know how long it'll take to get drivers to the schools, etc. So, um, I would just say a significant amount of tabletop exercises, thinking about doing wildfire mitigation. Again, we've done a lot of that around our mountain schools. We've
064done some of that down here around some of our Boulder schools. Um, and then just continuing to educate. But again, Mike has been phenomenal to work with. Um, just a great team. They involve us. Uh, we're always one of the first ones at the table when something goes down. Um, so you've got good people and I would say we still have work to do. Uh, but we're a lot more prepared than we were when the Marshall fire hit. So, which feels good. I was just going to add uh I happened to be we had a board meeting at um office of disaster management and Mike was sharing that he was doing recent tabletops and we're going to be engaging in more of those. Uh and I would say that while right now ODM is a
065Boulder County and city of Boulder endeavor, um there is interest from other cities and so I think we will be involving some of our um sort of regional cities uh more in some of those tabletop exercises because we know a fire jumps pretty quickly and it is not um limited to um one city. Uh so I think that will help um additional partners help in those endeavors. So, I think we're going to see even more of that continuity cuz the more people are trained in the same way, the faster response can happen um as we're doing that. So, I'm really excited about that. The other thing is you um and I appreciate the thanks for the city, but it goes both ways. We could not partner with you if you weren't open to that partnership.
066So, really thank you in those efforts. I know the chief has talked a lot about that. Uh and we just had last week a conversation with YOAB members, our youth opportunities advisory board. um students from all over um the district. And one of the things, one of the topics they brought was uh their interactions with um the police department. And the things that struck me the most and perhaps when I got here four years ago, the things I was hearing from Yoab was a bit of tension with our police department. And what I was hearing on this trip was how different that um relationship was, how uh much um they respected and how it changed their perspective on policing. It was such a different conversation and I just couldn't appreciate that partnership that we have
067with that youth opportunities advisory board and that relationship. So I just it's another one of those um sort of relationship building things that we have going on that I just lift up. So thanks for that. Any other questions or comments on safety before we move on to declining enrollment? There goes those five seconds. So that was very impressive, Nicole. I appreciate that. Uh um so I'll talk a little bit. Rob, maybe you can jump in as well and and talk about some of our enrollment trends. I don't think this is going to be a surprise to any of you all. Uh, and then we can talk a little bit, I don't have the slides, but we can certainly talk at length in regards to what are some of the efforts we're doing as a district
068as we begin to manage this dynamic in terms of declining enrollment. Um, these are the enrollment trends uh that that we have seen uh since 2014. And as you could see 2018 2019 pandemic we saw a drop recovered a little and then we've been continuing to decline. I will say this two years in a row we've cut our declining enrollment in half. So three years ago 2% two years ago 1% this past year half percent of a decline in enrollment. And uh we would attribute those declines to to a couple of strategies. Uh, one of the things that we've really done is try to open up the idea of of letting our community and folks that live outside of our community know and understand the incredible offerings and programs within our school district. So, two
069years ago and uh this idea I think stemmed from a conversation I had with Tina uh when she was on the board uh we we called it the BBSD is the place to be showcase where we have all of our schools. We rent out the CU Events Center and we we advertise far and wide about the amazing programs at each and every one of our schools. We have our departments. It's a community event. Um had that two years ago. And then this past year in addition to the the showcase, we created an enrollment preference called the Bright Futures Enrollment Preference. Uh and so student so so families or or parents that are already um commuting into the city are able to get an enrollment preference to enroll their kids um in the city in which
070they work and really expanding that idea of community not just the folks who live here directly but those who work here as well. Um and uh we had I think over 300 uh families qualify for uh for that over this past year during open enrollment. And so I do think that there's some factors that we're monitoring as we think about enrollment for next year. Uh the impact of immigration policies, federal immigration policies, I think is something that we're worrying about. The um you know you know what happens with so many of the grant- driven jobs that that are um that are here and within our community. Uh and so those those are different factors that may impact our trends. Uh but we we look to continue to think about different ways in which we can
071make sure that our student enrollment both at this the district level and individual schools um gives us enough kids to provide a highquality education uh no matter where you go to school. I will say that uh that that the declines in in Boulder have been some of the greatest as you think about um comparing that to some of our uh some of our um comparison communities. But there is light at the end of the tuttle tunnel. We are seeing a leveling out. Although we've seen been seeing declining birth rates, we are seeing a bit of a leveling out of of birth rates uh here both in Boulder and in in the district at large. And so uh this is we don't think that this is a permanent situation in terms of declining forever. Uh we
072do think that those numbers will flatten out, but our our most recent projections have us continuing to decline over the next five years and then more of a leving leveling out um uh process. So in terms of declining enrollment at our schools uh in our school district and and and looking at our school footprint and and and what are the things that we need to address uh I think it was three years ago um with board direction we developed the long-range advisory committee which is a committee made up of of community members to think about what are the things that we need to do collectively um to keep an eye on declining enrollment. You know, I think our biggest worry is if you if you don't keep your eye on the ball, all of a
