April 8, 2025 Regular Meeting

001[Music] I would like to call to order this regular meeting of the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education for Tuesday, April 8th, 2025. Board members may attend and participate in board meetings by electronic means in accordance with BV SD policy BMEA and state law. Laura, can you please call the role? Chavez here. Medler here. Nisnik Quinna here. Raj Paul here. Sergeant here. Anger here. Thank you. This time, board members, I'd like and guests this evening you to turn your attention to the screens for our land acknowledgement. [Music] The Boulder Valley School District resides and operates on land that is the ancestral homeland and unjustly and illegally taken territory of the Ute, Pueblin, Arapjo, Cheyenne, Apache, Navajo, and 48 other tribal nations historically tied to this land who have called this land home since time

002and memorial. [Music] 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. BBSD is aware of the many indigenous peoples, past and present, and their dignified nations and cultures, who care for this land with strength and resilience. BBSD recognizes the histories of the land in Colorado and the survival of many nations that carried their oral traditions into the present. It is BBSD's responsibility to educate ourselves, our community, and our students so that we can embrace the wisdom and knowledge of indigenous peoples and actively stand together to address [Music] injustices. In offering this land acknowledgement, we affirm and honor the history, wisdom, oral traditions, and resilience of indigenous people, and recognize the responsibility

003to 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 that all children thrive and are prepared for successful, civically engaged lives. Good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us here in person and those of you remotely. Um, we're glad to have you observe and participate in our meetings. At this time, is there a motion to approve tonight's agenda? Moved by Kitty, seconded by Jason. Laura, can you please call the role? Chavez, yes. Medler, yes. Quinn Linawa, yes. Raj Paul, yes. Sergeant, yes. Anger, yes. Motion passes. The first item on our agenda this evening, board members, is a superintendent report. Dr. Anderson, Good evening, Board President Rash Paul, members of the board. It's good

004to see you all this evening. Hope everybody had a wonderful spring break and we are on the home stretch of the school year. Uh a few a few updates uh for my remarks this evening. Uh board members, as you know, here in BVSD, we're bilingual and proud, which is why we're so excited to share that 12 amazing BBSD students competed in the 2025 Colorado State Spanish spelling be this weekend, making up nearly onethird of all state competitors. Thrilled to announce that two BBS students topped the podium on Saturday. Ansley Closer, a fourth grader at ESA Bilingu Pioneer, came in third place and Angivine Middle School 7th grader, Galia Gomez, was the state champion. Both students will be headed to the National Spanish Spelling Bee this July in Albuquerque to represent Colorado and BVSD. I want

005to congratulate both students and for all of our students who competed in the Colorado State Spanish spelling be board members. As you may know, this week is Boulder County's high school student voter registration awareness week. Our outstanding partners at the county clerks and recorders office are working with our schools to host registration events at many of our schools makes the honor that Fairview recently earned especially special. On Friday, the Colorado Secretary of State Office presented the school with the Eliza Pickroll Route Award from the Department of State for the third time. Ward is named after Colorado's first lady and the first woman registered to vote in the state and recognizes Colorado high schools where 85% or more of eligible seniors are registered to vote. Great job Knights Fairview High School and thanks to all of

006the BBSD schools hosting registration events this week. What a just a great activity that our students are able to participate in. Our food services team recently held its annual Iron Chef competition bringing out the best in our student chefs. They whipped up some incredible dishes, showing off their creativity and teamwork. We're told that the competition was fierce, but ultimately first prize went to the super cookers Megan FTH and Lyra Schwarz from Lewisville Middle School. They made their grandma's assop pow and Brazilian cheese bread. In addition to a $300 check, their dish will be featured on next year's school menu. How cool is that? Congratulations to those students and our food services team for doing something that's really cool and kid- centered. Uh and board members, finally, you'll want to stop by the Dair Arts Center

007before May 4th. The annual BBSD high school and staff art show is underway. Kicked off last Thursday with a big reception. You can still catch it this month. Drop by the Dair Art Center to see the stunning works in painting, drawing, mixed media, digital art, animation, photography, ceramic, sculpture, and more. Again, that is at the Dair Arts Center through May 4th. encourage uh staff and our community to go check out the talent of our BBSA students. And that is all I have for my remarks this evening. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Board members, any questions? Seeing as there are none, we'll move on to our next item this evening, which is public participation. The board respects the right of the public to speak on matters concerning the operation of our schools. The board does not endorse

008the comments of any speaker or remind all those who speak that you are responsible for your own speech. Speakers will each have two minutes to speak. You will see a yellow card when you have 30 seconds remaining. Yellow card and an orange card when you have 10 seconds remaining. If you run out of time or have additional thoughts, you are always welcome to email the board. Our first speaker this evening is Billy Gilbin. Hey everyone. Um, common mistake here in Colorado because it's Gilpin County. I'm Billy Giblin. No worries. I'm uh wearing two hat. That's all right. Because of Gilpin County. Get it all the time. Um, I'm coming with two hats. I'm a father of a first grader and a fifth grader at Ned Elementary. I'm also the mayor of Netherland. And so I'm

009just here to uh talk with you guys. Um our board of trustees um of the town, there's seven of us and five of us are parents of kids at that elementary, middle or high school ranging from first grade to 11th grade. So we're pretty invested in the schools up there. Um I I you know goes without saying thank you all for your work on this board and and for all the work that happens through the district. My family personally has has has benefited from some of the resources that BVST has um and and for my kids specifically as well as many people in the community. So, we realize we're lucky to be part of a a strong district. Um, even though we're more of a rural player, a rural community. Um, and we and we

010as a town, we need the school to succeed. I think, you know, the recent decision on the principal, the combination of two schools under one principal, [Music] um, has has been a tad controversial, as you may or may not have heard. Um, I think ultimately the model makes sense to me and kind of works and um, you know, and I think you know Caleb with the right re Caleb Malama with the right resources and support could be the right person to do that. And so the town's goal is to support what's the ultimate decision and make it succeed because the town needs a school to succeed and to grow to have a good future and not end up just being a bedroom or retirement community which is a great thing but that's not what our

011town is. So um we we stand, you know, we we will work to get behind the decision and get bring our folks together to get behind it. [Music] um you know we probably have more institutional or generational poverty up there you know per capita if you will than down below. So we appreciate that this school can be a good resource these schools to help our kids and give them an advantage they wouldn't have otherwise. Um if it's if it's got if it has the resources it needs. So the big thing we asked for with this, you know, moving from two principles to one is this dean. This assistant principal at each school would be a great, you know, assistant principal at elementary school would be a great addition, but this dean that they talk of

012at the high school that that is going to be transitional. We would hope it's more permanent. um if if if that could be funded, we feel like that would be something the community needs. And one principal would really work with two insistent principles and a um and a uh I'm looking for cards here. [Music] Yeah, that was Sorry, the cards are mostly for online. I wasn't watching I was watching you, but yeah, that their two minutes are up and if you have additional comments, you can always email the board of education. Thank you. Our next speaker this evening is Tanya Corvalin. Hello. Okay. Uh I'm Tanya Corvalon. I have a 17-year-old son who has been at Netherlands schools uh since kindergarten. And I'm also a trustee of the town since 2020. um mainly here uh

013to talk about the decision with the principal. Um I feel the process was poor. This is a big decision to take away a high school and middle school principal and in essence take away the elementary school principal and make one job for that person. Um, it's a lot of a lot of uh roles for this person to fill and there should have been some discussion um some respect towards the parents and the staff that are going to have to support this instead of just receiving an email about it at 9:00 p.m. at night or whenever it was I read it. Um, the other problem with the decision was that while it may be very common to hire within, it was not a competitive process. other people were not invited or allowed to apply and there

014was no transparency with the decision which has left a lot of parents pretty upset and staff and community um myself personally don't have an opinion about this person cuz I was child was already out of school uh but I've heard mixed reports so it's not like this person was 100% perfect and deserved this large promotion uh But the it sounds like this decision is done. We'd love for you to reconsider and put it back out. But now we have this dean and it's super important that this person's here to advocate for our kids that get left behind a lot. We lose kids to Boulder and also to dropping out. There's a lot of need for this resource and it needs to be here permanently in order for the school to be supportive. Um, I want

015to make sure that we're going to hold a town hall soon to discuss this and we'd love some BVSD representation at these town halls and so I hope you guys can consider coming. We will send you an email invite. Thank you. Our next speaker this evening is Sarah Colamina who has been given two minutes from McKenzie Rosen Stone. They are virtual. Sorry, I had my things turned off. Um, my name is Sarah Colamina. I'm a parent of two BBSD students, including a second grade student at BCSIS Elementary. I'm here to talk about the incident that occurred at our school in my child's classroom on Thursday, April 3rd. Allegedly, a parent of a child in our class caused severe disruption, alarm, and fear among our students. Our parent community is frustrated by the stalled and vague

016response we've been receiving and uh would like to have more information presented to us about this incident as our children were directly involved. Uh we feel the details that have not been shared have not been entirely honest. We are getting emails with accounts from the principal that are quite different than the accounts that our children are giving us. Um and and we've come together as a parent community to discuss the various comments that our children have had and their perspective on it. and it is all on the same page and and yet still different from the information that was presented to us from the school administration. Um I am also want to voice my frustration in the reaction time to this. Um this was directly involved. There was a specific classroom directly involved in this.