073sudden you have don't have enough kids and then you're you're making knee-jerk reactions around school closures. That can be divisive. And um you know, we it's at least once every other week I hear about a story from 2003 when the district closed schools and the horror situation around that. We've tried to really be proactive in thinking about what are the things that we can do. And so uh we've created a matrix um a decision-making matrix and and created categories um for schools uh that fall below a couple of thresholds in terms of um uh and we're focusing on elementary schools. The number of teachers per grade like how many kids are there and how many teachers per grade does do we have to allocate and then the overall um capacity of the school. And then
074once you get below two teachers per grade and below a 50% capacity, we create a community engagement process. We that's we call it that the engagement process. This happened at Heatherwood um elementary school up in Gun Barrel where we took uh eight months to engage the community to think about a why aren't families that live in that community going to the school? Uh we feel like there's 5% of our families that are either homeschooling private schools. We want all those kids to come back to BBSD. Um and so and so did some thinking about why aren't kids coming to the school and what it is that we could offer and change about the school to increase enrollment to so you could get to that place where you have two at least two teachers per grade
075and your enrollment is above 50%. Uh and so at Heatherwood this next school year um and and folks were able to open enroll into this program. They have settled on developing an e steam an environmental steam program which is really cool. And when we look back on how the process and that program and this is the communitydriven co-created process um for the kids that were zoned that weren't already at Heatherwood that lived in the Heatherwood zone that were going to Heatherwood next year um not one of those kids decided not to go there and so we know the process can work. Um we're being very transparent. We we we provide this report in in February of every year. Um, in addition, we're in the process of looking at our attendance boundaries for the first time
076since the dawn of time. Um, like it's literally been, I don't know, uh, a comprehensive view of your attendance boundaries. Uh, it is tricky because when you combine attendance boundaries with the idea that any kid in the state of Colorado, as long as there's room at a school, can go to any school they'd like to, as long as they can get there, uh, it's it's you just can't redraw attendance boundaries and redistribute students. there's some other things that you have to consider. Um, we're in the process of of of working through that uh with our board now. Um, and we'll continue to look at other opportunities as we move forward to really protect that that student experience in terms of declining enrollment. So, I don't know if you have anything to add, Rob, but that's
077kind of the overarching. I would say another way to just think about this. We in in city of Boulder, we have capacity for about 7,100 students and we have 4,600 students filling those seats. Um, so we're about 65% right now and in 5 years from now we're looking at being about 59%. Um, so as Dr. Anderson talked about, some of it's declining birth rates. A lot of it is is aging in place. We're not seeing neighborhoods turn over like we did at one time. Um, and some of that's probably due to affordability, lack of housing, etc. Um, etc. that we all know about. But, um, just to be transparent, uh, we're looking at attendance boundaries. We're trying micro moves, but we we have a lot of open seats right now in the city of Boulder.
078Um, I think my question would be to Nura is, um, how does the city want to be involved in this moving forward? Does the city want to be involved? Do you want us to update you in any way? Um but uh it would be a conversation to have so no one is surprised um as we're moving forward in the future. Absolutely. And I I think it's not just me. I bet you every council member here uh wants to be involved in that conversation. I know we meet quarterly and have conversations about this all the time. Uh and I'm sure council members can speak to this as well, but it is part of um council priorities as we're thinking about um where do we find more affordable housing? Where do we find? We've got a family
079uh vibrant familyfriendly um neighborhood. What is the thing? Family friendly vibrant vibrant neighborhood. We need a better name council members for that council priority. Um but we really are looking for ways in which we support um sort of missing middle housing, familyfriendly housing. We think it's just as important as you do to make sure that families are living here. The other piece I'll say is that we're in the middle of thinking about our Boulder Valley comp plan and um that is uh a key priority as we're thinking about the the future of our community. where can we create increased residential opportunities um that are really focused on families? And that takes a different kind of um approach to types of housing that are not just affordable, but that actually think about multigenerational that think about
080um broader, you know, more than just two apartments. if you're thinking about that that are housing types that really think about um children u in their mind the 15minute neighborhood uh concept too is where do families want to be where they have a park where they have a school where they have um options that are attractive to families Matt I see you have your hand up if you wanted to add yeah I mean somewhat a question then maybe a follow-up comment I mean I think Nura is right I think we're very interested and and I might try to more focus that I think one of the biggest challenge we face is and this is why you know transit oriented communities bill at the state level and some of our work with the family-friendly vibrant neighborhoods
081and sort of duplexes enabling really has to do with the schools west of Broadway. I think that's sort of the acute issue that I think a lot of us in the city are are looking at in that enrollment and we get that open enrollment and the shuffle it creates can kind of mask maybe some of the underlying enrollment issues about how many local nearby students are actually populating that school. And and when we look at the enrollment matrix, we see those diving off a bit. And so the real question is and I think where the partnership resides is how can you guys help point us to where those urgencies are because changing housing policy has a lag before the impact is felt. And if you guys are starting to think, hey, you know what, we're
082maybe 3 to 5 years out from a couple of these schools, you know, really looking to be on the chopping block. that maybe helps us focus on those neighborhoods more acutely to realize that policies we set now may help stabilize the families or provide more stable environments so we can help together head off at the pass any potential closures of those schools. And so I think that's really where I think there's a great partnership to be had and where that nexus relies solely with housing and transportation because we understand that open enrollment creates the you know beehive effect of people whipping around the community and so where do our VMT and sustainability goals align with yours and where does open enrollment play with that? So I think that's something that I think on a regular
083basis we would be very interested in having that collaboration and getting as much lead time of when those decisions may happen so that we can act with the longer runway of where our housing policies um can be focused. Is it rental? Is it this turnover issue with regards to people aging in place? These are all things that we have a few levers to use and if you help us focus and understand where to use them then we can really focus our our energy on those areas and really stabilize those neighborhoods. I appreciate the willingness or the interest in the behalf of the city. We talk a lot about the types of housing our families live in and the types of housing our families choose not to live in and how that drives some patterns even
084from our students. Uh in the McKini Vento program, there's a need for units that are three plus bedrooms. If you have like so those larger unit housing options are are really where we see families living and and we have a lot of data on that. the board gets those presentations. And so if there's interest in where the types of housing and where our students are and if there's a partnership there, I think it really is going to take us all working together to address this issue because it's not it's birth rates and it's housing affordability for our students and for our staff. It's it's all of the things. And so working together, I would really second that. So that data would be great coinciding with our Boulder Valley Comp plan conversation because then we can
085turn staff in to help sort of figure out where those pieces are. So that'd be amazing. Dr. Anderson. Then I saw Alex's hand up on mine. So Matt, I'm going to make your day right now. Um, we have a uh a declining enrollment dashboard. I'm not sure if you've had an opportunity to access that. And so maybe maybe I'm not making your day. Maybe this is old news to you. Uh, in any event, for the community, uh, we have been we we are attempting to be incredibly transparent in terms of the enrollment per schools. who's going, who's open and rolling in, who's open and rolling out, what are what are the challenges? And so, uh, through, uh, through our through the leadership of our board over this past semester, we've developed, I think, some of
086the most comprehensive enrollment dashboards that you'd find across the state, if not the country. Uh, and and so I do think that we have got the mechanism in place to look at the data. I do think that there is a lot of sense in in partnering as we think about um if the goal is to keep our schools full so every neighborhood has a walkable school where you can ride your bike, your SC your scooter, your skateboard. Uh I've also pulled this slide up as we were talking right now and we would love to see this number higher but 30% of our kids walk and bike to school. Um uh but that 40% single family car mat you know really you know speaks to this idea of a lot of folks because they aren't within
087walking distance or because they're not going to get on a bus or driving around. We would want that would align to our green BVSD action plan goals to reduce that more walking more biking uh for sure. So uh it's really great to know that we're on the same page in regards to what it is we're hoping to do. How can we uh make sure that we're keeping each other in the loop and working together and so we're creating solutions and synergies that that help us fix the issues? Um I'd just like to raise a couple issues. Totally agree with um what's been said so far. I would add in addition to the you know the familyfriendly homes that come from larger size and spaces for the kids, the other thing is to look at ownership
088versus renters. Um, and so we know that the families that are owning are more likely to have uh more kids who are involved in the schools. I'd also um point out that our long range advisory council starts with the word long range on purpose and that we don't have a process that leads to the um the quick closure of any schools, nor do we have any uh that are in that process far along that are likely to be closed in the next few years. we're likely to have community engaged processes with more schools. Um, but uh closure in the short to medium term is is fairly unlikely. And then finally, I think it's really important to understand how many of our Boulder BBSD families exercise public school choice. We're a net gainer of about 1,400
089kids that come into the district. Uh we get like 2,400 in and,00 going out. Um if you on the back of an envelope basically two out of five Boulder families or families in BBSD open enroll into their school of choice and that's just an inherent part and it creates um transportation issues, management issues, but it's also pretty key to making families feel like they're getting the school their kid needs. So um I push back often on people like, "Well, this choice stuff is really kind of inconvenient. We need to make sure people go to their family schools." I'm like, well, you tell two out of five families that they need to that they're making the wrong choice. So, I think we need to embrace our public school choice, support it, make all our schools attractive,
090and support our communities by making each school in each neighborhood a kind of place where you'd be delighted to go. But know that in Colorado, we're going to always have a lot of families um looking for a different great school to send their kid to. And that's part of our system being successful is having that be a good thing everywhere. Yeah, we just wanted to follow up just a little bit more on the comprehensive plan. I just would love for you all to be engaged with that process. We it'll be about over the next 16 months, but we'll be looking at things like potentially would we allow duplexes in more places. And if you think about if there's a single lot that has a single family home versus a duplex, if it's a duplex, that's