017We did not get communication from anyone at that school to us directly until three plus days after the incident happened. And at that time it was a very vague brief um email. I am happy to send uh documentation of this to the board to see this. Um we have very little to no information on how it is being addressed uh both inside the classroom and outside the classroom. This is a situation where kids were ran screaming, hiding under desks, hiding in closets, running out of classrooms, and we've been told to return our children to the classroom with no information to help support our children about what actually happened other than the accounts of our children. Um I I realize there is privacy issues um particularly maybe to one student involved but the reality of the

018situation is all of our students in this class were involved. They're all minors and as their adult you know protection representation decision makers and the the key people to you know alert these children and keep them safe and let them know they are safe. we feel that we are entitled to some information about what has occurred um sooner rather than later. We're not asking for specific names. We're not asking even for specific consequences at this time. We just want to have an understanding of what happened to our children. Um, you know, after re-evaluating this, talking to other community members, talking to media members, talking to administrators, we feel very frustrated that this seems to be an ongoing um occurrence in BVSD when incidents like this occur. And we would like to see as a parent

019community, better response time to this, uh, more human response to these situations, continued outreach. Even if you cannot communicate to us the details, it is important to reach out to the parents specific to the children that are involved in these situations. Hey, we hear you. We're still here. We know something happened. This is what we can tell you at that time at this time. This is what we cannot tell you at this time. And we will keep you posted and to continue to keep us posted even if you can't give us something. Um, you know, the the fact that there were three days plus before there was outreach to our class is really reprehensible. Um, the only outreach any of us got was because we were all very proactive in reaching out to the school

020um for this information and and that really shouldn't be the case. I thank you for your time tonight. I thank you for hearing me. I plan on forwarding um some additional information to you all to digest this and and really consider how we respond to these situations in the future and how we're presently responding to this situation. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker this evening is Katie Hackam who was given two minutes from Kerry Proopio. Katie is also virtual. Hi everyone. Hope you can hear me. Okay. Um good evening members of the school board. My name is Katie Hackham. I'm also a parent of a second grade student at BCSAIS. I'm here today echoing the concerns just raised by Sarah and other parents you'll hear tonight to address the deeply disturbing safety incident that

021occurred at BCSIS last Thursday evening. Um but more critically here to really request transparency into what happened that day so we can appropriately support our children. a clear understanding of the safety protocols that are in place at the school, the measures that were taken that day, what changes are going to be made following this incident um to try to mitigate that from happening again. Um and when will our children's teacher be back? We have no context or communication around this either. And the children are seven and eight years old and they are very confused um and very scared. and the lack of the communication from the school uh and the details that the school has given to the affected families has really been unacceptable and we're actively undermining and and it's actively undermining the trust

022in the school, the district, and ultimately the the safety um and well-being of our children. As you've heard, the alleged incident happened on April 3rd. Um and the children again were outside. It was very disturbing. Um 911 was called. This was not shared in the communication. Um that should have been shared with parents. We only found this out because our parents did their due diligence and found out that there was in fact a record of this. There's a Boulder PD case. We can share that with you after this. 911 was dispatched and we're actually on site for almost two hours. None of that was shared in the communication. This was not a minor disruption. Um, this incident has been completely downplayed by the school. Um, and whether or not these accounts are 100% accurate, I

023actually can't tell you because I don't know what happened, right? So, we don't have any details. We have no idea what actually happened and we have no way to support our children and their questions because the school is not telling us these details. Um and despite the severity of this event, again, the communication from the school um as you previously heard was significantly inadequate. Um we heard the first account from our children directly. We had no communication from the school until almost 45 minutes later that day. No mention of police involvement. Um and especially the threat isn't over. the child, alleged child's parent, that child is back in the classroom. Was the immediate next day the teacher's been removed, but the the child is still there. And that poses a significant risk still that this

024parents or alleged parent could come back and do it again. And we have no understanding of what's being done, what protocols are in place, and what's going to change because of this. Um, and lastly, with the communication that we're receiving from the principal, um, the very vague recommendation verbatim that she gave, quote unquote, with some ways that you can best support your student include listening to their questions and concerns, assuring them that they are safe and that school practices are designed to keep them so, and encourage them to talk to trusted adults at school. How can we be expected to provide reassurance of safety to our children when we don't actually know what happened and we don't know what the protocols are in place? Were they followed and what changes will be made? Lack of

025transparency really breeds uncertainty, instability, and significant anxiety for our young young children and our families. We're already witnessing the negative impact here. Um, again with the trust of what's happening at school and the emotional well-being of these young children. Um, and on top of this, I mentioned at the beginning, their teacher is not in the classroom and we have no context. This may be personal. This may be not, but it's hard for us to support our kids when they don't know even why their teacher's there. So, I'd like to close again by saying our children are frightened. They were hiding under desks crying. Some fear going back to school. Some haven't even returned. They don't want to go back to gymnastics because a parent might come and take them because we're not able to adequately

026support them and help them understand that these types of things may happen. um this can only happen with we can only support them with the transparency from the school and the school board and concrete action from this board and administration moving forward. Please we urge you to take these concerns seriously and please follow up with us as a group or individually um after this meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Our final speaker this evening tonight this evening is also virtual Stephanie Watran. Hello. Um, I am also speaking about the communication practices after safety incident at BCSS on April 3rd. What's most alarming is the district's response in the parent communication following the incident, which has been poulry. Parents and guardians were given little detail beyond a vague email containing basic information about the event that resulted

027in what appears to be approximately 2 hours long police visit to the school. My seven-year-old was a direct witness to traumatizing event involving a visibly agitated, yelling and cursing adult directly outside her classroom door. It was serious enough that the staff felt it appropriate to call 911. I take issue with my minor child as witness to a crime and I am not made aware of the details surrounding the overall series of events during and after. I understand the school has privacy obligations under the fura, but I am not requesting privacy protected material about other students. I'm merely requesting a more detailed timeline of events which involve an adult from the community and my student. My main source of information has been my seven-year-old student who was visibly shaken when retelling these details to me. I

028cannot fully p support my child through this when I do not know what happened to them that day. I find it unacceptable that I did not and have not received any meaningful communication from any district personnel to assure families with actual facts and relevant details that this event was handled lawfully and appropriately. I take issue with the public entities shielding themselves by remaining silent in the face of investigations. And this is not the first time BBSD has not offered meaningful communication following a safety threat. Just this March, BBSD was equally KY when responding to an event involving a Snapchat threats at Summit Middle School. Added to the over this has added to the overall mystery um of this. The classroom teacher in the room with my child that day has been absent and we have

029not had no communication as to the mere fact that she was gone, why she's gone, whose choice her absence is, and when and if she will return. This absence has made it clear that the district needs to improve the communication practices following events that happen at school and can do so without violating student privacy rights. When I send my child to school, my expectation is that they be safe and well cared for. And until this date, that has been the case. I think that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. This concludes public comment for this evening. On behalf of the board, I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to share your thoughts and concerns both remotely and in person tonight. We will now move on to board communication. Board members,

030who would like to begin? Kitty. So I'm sorry we didn't have a student moment this meeting but last meeting our student student moment introduced us students from both Monarch schools who are published authors. So of course I immediately bought the books all five four of them and read them and I really encourage everybody to read these books. It's it's they're delightful. You know they're not perfect. They're written by children, but they were all good. Um, and I'm just so excited that we have students who are published authors and they own the copyrights and they presumably get paid every time we buy their books. Um, I want to give a particular shout out about Don't Look at Me because it was written by an 8-year-old boy and it's about a monkey. If you if you didn't