091twice as likely that there'll be a family in BBSD schools. So, you know, those are some of the measures that we could be taking that could help with declining enrollment. So really encourage you all to engage with that process over this coming year, year and a half. Uh it would also be helpful if you had data about the ownership piece. Um whether there's any data around uh we do have a lot of rentals where our rental numbers keep increasing in Boulder rather than ownership. So I was just going to double down on the data. This to me seems a really an area ripe for I know your dashboards, our data particularly um in conjunction with the comp plan piece where we share our data. I think it just has uh great opportunity um to think
092about some early warning systems. I know closure isn't eminent. where can we actually start to think about um those areas where there will be some warning signs and we can start to overlay some of the demographics because there's also equity issues in in communities where I have seen school closures happen before communities most impacted seem to be lower income and frankly communities of color. How can we not have that happen where frankly we are trying to keep and add diversity to this rich community? That is not what we intend to hear. there are unintended consequences. We are not being mindful of that. And so there are opportunities here to be really lean into the data and make sure that we are actually encouraging um the the very outcomes that we want to see here. So
093there is uh conversation to be had about how do we um converge our data more purposefully as we think about this work. Love it and would love to be involved. Um I think that it makes a ton of sense. I will I will say and Alex you know mentioned this that our process is intended to be proactive and no surprises right I think that this goes really wrong in communities nura like you know that you know you you you kick the can on the problem you don't look at it then all of a sudden you got to close the schools and where do you look right you know potentially the the the places where you wouldn't you'd get the least amount of uproar from community about closing schools right and you've see this across the
094country you know we're committed to not making sure that we don't do that um being open, honest. I mean, the issues are the issues and being clear, but uh we're not trying to sneak up on anybody. And if I can add reinforce something Tina said, I mean, I think home ownership is a big part of this. And um in my reading of the research, when property values go up for rentals, your birth rate goes down. And when property values go up and people own houses, the birth rates actually go up. So, um, in addition to making trying to make Boulder an affordable place for as many people as we can, emphasizing families in that, I think that affordable ownership is a real proschool priority. Can I just say our wait time at our meetings is
095about a third of that one. I keep waiting for something to happen. Hey, Ryan. Well, I have a possible new topic if if we're getting to that point. I just there was some wait time, so I thought I'd rather too, but I just wanted to raise my hand for a possible new topic when it's time. I think now now is a great time unless there are other questions or comments around housing and declining enrollment. Take it away. I have a potentially a question about transportation, but I know that topic's on the list of of your possible briefings, Rob. So, I'm wondering, do do we have time? Are you still doing briefings? Yes. Yes, absolutely. I appreciate that. And so, um, Rob, I think I'm going to turn this over to you to to kind of
096walk through uh where we are. Happy to. So, Dr. Anderson went through a few of our percentages. When you think of the 27,000 plus students we have about 11 11,000 uh uh families make a decision every single day to drive uh their students to school. Um as Dr. Anderson mentioned three times the national average uh and BBSD walk or bike and then we transport about 5600 students every single day uh through the school bus. As most of you have known, we've really struggled with a school bus driver shortage for uh really since the pandemic, and we're finally starting to get out of that. So, we're in a much better position uh today than where we were at uh several years ago, but um doing much better. Uh thanks to everyone through RTD, we have doubled
097our wrership on RTD since the zero affairs for all uh or for youth, I should say. And then working through Dr. COG about 4% of our families car pool through school. None of these numbers are exact. This is part of our sustainability action plan, but through surveys and others, we've captured this information. I will say this is a goal through 2026 to get more accurate data, but this is the best we know today. Um, you can see this is a little bit about our bus fleet. I'm not going to go into this, but we run about 130 buses a day. And if I had one request from the city and I don't know how valid this is is to give us a seat on the transportation advisory board. I do believe there is some collaboration
098that can happen there. We have a lot of duplication of efforts uh as we think about transportation in the long term. I think we all have our own sustainability goals. Uh but how do we collaborate and do a little better job of having reducing this reduction of service? I think it we can find some efficiencies there. Uh but that would be one request going into the future. Um just have a voice. Uh I know our safer routes to school team has done a phenomenal job working with the city, your transportation engineers, etc. But just some long-term planning can take place there. Uh we did have we have an a sustainability action plan that was 2021 and that extends through 2026. You can see that we had some goals that were outlined. Those we have exceeded
099those goals. We have dropped our carbon emissions by uh 30%. A lot of that was done through route reduction. So we went from 186 routes in 2020 time frame and now we are at 130 routes districtwide. So we're extremely proud of that. Still a lot of work uh to be done. We have nine electric buses. We have four more electric buses uh on order. Our board of education is extremely interested in adding mortar fleet. So we continue to look at rebates, grants, etc. As you all know, federal funding is extremely hard and much of it will probably go away. So it's extremely risky for us to continue to rely on federal funding uh for electric school buses etc. But it is our desire um and goals of the district. And then other sustainability options uh
100talked about RTD wrership again fantastic partners Dr. Cog um walking and biking uh exceeds the national average. We have brought back bicycle education Amy Thompson is leading that work. Um you can see what she has been able to accomplish just this year. And then I think one of the most successful uh programs with the city of Boulder is Trip Tracker. Right now, uh, we have, I believe, almost every school in the city of Boulder, including our high schools, and now we have other municipalities, Erie, Lafayette, Broomfield also participating in that work. Um, so, thank you for continuing to fund that. Thank you for standing behind that uh because that encourages a lot of our families uh to continue to make uh good decisions um for the environment. So with that, I would open it up
101um for any questions around transportation. Thank you. I Okay, I do have one question. Um, so I'm thinking about the I know there's a really rich, excuse me, collaboration with staff and uh between the two agencies and um the city of Boulder's transportation staff is just doing an incredible amount of work to bring forward proposals to restructure, rebalance our streets um that are going to create new thoroughares for kids to be able to bike and walk to school. Um and a much of the much of that comes to city council. It has come to us um in different forms. We have a vision zero action plan that city council sees regularly. Um we're we're you know formally approving or going in the future we'll consider proposals for road diets on I two two more roads
102ahead of us. Um so at the council level at the elected level we're we're pretty involved with with helping to enable and support that. So my question uh to President Rush Paul I suppose then and um the board is what are the kinds of things that the board thinks about with respect to um unlocking enabling supporting transportation from the BBSD side and um yeah that's that's the question leave at that by unlocking transportation what do you what do you mean so so Sorry, lot of short hand. Um, you know those numbers that I think it was 30% of kids walking biking to school, they're doing that because it's perceive it or their parents perceive it to be safe enough, right? And so those I think the evidence shows that those numbers will increase as we
103increase the supply of comfort and convenience and perceived safety. So that happens through the decisions of electeds. And I'm just I know that we as the city elected body are actively working to create that new supply of of better experience. So yeah, I'm just wondering if this is a topic that comes to BBSD board and maybe it doesn't. So I'm just sort of curious what that looks like. We had a couple weeks ago a very two and a half two and a half hours just talking about transportation and sustainability. So it is something that we talk about. We talk and we do work really closely with state safe routes to school. So when we hear complaints from families about paths that they do not feel are safe to trans to to walk or bike to
104school. We work the staff works with safe routes to school to kind of problem solve around there whether it's and that's in different localities whether it's around changing the path of like underpasses, overpasses, different lights, different types of things. We it's something we are thinking about. um not not a huge priority, but it is built in within our sustainability and our transportation planning. And I think the the trip trackers and some of those alternative programs really are impactful. And the more kids I would say even I would the RTD bus participation when a couple years ago my kiddos would take the skip to school and they were the only middle schoolers on the skip and more year over year over year and particularly as it became free you see far more kids participating in the
105that RTD program and I think it's the same in the bikes I live in North Boulder we see I see a big group of kids every morning biking from my neighborhood out to Centennial they kind of go as a group. So, it's that cultivating a community around that at the site has been really successful as well. And then alternative if Rob, if you had anything to add, I can um I would say the work the board does is guides us with policy. Um and we have set a lot of goals in our sustainability action plan. We have policies that guide this work. Um we are very invested in this. We meet with your staff, if not a weekly basis, on a bi-weekly basis. I do feel like every time the city has a big initiative,
106if they're going for grants, safe for routes of school grants or anything, we're first at the table to have that discussion. Uh we've been at these discussions about a rapo that could be 10 or 20 years out from now. We've been very engaged in that work. Um but you know, if if it were um to me a lot of the challenges that we have in the city of Boulder is a lack of adults, um crossing guards, etc. when we really think about it, a lot of the infrastructure is there, but you can't change the habit of drivers, distracted drivers, etc. So, I still go back and that is something that we've struggled with funding. We've a number of schools do it really well relying on volunteers, but even since the pandemic, relying on volunteers has
107been challenging. So, um that is something we continue to have a discussion about. I've got a couple schools right now that come to mind that um if I just had a few adults out there, we could really do away with a lot of the challenges that we're facing dealing with that 40% number, right? We talk a lot about safety and security in our buildings. We talk very little about the safety on our exterior of our buildings and there's probably more danger out there trying to cross the streets than there is once you get inside the four walls. So, uh we talk about this a lot. Um but as we've also talked about tonight, we're very constrained. Um but if we were to focus going forward, I think we continue to work together. We have a
108seat at the transportation advisory board, but I would like to see us all have a discussion about crossing guards. I know Fort Collins has done this really well de developing a sustainable crossing guard program. They've done that between Pter School District and the city of Fort Collins. Um and how can we do that? How can we sustain that? Um because with the lack of adults, we've got kids on electric bikes that are going 40 m an hour. They don't stop and look going a crosswalk. We can provide a lot of training. They're still kids. Um so, uh if I were to advocate, I would advocate for that. Um the board definitely has guided my work. Um and that's guided through policy. Um, and uh, I think it's it does sometimes go to staff, but if