031watch the last meeting, it's about a monkey who didn't like being looked at in the zoo. But the student who wrote the book didn't just say he was a monkey. He was a howler monkey. He had another um he was a he talked to a macaw. It was it was a scarlet macaw. He knew he didn't just call animals by their name. He looked up what types of animals there are and they all had their own name and I loved that because it showed he did some work um getting this done. So the books are Xenovia which is by Leta De Gorgi, Don't Look at Me by Roku Maine, Alien on Earth, which was by Kira Cochran and Cara Stevenson, and Anomalies by Evie Lesley. So they're they're all great. They're delightful books. I encourage

032you to read them. Also, I still have some attempted murder buttons if anybody's interested in them. And for those of you you were giving me a funny look, it's a picture of two crows with the aggregate group for crows being a murder. So, two crows is an attempted murder. So, there's nothing sinister going on with it, but I saw this at a conference and I had to have some, so I bought them. And other than that, I just had a nice break. It was nice. I didn't go anywhere, do anything, but it was nice just to have time not to have to think about important stuff. So that's all I have for today. Jorge, thank you for sharing those books. Those it's really exciting. And I know we didn't have a student moment earlier, but

033just you as you were going through the list of things that we saw from the um you know Spanish language spelling bee to the voter registration, the dairy art center, I'm I'm always, you know, so excited to see the work that our students are doing. It really centers the work that we do here because we get so many different messages, so many, you know, incidents that scare us, um potential for budget cuts, federal mandates that potentially put our students at risk and and we're trying to fight to do the right thing. And so it's it's it's inspiring to see our what our students are doing, right? And keeping that at the core of everything we do here. And and I know Anley, she's actually um at Esqua Belingua Pioneer and my wife and I run

034the running club there. She's one of our strongest runners as well in addition to a strong speller. So that's exciting to see. Um and as we go into the springtime and and we we're starting the running club, we had 60 kids yesterday. And it just keeps at the front of my mind, right, why we're all here and why we're doing this. So, I want to thank the speakers for being for being here and for sharing and the rest of the board for the work that you you're all doing. I know these are difficult times. Um, but I want to reassure families that we're we're keeping our students front of mind. We we're a district that um is inclusive and welcoming and represents our students because they're the best of us and and I know um

035that we're working to do the right thing. So, I appreciate all your support. Thank you, Alex. Uh yeah. Um, first off, I just wanted to give a a brief update on the the last uh DAC meeting which I attended. Um, uh, Jason had to was out sick, so I was able to fill in at the last minute. Um, uh, kudos to, um, the BBSD staff uh, for Claire and Jonathan um, sharing about our data dashboards based on um, performance which went over well and people were responsive to that. In the disc in the follow-up discussions we had with the performance um working group uh they really reiterated how important it is uh for the school leaders to be engaged with the school accountability committee in their community to be able to interpret all the data

036that's there and the people from the different schools really had different experiences in terms of the engagement of their sack. So I think it's another example where um there's a lot of data there. It's a lot of really powerful stuff and a certain degree of facilitation of access to it can go a lot further and I know we're trying to do that but it really re reinforced for me the importance of how much people appreciate when someone takes time to work with them with their data and to help them make sense of it. Uh so I just saw the the difference between a place where people felt like that was working at their school and where it wasn't working as well. And um I think that's a great I think of the DAC as a

037two-way uh portal and it is sometimes ways that we get information up to the board and it's also a way that people can help the sacks have school level discussions and sometimes I think we need to think more about how we're empowering all the schools to have a good sack discussion about the data. Um, also, uh, their budget, um, folks. Um, I think we need to continue to dialogue with the DAC to get to a point where, like their input will be on a timely enough basis to act on things like budget and policy. Um, but I do think they have a a reasonable request to try to understand the budgeting decisions at the school level. So, as they're thinking about their input on the budget, one of the the group was expressing their frustration.

038A few people were about trying to understand well what at a school level is is at the discretion where a school leader can make a decision about it or not and what are the decisions as they're thinking about whether the DAC is providing or the SAC is informing us or whether they're thinking about their own fundraising through their PTO's and other things like well what is it where's where's the discretion what's how much money is controlled at school level and what could they do with their discretion to decide what to raise money for. So, I mean, I think it really we'll have a nice budget discussion tonight, but I think it's important um that everybody have sort of the information they want to inform the decisions they're trying to make. And I think sometimes people

039are eager to help, ready to weigh in, and they don't have quite the tools they need to be as informed as they'd like to be. And I think we can do more of that. And then uh finally, I just want to say um in response to not just the public um testimony tonight, but the ongoing um uh things we read about or the things we hear about as schoolboard members, when um parents or staff or community members are reasonably frustrated about something that hasn't worked out, I've been advocating for a while that we as a district uh need a better communication strategy to talk about generically the things that we can't talk about specifically. And by that I mean that when there's an event that leads to an investigation of a staff member or a

040criminal investigation of a student or a disciplinary action following up one student acting against another, there's a host of reasons why we can't talk about that case as board members, as superintendent, as a district principal, as other staff. And um that leaves uh parents and students and other stakeholders reasonably frustrated that something super intense has happened. Something unexpected, something not okay. And we're in a situation where the people who uh presumably are taking action to try to solve that. I say presumably from not knowing the people are trying to take action to address these issues. Whether it's an assistant principal working on a disciplinary, a counselor working on two students who were fighting with one another, the police were investigating an alleged crime, like stuff's going on that is intense. And parents and students all

041want to know what's going on. And to be clear, my 15 months on the board, you get a better education about all the reasons we can't say something. And they're legitimate and legal and they're real. It's and it's not just furpa. It's labor law. It's labor contracts. There's a bunch of stuff that that we are not at liberty to discuss as board members or staff aren't telling us as board members because they're not at liberty to talk about it. That's part of America in 2025. What I would like us to see as a district is a set of generic communications that you hand out to a student after there's a police investigation out of school and says, "Here's how BBSD handles our interaction with the police generically. here's how student on student complaints that rise

042to the allegation of a crime are handled just so that the FAQ could help people explain situations that we're not in a situation to explain either as a district or as board members or as people in your school. So, I think it's hard to both honor the protections that our staff deserve during an investigation that a student deserves when they're a minor subject to a fight about discipline. uh to respect all their due process. And if there's anything in America we need right now, it's respect for due process. And I just think we could do a much better job of explaining people generically how those due processes work so that people don't feel like the inability to answer their question is because we don't aren't trying to solve a problem, that people aren't working on

043it, and that we're not aware of their um of the harm and the problems there. And that makes people come away feeling like there's one more government institution they can't trust. And I can tell you from serving on this board, I have developed so much trust for how many good people are doing good work on behalf of kids and trying to solve problems. That's not the problem. The ability in America in 2025 is to talk to each other about anything. And so I just think we need to anticipate that we're going to have a thousand disciplinary cases in a year and that we will probably have 200 investigations of staff in the course of a year. and that those staff and those students all have a lot of rights and we need to honor that.