109I was looking at the policy makers here, I would advocate for um, thinking about a crossing guard program and how can we sustain it in the long term and I piggyback sorry and then Tara on that year over the past couple years and even just the past couple months the number of concerned messages I've been receiving around ebikes and some of the ebike rules in the city and where they're allowed and where they're not allowed and who can ride. It's becoming problematic for a lot of our our our school staff and kids that go to our schools. Um so some of that ebike safety and having communitywide ordinances or rules around the ebikes would be immensely appreciated by a lot of the folks in our schools. So sorry for you said ebikes and that reminded
110me of that. Tira, hand it over to you. So a few questions first. Um when it Sorry. When it comes to ebikes, you want us to make ordinances for the kids. Is that what you're saying? So, do you offer training programs for them? You said you did, but you just need enforcement or something like that. You know, there there's a lot of work here and I would be happy to get with Amy. Some of the what is happening is we're going out and students are buying bikes and then they're finding ways to get around. I'm going to call it a governor and how fast the bike can go and it goes from, you know, supposed to be 50 miles an hour. Now it's going up to 50 miles an hour. I do believe some of
111them are very fast and I think we're seeing those throughout the city. Um, so a lot of it is on our side from a bicycle education standpoint, but I do believe there should be some state laws or something else around there governing what is able to be sold to an appropriate age um when we're thinking about electric bikes, scooters, etc. Okay. And and then, you know, how do you safely navigate some of our crossings, etc. um even as an adult driver sometimes in the city of Boulder, there's a lot going on at these intersections and we ask our young students to navigate these and I think that goes back to having adults present etc. Um so but happy that Amy Thompson just presented in Washington DC at the capital on the importance of electric bike
112infrastructure uh education etc and would be happy to get that information to the council. Okay, great. The second question I have, did it just leave my mind to come back? Um, is Oh yeah, you said that when parents have issues with particular streets or underpasses, they give that information to whom? It depends. Sometimes it comes through us, sometimes it goes directly to the city of Boulder, your transportation engineers. Is there any way for us to see some of that information so we can be kept? It depends on if it comes. Sometimes it comes through the through the portal through the inquir boulder. Sometimes it comes to you all directly. So certainly we can take a look at it. I'm just thinking like specifically the parents. Let's say the parents will say this X street or
113underpass is problematic. It would be great for it to be on our my radar or I'm sure I speak for all of us to know so that we could focus on it. Sometimes it's through council emails. If it comes through us, we can certainly take a look and sort of gather what that looks like, but some of it's the emails that comes directly to you and if it's coming through you and we don't know about it, certainly happy to get that. We definitely have that list. So, yeah, this is a topic we Oh, sorry, Alex. Well, I was going to say I would just weigh in um on two things. Uh one is I think it would be great to figure out what information we're not sharing and what information we have we can give
114each other. So to the extent we we know something you don't know and you know something we don't know, it'd be great to be on the same page. Um I'd also add on the I think our bike training from Amy is aimed at younger kids introducing them to bike safety at a young age and I'm not aware of programs for the older kids who might be who are more likely to access the ebikes. Although I have neighbors who are like eight years old on ebikes that are scare me. Um I think the other thing to keep in mind is that with the um the family ebikes where people have got their little kids on the back of their bike actually the the lit are longer than they would have been. So you might be thinking
115oh the bike is what people are going to use within this mile and a half. And I think with the ebike uh infrastructure now people will be that do want to bike uh will be biking further. So we might have to think farther out from the schools to understand the pathways. But in general I think the most actionable thing is figuring out how we identify any gaps in our data sharing and how we can facilitate knowing as much as each other knows on this stuff. Sorry. Um, I was just I'm really grateful for this conversation. We've talked about this a lot at the schoolboard. I've raised this a few times. Um, you know, my three kids are in that statistics of walking, biking to school and and almost every day we take our lives in
116our hands as we cross Broadway or cross, you know, um, all sorts of intersections. And so, you know, this but this conversation really gives me hope because, you know, Rob, your suggestions for, you know, having a seat on the transportation advisory board, um, data sharing, you know, crossing guards, it's such a simple thing, but I think having more adults present. Um, and so here's some, you know, real like concrete steps that we can take together. But I think Tara to your question, you know, if we let's say parents or other people identify particular dangerous intersections or um you know places that are unsafe, you know that I know we know the long-term planning that's that's in effect, you know, between the city and the district and the collaboration, but what happens like let's say somebody
117identifies, you know, the um you know, Norwood and and 19th Street is a death trap, you know, for my my kid going to Centennial Middle School because kids people race over that hill and you know we've people have have complained about it and not this is not just about my kids but I think speaking for you know parents of of any kid who rides their bike to school uh but what happens like what happens when somebody complains about that you know does is there an immediate um response I think that's where if we could start to get some steps on um again this is our responsibility as much as this the cities but I think here's an area where if there's a process for this we should at least let people know what happens once
118people have identified problematic areas. I think it it depends on the type of the problem, but it'd be great to start to get to know what it is because intersections are problematic for different reasons. Um it could be um the way the corner is. It could be the height of the slope and how it's coming down. It could be a variety of different things. So, we would have our engineers go out there and go take a look at it, tell us what's going on. Hopefully getting that data together would be great, but it starts with that conversation. So I think um this is a great for that very reason. This is a great start. Let's get that data together and let's have a conversation with frankly the experts because that is not me. Let's get
119our experts together and have that conversation. On that, just on a positive note, I I wanted to not not just be critical, but also uh one of my kids goes to Creekide and before a number of road improvements were made in the Martin Acres neighborhood, uh I think at field day or some event at school, there were city uh folks there with maps and post-it notes asking for feedback from the community and from parents on kind of where are the dangerous intersections, you know, where are the um troublesome areas. And so, uh, and you can actually see that reflected in the construction that's happening now. And so, um, just appreciative of that those efforts, the efforts of council and your leadership, um, and hopefully just more of those things happening because I think that's that
120kind of partnership is really essential. Appreciate that. While we're talking about um electric vehicles, I was curious uh it was a number of years ago I was fortunate enough to join some of my colleagues, certainly some of you all and Governor Polus for your first electric school bus, which I believe might have been certainly the first in the state and maybe first even maybe nationally. I I it was certainly way up there. Um I'm just curious where is that where is that program? H have you been expanding that? And I'm just sort of curious because we've now purchased two electric fire trucks. So, we're in that process. So, I'm just I'm just curious where you are in sort of electrifying your fleet. We just had an hour and a half discussion about this. Is that
121right? It was like two two and a half. So, uh so yes, and thank you for highlighting that work. Um we now have nine electric buses in the fleet. We have another four more on order. Uh we're I mean we're running into a number of challenges. one that the price of a bus, you know, for electric's $400,000 compared to a diesel or a propane bus, which is about $150,000. So, the really the only way we can afford to get electric buses is through grants and rebates. And right now at the federal level, they've pretty much done away with all grants um for electric buses. Excel has a little bit of money out there, but one of the bigger challenges we had is just the charging infrastructure. it's 18 to 24 months uh to get it
122in. A number of the uh manufacturers that are out there are no longer in business. So then we're dealing with chargers that, you know, how do we maintain them and warranty them, etc. Uh so we've ran into a number of hurdles. Uh we're very proud of what we've been able to accomplish. Um but we're going to have to relay on grants and rebates in order to continue to add. Um I'm I'm speaking on behalf of the district and feel free. But um it's a priority. It's in our sustainability action plan. It's part of our Green New Deal uh resolution. But with that, I mean, right now um we really need to rely on those grants and rebates to bring in more when we have them. They work well. It's just uh money is a factor
123right now. I'd say money and uh now what the impact of tariffs are going to be. I think it's going to be I was just up at VIA and they were having similar problems and supply issues and so I think it's going to impact us all as we're thinking about expanding our uh electric uh charging infrastructure. So I I think we're going to be sort of in similar boats and having similar conversations as we see fluctuations and um how we're going to get some of those um parts and pieces from abroad as we continue to look at that. So more to come on that. Just seeing that people might be ending. I wanted to make just one more comment and then I'll step down. Um so thanks for the discussion and Rob both Robs for
124all of that. Um I think oh could you show the pie chart? Is that possible? the mode mod split pie chart, please. And while you're doing that, I'll just start to say um the I have have a lot of confidence that at this at the staff level between the city and BBSD, there's probably a lot of alignment between like change model like what what we're trying to do, what we need to do. Um, and Rob, I hear you your your suggestion for BVSSD to be part of TAB. And I really like the idea of of some kind of um greater um kind of higher level alignment between development between the two bodies. Um and and I think that if you look at this pie chart and we think about what goals we might have to
125me it increasing that walking Viking share quite a bit and and maybe the bus one too the question become like safe go to go from 30 to 40 or 50%. the question becomes like well how do we do it and I think staff will have some ideas but it will what they come up with will will require these these bodies to to take action and it's not intuitive I think generally to these bodies what that action is. So, um, I guess what I'm sort of pro providing as a suggestion is I I do think there's a there's a good opportunity to create some maybe more political or elected level alignment on those topics because a lot of these issues are not they're not intuitive um to nonexperts in this field. So, um I just I'd
126like to think about the tab suggestion more, but more broadly, I I like the idea that we come up with some kind of uh coming back together at at this level on on the subject. Thanks. Thanks for that, Brian. I I do believe that us working together, you know, is is going to make the difference. Uh, one of the things our board is is con contemplating is these attendance boundaries for our schools and um are the boundaries drawn in a way where kids have a safe way to drive to be able to ride their bike or walk to school. So that is one thing. Uh and again I think that that this has been this conversation has been a great starting point. Um, and as you all direct Nura and our board directs me and