044So, we're not going to change due process. We're going to do it right. And I think we could do much better at explaining how that works. And people are frustrated that they can't do it. And I think that's totally fair to be frustrated. And I don't mean to diminish anybody's sense of anguish or outrage. I'm just saying that we could do more to generically help people understand why we sometimes can't answer their questions. That doesn't take away the urgency of informing people and doing everything that we can. But I I think we could do better on that. I'll go next. Board members, as you know, I've I'm calling it I'm on the road show. I've been going to some of the meetings of standing parent organizations, community organizations to talk about the upcoming school board

045elections. So, since we last convened, I was able to go to my first DPC meeting ever, which is kind of funny to think about considering how long I was involved in the district accountability committee. So, that was fun to see that. Um, I also chatted with the folks at Leadership Academy about the upcoming schoolboard elections and wanted to put a plug. We will be having this Thursday from 5 to 6:30m here at the ed center our final formal meeting on answering any questions and kind of talking about what it means to be a schoolboard member, what the requirements are, what election are, what is involved with elections. So that will be this Thursday here at the ed center from 5:00 to 6:30 for anybody that lives within the boundaries of BVSD and is interested in

046potentially becoming a member. So that's been fun. waiting to head into DPC. I had the pleasure, I guess Wednesday nights is a very popular night for our students to convene and meet in districtwide committee. And so I happened to see our green our students that are involved in the green BBSD initiatives. And then I sat in on our student cabinet discussion which was fascinating. They were asking a lot of questions about our curriculum and how those how our requirements are chosen, how curriculum is adopted and and I was really to's point about our students are so engaged in all kinds of different things. And what was great to hear is how our staff support them in their advocacy. And in that particular cabinet meeting, staff were explaining how BBSD has a district-wide course catalog. And

047then high schools can choose for courses amongst that catalog. And so if students want a course that's not offered at their particular school, they can advocate to their school leaders say to say that they want XYZ course that's offered at maybe a different school than their own. And I wanted to put that plug in because I don't think very many people, parents or students are aware that you can advocate for any of our BVSD courses to be offered at our school. So, I thought that was pretty cool. I also had the opportunity to attend the first of the BVEA negotiating sessions and it was great to reconvene with that group and understand the different interests of the district and the teachers and their commitment to the consensus based decision-making process. So, that's kind of what

048I've been up to since spring break. And I agree with Kitty. It was nice to have that time off. And I hope our staff and our students and our families were also able to get a little bit of a rest bit, not only from school, but from all that's going on around us that does impact our our students and our staff and our communities. With that, board members, we will keep plugging right along on this evening. Oh, Kitty. Yes. I since nobody else is going, I just want to respond to Alex. I think that was a great idea about how to communicate with parents about our process because I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about things like this because frequently the district will um you know go out and ask for feedback on

049this that or the other thing before making a decision which is good and right and we should. And then we get a lot of responses from people who really didn't pay attention when we were putting out the information in the first place. And that's not to um criticize anybody. You see something, you get, you know, we're all inundated with emails. You see something, oh, this doesn't apply to me, so you don't think about it. So Alex's idea of doing this kind of thing in the, you know, right after something happens, people are thinking about it. So I think it could be useful and I and I actually think we could do both. Um and you know say an incident happens we respond this is how we respond to this sort of situation and then say

050refer to a document that we've sent in the past that perhaps would have more detail. I don't know but I just want to say I really think it's a good idea because we cannot communicate too much. Thanks Kitty. We will now move on to our information items for this evening. Board members, it is April, which means we are due for a sustainability update from our team. And it looks like Rob Price is walking up to the podium to do the introductions. All right. Good evening, President Raj Paul, members of the board. Dr. Anderson in alignment with uh earth month and board policy ECF which is our environmental board policy. Dr. Gita Carroll is our uh sustainability energy officer. Miles Hoffman is our sustainability energy analyst and Aaron Greenwood who is our PK12 science coordinator will

051provide an update on the goals outlined in our sustainability action plan. So with that I will turn it over to Dr. Gita Carroll. All right. Good evening. Okay. So, this is the GreenBSD vision and mission. As stated in the plan, we are all together for all students and the planet, which also aligns with our district strategic plan. And our mission is that as a leader in whole district sustainability, BBSD creates healthy learning environments and experiences that equip all students and staff with the knowledge and skills to create more equitable and sustainable communities. So, our staff do continue to be requested at leadership forums to share our district's sustainability journey um locally, state level, and nationally. This past summer, Miles and I were invited to speak at a clean energy and indoor air quality national summit

052that happened to be hosted in Denver. BBSD was also selected to be participate in the Department of Energy's energy class program this year for districts invested in energy efficiency work. Um, and we recently had two BBSD high school students recognized at the Green School's national conference in where was it? Florida. In Orlando. In Orlando for their work around the Green New Deal for Colorado. So, that's pretty cool, too. Um, here are the guiding documents we've had in place since 2009 guiding our work around sustainability. They're supported by board policy, as Rob Price said, which the board re-emphasized last year by passing the Green New Deal resolution. So all of the work we're doing supports both the 2021 sustainability plan and the Green New Deal resolution. And as we walk through this presentation, you'll see the

053letters G and D on the goals that specifically and directly align between those two guiding documents. Our current action plan has the following four focus areas that are outlined on this slide. Each area has an overarching goal and three to five supporting goals, and we're going to walk through them all in this presentation. The plan has a five-year timeline which of which we're in year four of five. Next year will be the final year of this current plan and opportunity to rebuild out the next iteration. The first focus area is leadership where we have the goal to collect data at 100% of our schools related to healthy, equitable and sustainable school best practices. There are four supporting goals in this category. The first is to create a sustainability advisory group which is complete. This group

054was established in January 2022 and meets quarterly to provide direction and feedback to the district's work around the goals outlined in the plan. The current members include students representing four of our high schools, teachers, community members, some past board of education members, um, and more. And there's information and minutes and agendas on our website. The sustainability dashboard was also completed and launched last year. We have had great engagement already in this tool and you can find sustainability metrics for all of our schools. You can do a Google search on green BBSD dashboard and you will find it sustainability dashboard and it's also on the district's new dashboard page. We continue to update operational policies with sustainability principles. So most of the work here has been building documents into our bond program to make sure sustainability

055goals and priorities are reflected in the right places. So for example, our technical specifications and other contracts. And VVSC facilities recently updated their grounds management manual to reflect integrated pest management priorities. And this was collaborative effort with the city of Boulder. The work to create a professional learning plan for 100% of our staff is ongoing. Um our partners provide a lot of professional learning um to staff as part of their programs. Erin's going to talk a little bit more of some of the work that's going on. Um and sustainability staff are also working with PD staff to create a new green BBSD staff certification which we hope to launch this summer or fall. The tool that you see on the right is an interactive display for seeing sustainability action on our um at BBSD that

056can be used also for PD and lesson planning. And I'm going to turn it over to Miles. Thank you so much. For our facilities and operations impact system, we continue to pursue our goals focusing on greenhouse gas reductions, particularly from building operations and transportation, as well as water management. Our short-term emissions goal is to reduce carbon by 14% compared to FY19. If we hit this goal, it means we'll have reduced our emissions but from building operations by over 5,000 metric tonses of CO2 or the total emissions of 1,193 gas passenger cars driven for one year and we nearly hit this goal in FY24 and to continue to ident we continue to identify opportunities for energy reduction across our footprint. Our long-term uh goal remains to be carbon neutral by 2050. And this data doesn't include

057an additional 289 metric tons uh of CO2 that we retire we got from retired offsets through our transport gas contract in 2024. In terms of building efficiency, uh we utilize the energy use intensity or EI metric which we discussed last year. Uh it normalizes our energy use across all of our buildings by incorporating building square footage area. Uh our 2026 goal is to average 56 EUI across our footprint. And our long-term goal is to get to a 30 EUI average. And you can see that we're still on track to hit both of those goals. Um we've done really well instituting energy efficiency programs and engaging our schools to reduce energy use to this point. We will need to focus on more significant infrastructure investment in the coming years to maintain that trajectory to achieve these

058goals in the long term. As far as our supporting goals go, uh, Gita mentioned the integration of our green building principles and the new tech in the technical guides for buildings and new construction. And this of course includes uh both the modular factory that opened up here on the Arapjo campus uh as well as New Vista High School. In addition, we stood up a sustainable finance team uh internally in the district here to continue to act on incentives and creative financing vehicles for building electrification and infrastructure improvements. And for the second sub goal, I'm going to turn it back over to Gita. Okay. So we set the goal of maintaining our 50% diversion rate which um when we created the plan in 2021 we were at 50%. Um since then we've experienced several changes which

059we've talked a lot about most notably the changes in the compost industry which make this goal no longer attainable. However um this year we are on track to hit a 30% diversion rate which is double the state average which is about 15%. So we're still proud of the work that we're doing here. Um, we have a lot to celebrate in our zero waste programming and partnership with Ecoycle, including um, new money Ecoycle recently secured that will make it possible to offer the Green Star Schools program to all BBSD schools by the end of 2027. Thank you. Um, in terms of water, we've been tracking our consumption and cost since 2008, and we achieved our 5-year water goal of a 5% reduction in FY23. FY24 was really hot as we can all remember, but we did

060pretty darn well and we stayed in at 4.5% compared to that 2019 baseline. It's important once again to keep perspective of what these reductions really mean in terms of budget. Since 2008, our usage is down 30%. Our costs are up 73%. So, you can see that in that graph right there. Um, we also recently stood up a district water team uh where we're working with uh our grounds and maintenance and uh facilities folks and we're looking to identify opportunities for more efficiencies grants to install smart meter uh smart water management solutions and we're developing uh comprehensive water management plan as well and our indoor water use which is a little less touched by that outdoor climate is still uh holding steady at quite a drop from 2008. Um, as you're going to be receiving an

061entire separate transportation presentation, I'm going to skip over this one a little bit. I'll just tease that we have achieved our sustain our transportation emission reduction goals, and I'm looking forward to hearing that. Uh, and finally, we've already discussed EY and building standards in a few places, but this last year, we hosted three students from the CU's Master of the Environments program to develop the district's first decarbonization plan. We spent time in the community, in our schools, on our rooftops getting stung by bees with our maintenance team when with utility and vendor partners investigating actions we can take to electrify our buildings in the short term and create policies to support our 2050 net zero carbon goals. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Aaron. Thank you so much. I'm wearing green

062pants, but I'm really glad I'm not wearing any of these outfits. I don't know if you can see those. They're they're shocking. Um, I'm here to talk about our very, very busy year in curriculum and instruction. It's a strategic priority in our sustainability action plan. Um, our overarching goal is that all students have experiences to develop their sustainability knowledge, values, and behaviors. We happen to have lots of supporting goals and all of these goals are aligned to our strategic plan as well especially in the categories of no limits defining the destination and also in the valued and included part of our strategic plan. Um and I'd like to talk about our first goal tonight which is integrating sustainability topics into the instruction we provide in schools. So um we have identified the standards in science,

063social studies and health for opportunities for students to learn about sustainability through teacherdirected instruction. We also have had students in our green youth council learn how to write optional elementary lesson plans using our standards and the BBSD instructional model. They have eight lessons so far and they're looking forward with the opportunity to practice environmental hope and action through PD with our teachers. We have one new middle school climate literacy course offered in our course catalog for next year and also two new high school courses for climate. We before this we audited our system and we had no specific climate courses. So this is a huge adjustment for this. Uh thank you so much to our board for supporting these new courses in our catalog through your recent approval. Um a great example of how integration

064um of sustainability topics is occurring is through our work at Heatherwood Elementary. They have become an environmental steam school and are looking forward to launching their programming coming up here at the end of April and into May. Their students are inspired by nature and will learn about both science and social studies through exploration of current environmental problems. And they'll design action-based solutions as well, all by getting outside to care for their natural environment. Goal number two is to support and track professional learning. And as Gita referred to, we are working towards a certification program that mirrors the seal of climate literacy for our teachers. Additionally, we've leveraged partners to engage in learning with science teachers, especially around ways to engage students with sustainability phenomena and explore highquality resources. We are also working with the professional

065learning team to audit our PL catalog and future professional learning offerings to identify the courses that are aligned to our sustainability goals and tagging them as green BVSD courses so that teachers can easily find those opportunities. Our third goal is all about our partnerships and we continue to build partnership um relationships. Nearly weekly we intake new partners and we're building additional connections for our partners to work on BBSD initiatives as well. Um we're looking at creative ways where partners can be involved in our Heatherwood work and our seal of climate literacy work as well this year. Only three more goals in this section. Um goal number four is to incorporate student voice. So, excitingly, we have the inaugural year of our green youth council. This year, we have a very dedicated group of students. Our

066leadership team meets monthly to plan our monthly meeting for the entire youth council. They're quite excited to be involved in all different ways for our sustainability work. They had the job this year of designing our seal of climate literacy process um designing climate related courses and lessons and also speaking to the greater community about their work. A really fun example of the green youth council working with partners um is they were paired with adult partners recently to review the applications for the seal of climate literacy and our partners learned a lot from our students. They asked great questions and gave really great answers. There's a picture of our teams working together. They mostly enjoyed the dinner as well. Goal number five is once again related to um professional development, but it also reaches into our

067curricular and extracurricular activities as well. This is a very futurelooking goal. It's something that's always on the burner. Um we continue to pursue and develop aligned professional development opportunities and other activities in our schools. Um, we have active green teams at all of our high schools and many of our middle and elementary schools. We provide support to schools who would like to start new green clubs or initiatives. And we continue to pro promote the new tradition of rotating studentled high school climate summits. The fall summit was at Monarch and Boulder High will host the summit on April 26 this spring and everyone is invited. And lastly, goal number six is to expand pathways to green jobs. This was year one of our natural resources pathway, which will be branded the environmental sustainability pathway starting next

068year. Um, school students in that particular pathway get to work in various career fields related to sustainability and develop their knowledge in those topics as well. And we've also engaged with BBSD's workbased learning coordinator to consider how green jobs can be highlighted in our new Pathfinder career portal for students. And lastly, I just wanted to give a big update on the seal of climate literacy. This is a project that started this year and we have already had one student and you can see by her face how excited she was. She was an early graduate who graduated with this high school diploma endorsement for the seal of climate literacy. There's Rose. She's now in Asia learning and volunteering and trekking. Um we will have 20 graduates this spring and they will be presenting their experiential portfolios

069on April 23rd. All are invited to that as well. And the biggest most special part of our seal of climate literacy is that youth were able to develop and lead the process all the way through with support from adults. Love to pass it back over to Agita for our last goal. Okay, so this is our final section of the plan um thrown climate and culture and the goal here is to have regular opportunities to experience sustainability for everyone in our community at all of our facilities. So the first goal is to have outdoor learning spaces at all of our elementary and increase seating and shading at our secondary schools. So while we may have met this goal, we think we probably have, we've not yet done a full assessment to confirm. Um, but we've made

070great progress through partnerships in the community and through our work in the bond. Um, so for example, through a partnership with the city of Boulder and Play Boulder, we have planted trees at several of our schools and the community forestry corps is hiring for paid summer jobs for teens and students um to help with the planting and caring of these trees across Boulder County. Um the planting map on the bottom right was created by Boulder High School Science students. Um and many schools have created outdoor spaces in partnership with their parent associations. So if you haven't already, go check out the beautiful new space. It's what being coined the Mesa Mesa Oasis at Mesa Elementary. Um but these spaces are across our district. Really great spaces for outdoor learning. The second goal is to create

071an annual communication strategy which we have done. We have communication around sustainability that goes out minimally monthly. Our biggest reach being the Earth spot that goes out communitywide and will be coming out in a few weeks. Um and the new tool that I mentioned earlier, the day in the life of sustainability is also a great way to communicate about the programs and the works embedded into our schools around this. And finally, the third goal is to support the model programs that exist and are truly the heart of the sustainability work at our schools. So, for example, garden to table last year reached 6,344 students in 16 of our schools. One of their greatest successes was a 45% increase in student visits to gardens from 2022 to 2023. We have 45 schools working to committed to

072zero waste through our green star program. Our amazing food service program continues to offer healthy, fresh, and when possible, local foods for all students and are also committed to best waste reduction practices. Just going to give you another fun highlight. Food services gives Ecoycle the empty pickle buckets to use for classroom recycling. And they Ecoycle had so many that then they donated some to music classes that used them for drums in a stomp-like um lesson. So, this is interdisciplinary reuse at its best. um in partnership with Thorne. Last year 30 BBSD schools and almost 2,000 second graders got to visit the Simber Marsh Environmental Center to learn about wetlands and this year that was offered al with additional support from the natural resource students to the Apex program. So great collaboration across the ages and

073trip tracker is an amazing program you'll hear about in the next presentation supporting sustainable modes of transportation. So this plan is a living document that evolves in response to implementation and evaluation. Next year will be the final year of this five-year plan and we hope to build out the plan shaping the next five years and fully integrating the Green New Deal um board of education commitment as well. Thank you very much. And with that, we'll take questions. Thank you for that very thorough presentation, Dr. Carolyn team. Board members, any questions? Kitty. Yeah, I have a couple of questions. First of all, I always love this presentation and I just want to commend you on all the great work you all are doing because you've made us a leader in the country and we can be