127we have our staffs that we direct, I think that there can be uh this could be a point in time that really has made a difference for our community around this topic. So, I appreciate everybody sharing their thoughts and ideas uh and uh that this you know these these meetings and we've had these meetings in the past. I really feel like this meeting is a different like a coming together of entities to really help and support our community. So, I just want to just appreciate everybody And I just want to add the complexity of open enrollment on this making a an appreciable shift in this pie chart will always be a constraint. You have a family that lives in North Boulder and they want to open a role to South Boulder or vice versa. It's
128going to be really challenging to get those folks to walk or bike. People with mobility issues cannot walk or that may not be able to walk or bike. So there are some limiting factors into while we continue to plug away and do better that we can't there will be some hurdles that we are just have to be realistic in not being able to overcome because of the access to school choice and that it just does create a different dynamic. Yeah. And it it would be helpful if we do have another conversation just to understand if this is specific to the city of Boulder and if there are some GE geographies that have higher walking and biking so we understand it better. Um and then understanding what the impact is of not providing transportation to after
129school athletic events. So we are now relying on students to drive themselves. So, it's not it. So, um that's one comment and interesting talking to Principal Ramsey out in Broomfield. She I was there for an event, their parking lot was full. There are street signs all around the high school saying that you students cannot park. And she made a comment that when uh the graduated licensing program went into place and the rules around how many students can be in one vehicle that she could she said I could build a multi-level parking garage and not have enough space for all the cars because because of the activities and having to drive to them because of the graduated license requirements that basically prohibits car pooling for for newly new drivers. There's a lot of different things that
130do impact. So, I I appreciate you elevating the athletics and activities and lack of busing for some of those folks that are staying after school for any any reason whatsoever. Sorry. Can I call Do you call here? Is that a thing? No. Oh, okay. It's just when you say something about what somebody else said. Would that be okay if I just So, I I thought that was an interesting um thing you suggested, Tina. I when I when I think about what students might do, they could also ride a bike. they could also ride an ebike and and part of the story here about ebikes is like this what an incredible opportunity to give students an alternative to driving but we have a lot of work to do to make the system work right and I
131think often ebikes there's like a an instinct that we have and I certainly have when I see a 13-year-old with two girls with no helmets on or their helmets are on the handlebars to be afraid but but it's such an incredible technological opportunity to free people from their cars and um if we can do that together. So I think it's really exciting but this gets again to the kind of higher level strategic structural work we have to do. So thank you for the call. Any other questions or comments on transportation? I I would just add that um student equity is a huge priority for the district and to Tina's point thinking about um after school programs and access to the things that are fun in school. Uh we want to make sure that any kid
132who wants to do fun stuff is getting to do fun stuff. And uh we have a certain amount of the cool things at Apex or in our other uh grad plus stuff that are getting kids from one campus to another in high school. So we have things that generate traffic that generate people staying that add to the transportation wos. And I I totally agree that the opportunity to collaborate so that we can make more safe and effective bus routes, manage the electric bikes, bikes uh in a way that's forward-looking and safe and still increasing use um while encouraging the kids to enjoy themselves. Like I I hate whenever we think about a solution that makes fewer kids do something that's fun. So I like to keep fun in the mix. We're approaching 8 o'clock and
133I actually realize that while we still have work to do, I don't know how much time we had allotted Boulder City Council and how much time you would like to spend with us this evening. And so I want to be mindful and respectful of everybody's time. If we have additional questions on some of the other topics, I'd be happy to carry on with those at the will of the council members. And if not, I'd happy to be adjourn the council members portion of our work session as well. Seeing as there are no further questions, thank you so much for coming here tonight. I actually agree with Dr. Anderson that this is pro felt like it was the most interactive, engaging, productive conversation that the school board has had in my tenure with the Boulder City
134Council. ly I really appreciate the candid conversation, our joint interest in working together to tackle some really hard and challenging issues that are facing our community and the continued partnership is very much welcome. So, thank you for taking the time to join us this evening. Well, thank you so much for having us. It's been a wonderful and important discussion. Uh so really appreciate the hosting and the delicious meal as well. I look forward to the next one. We're just going to take a little bit of a break, board members, before we move on with the rest of our agenda so we can say goodbye to the council members. [Music] Alex, are you here? I am. Thank you board members. The next item on our agenda this evening as indicated is the executive session. The board
135has issues issues to discuss in executive session. Is there a motion? I, Jorge Chavez, make a motion pursuant to CRS24-6-424F to convene into executive session to discuss personnel matters regarding Dan Greenberg and pursuant to CRS 24-6-424B to receive legal advice regarding the teacher dismissal process and litigation related to Dan Greenberg. Is there a second? Seconded by Basselor. Can you please call the role? Chavez, yes. Medler, yes. Nesnik, yes. Quinn Linua, yes. Raj Paul, yes. Sergeant, yes. Anger, yes. Motion passes. Board members, we will now convene in the glacier room. Uh, Kathleen, can you call call me on so when you're ready? Board members, any discussion on this item? Seeing as there are none, Laura, can you please call the role the vote? Chavez, yes. Medler, yes. Nisnik, yes. Quinn Aea, yes. Raj Paul, yes. Sergeant,
136yes. Anger, yes. Motion passes. Board members, this concludes our business for today. Um, is there a motion to adjurnn? Moved by everyone. Board members, have a great Wednesday evening. Thank you so much. Bye everybody.