074an example to what districts can do. Um, couple of questions. What can you remind me what EUI and EFS are? So, I'll jump in with EUI. It's energy use intensity. Okay. So, that measures how much energy is used per square foot per year. Okay. So, it normalizes. Thank you. EFS is short for education for sustainability. So we define that internally and then we look for those opportunities through the standards. And one note is science standards are being revised currently at the state level and BBSD students are involved with that process as well. They are being revised to look where climate science can be additionally implemented into our current standards. Thank you. Um couple other questions. What happened in 2016? I noticed there was a spike up in the I think it was the energy use

075what happened in in energy. I'm assuming I think it was before my time it was before 2020. So we know that we had our well we were in the middle of the bond and had a big dip that came from the bond and kind of came back up again. Let me let's see where the is this the one you were talking about this slide. So we're about so the this which part the spike up it was it looks like it's 2016 here. Yes. Um I don't know. I'm just curious. Yes. I'll look back to what we said about it that presentation. Yeah. Okay. That's fine. And can you tell us who some of your the partners are that we're working with? So many. Yes. Yeah. Mentioned a few. Um, Ecoycle, Garden to Table, Thor, um,

076City of Boulder, the OSMP department. I'm going to I'm going to forget some. I hope they're not listening. Classrooms for climate action partner. Yeah. And can tell me exactly what is climate to table? I mean climate. Good heavens. Garden to table. Yes. to that slide. They are an outside partner that um will sometimes install gardens and then provide schoolwide kind of curriculum and learning to work in the garden. So they at best they get to work with all of the grades um in the school at some point to get into the garden and sometimes it's just a particular grade but they support it you know from install all the way to learning and growing and harvesting. So the are these the schools where you see the gardens most of them. So, we have had uh

077gardens put in in other ways, not through this particular program, other garden programs, but this is the main one. Thank you. Yeah, Jason. Um, yeah, I also agree. This is one of my favorite presentations and great to see so many um, you know, exciting things happening and so many in so many different areas. Um I think I think we've talked about this before and I know I've asked something similar but you know the chart that Kitty was talking about which is 13 which shows the what is it the EIUI and then also kind of getting to net zero. Um you know thinking ahead not to I know we're going to cover transportation in more detail next but you know that that was pretty shocking to see kind of how what a challenge it is to

078kind of move from you know to fully clean electric buses. So what are the what are the big things you know there's a ton of things going on these are all great initiatives but what are the big hurdles that we like need to deal with I guess first question I know that's a big question and then you know what else can the board do besides you know pass green new deal resolutions is there anything specific that we can do to kind of move us to these things I know we're not in ideal climate nationally around some of this stuff but it's great to see us taking the lead at the local level but I just I I look at this and it's you know we're making such good progress but that's still a pretty big

079dip to get to net zero and I'm just curious for like what are the big things obviously transportation is one of them people beyond that yeah so part of this is what the students um the started to map out for us in our decarbonization plan and you know continuing of course to look towards efficiency when we're doing end of any replacements and then when equipment is end of life that's a time to at least consider the options around electrification if that makes sense um a lot of electrification it hopes and relies on the fact that Excel's grid will ultimately be clean. Um because that's how we get to net zero for electric and using not clean grid energy. That doesn't that doesn't help. But in the interim, investing in renewables can be another option for

080that. Anything you want to add in terms of Yeah, I mean what we need when we start talking about this is the funding for it. It all sounds great. uh but even electrifying our build buildings that comes with a cost and then there's an ongoing cost of electricity because electricity is significantly more than natural gas. So we have to weigh those as we move forward. Is that a cost we want to incur or not in order to meet the goals. So I think tonight's transportation discussion is perfect for this to start having those discussions of what is the priority and ultimately money becomes some of the guiding principles for what we're doing moving forward. So you know I think new Vista is an example. Uh you know we have to design a building that held

081350 to 400 students but we also had some energy goals. We still met a lot of those but we didn't exactly meet all of them. So, um I think as we're advocating at the state level, at the federal level in order for some of that money to help us reach some of these goals, uh but it's going to take funds. So, um yeah, we struggle with it. I'll add just one last thing. what I mentioned that we set up the sustainable finance committee internally. A lot of that is looking at what are the resources available to us mostly right now on the local level. There are still some national levers that we're going to be able to pull and probably be able to pull for some time, but there's also more uncertainty in future years.

082So, that team is tasked with really identifying pathways to find financing outside of what can be provided in budgets and and bonds and whatnot. So, Alex, yeah. Uh, I'm also super excited to hear all the things we're doing and um, proud just to be associated with the leaders who launched all this and the students have been doing it for so long in Boulder. Um, one of the legacy things I'm interested in, you referenced the interest in shade and trees. Um, I live across the street from community monastery by where I think they probably lost 15 trees in the last 10 year. And a quick JAT GPT search shows me that more than 3,000 ash trees have been removed in Boulders's public property as a city in the last 10 years. And I have seen literally

083none planted at community monastery since then that I that I count that that would provide shade yet. what's like what's the scale of trees even to just go back and fill the lost canopy that we're like planting on a yearly basis and what can we do to actually get back to having even the shade we had when my kids started at community monastery yeah um Alex I don't know if I have uh I'm trying to think back to when you're talking about a community monastery I mean one of the challenges we've had with climate change etc it's getting hotter when a lot of our trees were planted that they didn't have irrigation. So, we rely on rainfall, etc. And a lot of those trees are dying. So, any new trees that we plant, we require

084irrigation to be added um in order to maintain those. So, that's what we're doing moving forward. Have we had a big initiative internally? I would say yes, by working with community partners and we can look at what has happened out of Fairview, for example. Significant number of trees have been planted there. We're working with the city of Boulder right now on their climate initiatives. We've got a big project coming up at BCSIS High Peaks with a number of tree planting. So, we'll just continue to work with our partners um on that, but a lot of it it I mean it takes funds and again it comes back to that it takes resources in order to make that happen. But we want to do it right. We don't want to just go plant a bunch of

085trees. We got to make sure they're irrigated and they're going to withstand time. Yeah. I I I guess I would follow up and ask like what's this like how many are we talking about because the loss has been so dramatic and in terms of a prioritization of a pleasant place to be a small kid and a playground shade is so crucial in you know early and late months of the year that I like we could have a really cool initiative going on and replace 10 you know of the thousand. So I'm curious to know what the actual numbers are or if we have a plan that gets close to the scale of what we've lost assuming that we have to do irrigation. I mean, I'm I'm assuming we be smart and energy efficient and useful,

086but I'd still love to see a canopy in our public lands that kids can play under and on. I I think this aligns really well with the goals that we have with the city of Boulder. And I'll be happy to share an initiative that we have with the city right now that we'll be moving forward with this summer. So, I'll make sure the board gets that information. I don't have specific numbers to that, so I'm not sure it answers your specific question, but we are moving in the right direction on this. I have another question that's about uh numbers. Um, again, super excited to see our the Green New Deal resolution that the previous board members enacted and excited to see the climate seal of literacy. I also look at our grad plus program and

087our strategic plan and we we have one of our big four planks of that is sort of the workbased learning that goes on and again I look at the numbers of it compared to the other pieces of our grad plus program and the workplace numbers are just minuscule in comparison to the post-secary options and um I mean I look at the Green New Deal resolution and it's it's about getting those real world work experiences and I'm just like well how do we get the numbers up and and I'm curious what the interest is amongst the students and if if we had 10 times as many slots as we have today, would students want it or are we maxing out how much they want and how do we work with when it comes to climate uh

088I can't imagine a better city in which to partner with major institutions like ENCAR and Noah and and NIST and CU um but I don't hear those referenced I I would love to know more about the scale at which we're creating those work-based opportunities. ities and um whether it's a supply or demand issue or a partnership issue or what's the deal with the low numbers. I'm happy to answer that question for you, Alex. And uh luckily for us, we have one of our strategic plan deep dive conversations where we're going to dig into a little bit of some of the work-based learning aspects. Uh certainly college before graduation has skyrocketed, making all other progress seem really low. So, uh I I do think that with college before graduation, there is an infrastructure there already uh

089to be able to build that fast and quick. Um we will have uh we'll be able to report out to the board um and I believe it's next next next next Tuesday. Uh some of the work we're doing on workbased learning. Um why is that taking a little bit longer? Obviously, work-based learning is more than just us. We have to find our partners. we have to get the agreements. We had to build and develop a system to track and monitor. Uh and so we've done some of those things. So we're happy to give you an update on that. But I do agree with you. I think that as as Grad Plus evolves, as um our worked base opportunities evolve, um as the state has evolved, now we have a seal of climate literacy, which is

090super exciting. Um I would say and I would add Aaron or Gita the student interest is for sure there. Uh and uh you know having our first environmental steam program at Heatherwood starting next year which by the way was a program that the community said we want at Heatherwood. Uh I do think that there is uh there's a definitely a bright future in these types of opportunities. Uh, but be able to update you all and dig into that a little bit more next Tuesday. I just want to commend you for all the work here and how quickly you were able to integrate some of the priorities from the Green New Deal resolution into the work you're doing and highlight that specifically. I know that was something that the board had talked about, inserting that piece

091into a plan that was already in motion. So, thank you for that. with the professional development. Is that something that we're having to create to provide those opportunities or does that exist in your just Okay. Well, a lot of it is there. Oh, sorry. A lot of it is there and as Aaron mentioned, we're kind of going through to kind of tag what's existing and and overlaps with this work. A lot of it is provided by our um by Aaron science teachers by our partners. Um and we're working to create new things. So, the goal in this plan was to create a plan around it. And so our our plan is through schooly to have this new opportunity to become green BBSD certified as staff or teachers. And so we've already got how many modules?

092We're we're coming along. It's really close. Um so that then anybody can kind of go through take these trainings and become officially green BBST certified. So it's it's a combination of things. Does that answer your question? Yeah, it does. Thank you. And I want to acknowledge the the work that was done at Fairview on that campus. the number of students that are outside utilizing the tables, taking advantage of the green space, it's outstanding. And so I'm glad to see that that's going to continue as funds become available and as partnerships become available to continue to roll that out to our schools, our kids, our staff, they really like to be outside and connected to nature. And that does wonders for stress levels. So I'm glad to see that's going to be expanded. And then lastly,

093you have these really cool poster boards from a photography project. And I would love the outfits. We didn't explain them. free to share that. So, this is a project that actually happened in 2019, believe it or not, that it was a collaboration with CU um a nonprofit called Eco Arts and I think six of our middle school and high school photography classes. So, CU provided these green suits and our students went around and chose different sustainability features at our schools and um community that they wanted to highlight by wearing these green suits and they took the pictures and there were I think there were 80 plus submissions. So, this um is just two of I think 18 of of these that we have. It's been all around our community at Noah, at CU, at the

094libraries, and now we're going to get it here at the Ed Center this year um in April for Earth Month. So, you can see the whole thing a little bit later this month and really cool project and continues to be, you know, exciting and inspirational to folks. Um and Erin will be wearing a green suit to the next presentation. So, next year. Yes, we all will. Rob, too. Board members, any additional questions for the team? Looks like there are none. But thank you so much for being here, for all your work. You are a small but mighty team and you are doing great things for this district. Board members, I would like to call a short comfort break, about five minutes, to give you an opportunity to look at these boards before our staff take

095them away. So, we'll commune back in five minutes. I'd like to call this evening's meeting back to order. Board members, we will continue on with our information items. Our second information item this evening is the transportation update. All right. Good evening. At the board's request tonight, I am going to be providing an update on uh our efforts to modernize our bus fleet in alignment with our sustainability action plan and just talk about some of the opportunities, the challenge we face to uh as we look forward to electrifying our fleet. Um, also joining me tonight is Amy Thompson, our safe routes of school coordinator, who will provide a safe routes to school update later in the presentation. So just to get started to give us a high level overview um this slide shows the current mode

096share of how our students get to school. So as you can see single family car trips still make up the largest portion with approximately 40% or 11,000 students getting to school uh by car every day. Um 5600 of the eligible 7,100 transportation students utilize a school bus. approximately 8,400 walk or bike and 3,000 utilize RTD or carpool. You can see the percentages uh in the piraphph there. Um I will say these percentages are not exact but they are in alignment with past surveys. Trip tracker number, bike counts, etc. Um and I do want to emphasize our walking and biking numbers are three times the national average. So thanks to our parents and our students for making those decisions. Um our action plan for uh does call for every school to monitor their own transportation patterns

097and develop strategies to support more sustainable options. This action plan goal has not yet been received or achieved. Um we are rethinking that. I don't want to put another thing on schools. So we're looking at how do we develop another a comprehensive mode share data system. Um, but please know we do uh work hard to encourage people to pick uh healthy choices like walking and biking, school bus, RTD and carpool. On average uh or our average fleet age is currently 10 years, meaning each school bus is replaced roughly once every 20 years. We operate 130 daily routes of which are 60 or general education routes, 70 special education routes. We have 14 midday routes and we average eight activity and/or athletic trips each day for a total of about 2.2 million miles driven each school

098year. And I would like to say or think that these statistics highlight uh the importance of reliable and efficient school buses. So here's the current composition on the left hand side of our 219 bus fleet by fuel type. So, while we've made great strides, including adding electric and propane buses, still the majority of our fleet, as you can see, is diesel or unled. We currently operate nine electric school buses. We have four more on order that should be here this year. Uh you'll see on the right hand side our ideal fleet uh would be 110 electric school buses, 30 diesel and 15 unleted that are needed for our mountain routes and our longer trips and 64 propane buses. Um I'll talk a little bit about the comparison of the different types in a future slide.

099I would say the numbers in the ideal scenario are based on today's technology. um if the range of electric school buses improves, additional infrastructure is installed throughout the state, giving us an opportunity to charge elsewhere and money wasn't a factor, then I could see definitely more school buses in our future in the ideal state. Rob, just to clarify, when you say ideal, Yep. to is is that based on the maximum number of electric buses that we could potentially have using today's technology and then we would be able to transport students. Is that is that how we're coming up with the the ideal number as verse to like an ideal set by somebody else? So that correct? So we've went through all of our routes. Right now our electric buses we are getting about 100 miles

100uh maximum per charge. So when we look at the routes and we look at the terrain, we're not running electric buses up in the mountains. We don't have the capacity up there. Uh we believe we have about 110 routes uh that would suffice for 110 electric buses. So we've had a consultant that's helped us look with that look at that at a high level. Um so that's where that ideal state it's really based on today's technology. Thank you for that clarification. Um, just moving on, I would say the age composition of our buses is broken down as shown. You can see on this chart that we have 128 of our 219 buses are over 10 years old. And of that number, 69 of the 128 are over 15 years old. Um, so 31% of our

101fleet is older than 15 years. And our goal is to get to a 15 year 15-year replacement cycle again to help ensure fleet reliability and uh maintain our emissions compliance. So we have uh made important progress over the last decade and I would say through electric infrastructure that was completed in the 2014 bond, expansion of our propane fleet which started in 2016. The retirement of over 100 high emission buses. uh the route consolidation that we did in 2021 still while maintaining and trans transporting the same number of students. Um we continue to move forward with our sustainability goals and uh much of this work especially when we look at propane, electric buses, the electric infrastructure that we've installed has all been supported really by successful grant applications, rebates, and fantastic community partners. Um, as Miles

102noted in the last presentation in the 2021 sustainability action plan, our goal is to reduce transmission or transportation emissions by 750 metric tons of carbon dioxide from our fisc year 2019 baseline. I'm pleased to share that we have surpassed that target in fiscal year 24, reducing over a thousand metric tonses, which is equivalent to taking off uh 241 cars off the road each year. This slide that I referenced referenced a little bit earlier really compares the major characteristics of each fuel type. Um, as you can see, propane buses have uh same initial upfront cost as a diesel bus, but are less costly to maintain, have lower greenhouse gas emissions than that of a diesel bus. Um, the range of a propane bus is around 350 mi, which works really well down here in our non-

103mountain areas for longer trips, uh, longer routes. However, uh as I've stated before, when we're ordering diesel, um propane buses still lack the acceleration we need up in the mountains. That technology has not come around. Uh but as shown, electric buses are significantly more expensive up front. Um they do definitely have the lowest fuel and annual maintenance costs. They offer the greatest greenhouse gas reduction and are definitely the quietest, which helps with the student behavior. Um however their initial costs the associated infrastructure costs the possibility that we'll have to replace batteries in 8 to 10 years and their limited ranges are all challenges that we are planning for. Um we've first bus electric bus was purchased in 2019. Manufacturers have told us all along that the batteries would likely have to be replaced in 8

104to 10 years. We haven't had them long enough to know if that's going to pay out or not. Uh right now if we're getting about a 100 miles per charge, we do believe that will drop down to about 60 or 70% at that 8 to 10 year mark. So as we're talking about costs in a further side, uh think about that. Um we currently have chargers installed at our Boulder and Lafayette transportation terminals. We have three terminals throughout the district. We have another one up in Ned. However, we do not have chargers up there. These are this is a photo of the chargers we have installed at Lafayette. Um here is a map. We currently have 10 chargers at the Lafayette terminal, one at the Boulder terminal for a total capacity of 13 uh to

105be able to charge 13 buses. Uh we utilize both level two and level three fast chargers. You can see the benefits of both uh in the bullet points. And I would uh just add working with GA miles and others careful planning goes into when we charge these charging them during the day is a lot more expensive due to peak demand pricing versus charging them overnight. So that is uh something that we have to think about as we're uh charging buses and um installing the infrastructure. Uh as I have communicated before, one of the most significant challenges we continue to face in electrifying robust fleet is the installation of the charging uh infrastructure. Um this process with Excel typically takes anywhere from 18 to 24 months from start to finish. And under the current rebate structure,

106we are only able to install chargers and the required infrastructure for the number of buses we order. So if we order four electric buses, we can only install four electric chargers. So as a result, each new bus order restarts that 18 to 24month process, which significantly uh slows our ability to scale up with electric buses. Um and this process could be done uh faster and a lot less cost um by scaling up that infrastructure all at one time. When I say infrastructure, I'm talking about the switch gear, the transformer, all of the underground conduit, the wire, the pull boxes, etc., and adding chargers then as needed. If you can get all that in at one time and then add the chargers. However, rebates won't cover that. So, that would require substantial upfront cost uh from

107the district. So based on as we talked about just a little bit ago based on our analysis of our bus routes 50% of our fleet could be electric again based on today's technology the range of the electric buses and the infrastructure installed throughout the state which is minimal uh for buses. So if you look at just that 50% of the fleet, not focusing on the other 50%. Here is a sidebyside comparison of diesel, propane, unleted, and I'll refer to that as internal combustion engines versus electric based on a 15-year time frame. And again, just reinforce based on what we know today. So electric costs more upfront, but offers a long-term savings in fuel and maintenance. That is apparent. However, even with these savings, we still forecast an additional expense of about 58 to 73 million

108over the 15 years to transition that half of the fleet to EV. Um, I did not include some of the other expected costs just for simplicity sakes. We have software costs. Uh, we have upgrades to the software that we have to pay. Um, and then the other thing I did not include, and I think this would be a discussion in the future, is if we have a power outage and we have 50% of our fleet that is electric, what do we do? So, do we build a cost for diesel generators? Do we have a micro grid that could power the power buses? But, um, power outages in our district are pretty common. We see those quite frequently. So, that is something. thing. The other thing that other districts have done is prioritize routes, which means

109the routes that have diesel and unled buses and propane will get service, but electric buses will not be able to service, and you'd have to prioritize those, notify families in advance uh of that. So, just something to think about. Um, this is something where a consultant could really help us uh plan in the future on what that may look like. Uh, however, I just want to note that cost is not in here. The bus purchase line item 110 buses is calculated on $150,000 a bus for internal combustion engine 400,000 for electric buses. Uh based on these current assumptions we anticipate a total cost of 25 to 30 million electric bus scenario 70 to 75 million. Uh that's over 15 years. And these projections, I will say, do include inflation and interest built in. And if

110grant funding becomes available, uh then we can close that gap of that 58 to 73 million. Uh we don't know exactly uh and the timing of this presentation was tough because we don't know exactly how the tariffs and some of the other global uh changes that are occurring today will impact bus prices. If we would have had this conversation six months ago, we all thought that bus prices were going to be d uh dropping drastically because another number of bus manufacturers were to come online. Um and I believe in today's uh what's happening at the federal level, etc. That's still to be seen. So I have built this on a $400,000 bus, not assuming buses will drop. Um, the cost of the electric infrastructure and the chargers is estimated in the range of 10 to$15

111million for 110 buses. I did take out some funds for the chargers that we currently have installed. The estimated life for the electric school bus battery is 8 to 10 years. Uh, right now we cannot get hard costs on what that will cost to actually replace them, but uh manufacturers are telling us that's somewhere in the 30 to 50% of the total cost of the bus. So that is that estimate is 11 to 24 million. Um as you can see maintenance costs are about half for an electric school bus compared to diesel and those are based on our numbers. And then fuel costs are approximately 60% less for electricity compared to diesel or propane. Um to bring all of this back uh to the presentation prior to this and to our sustainability action plan, I

112think this is the real reason we're having this discussion is if we were able to achieve this goal, we would have reduced our emissions from 66,000 to 22,000 metric tonses over the next 15 years, which would be significantly. And then that's uh very similar to removing 9,600 cars from the road over that 15-year time frame. I do want to point out that 22,000 metric tonses is produced by Excel Energy to supply the electricity to charge the buses. If Excel can meet their goals prior to the 24 20 240 deadline um 2040 goal that they've set for themselves, that would be better than what I have shown here. Um this slide here, I'm going to focus on the right hand side and then I'm going to move over to the leftand side. But to maintain a

11315-year cycle for 219 buses, I need to replace approximately 15 buses per year. In order to do that, in today's dollars, if the board were to elect to move forward with electric, we would need approximately $6 million of ongoing funds to replace 15 buses. If we maintain status quo, we continue to do replace diesel, propane, and leaded buses. On that 15-year average, we would need approximately 2.25 25 million per year not figuring in inflation etc. The current budget that I have in cap reserve right now is 1.5 million. Uh that was around a million and then a handful of years ago we increased that to 1.5. So, with that 1.5 million, uh, if we were to purchase electric buses out of $400,000, I'd be purchasing about three or four buses per year. Or with diesel,

114propane, and unled at 150,000, we can purchase approximately 10 buses per year. So, that replacement rate with the current funding right now is 22 years. Um, now moving back over to the left hand side, the state of Colorado is no longer offering grants or rebates for electric buses. They have pulled those. Um, Excel is still offering a rebate structure and that is still active. However, a lot of that requires us to uh put up the upfront capital and then we can get a rebate back. The details with Excel right now are very unclear. It's a first come, first serve basis, so you really don't know what you're getting until you're moving forward and you've already invested the dollars. Um EPA's website still states that the clean school bus program is active. Uh but we know

115that's possibly on the chopping block and relying on federal fund funds right now is extremely risky. And I would just throw out there the other options for the board of education to consider would be prioritizing a sustainability component in a future bond measure or consider increasing the transportation override mill levy to help fund the additional cost and those funds could be used for both the infrastructure and uh to purchase school buses. So goals moving forward and as we're thinking about just finishing out this year into next year. Uh first goal would be to complete a bus electrification study and continuing to monitor grant opportunities to increase our electric and propane fleet and expand our charging infrastructure and continuing to get rid of a lot of our older buses that are typically unled or diesel. Um,

116and then I would look to the board for guidance on considering a potential ballot question moving forward to uh enhance this priority. Um, with that, I am honored to turn it over to Amy Thompson, our safe routes to school coordinator. Good evening, board. My name is Amy Thompson and I'm the safe routes to school program coordinator for the Boulder Valley School District. And what does that mean? I I put together resources for the 22,000 kids who don't take the school bus every day. So what are some of those resources? Um first of all, RTD. We have a wonderful partnership with RTD and I want to thank the board for supporting ballot measure 7A last fall. That was huge. There was a pilot program for a year to have a zero fair for youth. We didn't

117know if that was going to continue. Thanks um to that initiative, it is now a permanent fair structure. And from my partners at RTD, they have told me that youth writership has doubled in the first year and then we'll we'll get another report at the end of this school year. I think the program has been extremely successful. The whole system is free even down to Denver, even to the airport. It's been a wonderful asset. Um, second of all, car pooling. So, we partner with the D Denver Regional Council of Governments. They've got an online tool called School Pool. We've got a a network set up at 54 of our sites that um families can sign up for to find a carpool match. We've got 700 families signed up for that right now. Walking and biking,

118the one I like the best. Excuse me. We estimate that about 30% of our kids walk and bike to school. Like Rob said earlier, that is three times the national average. We're very proud um of that figure. We're national leaders in the safe routes to school movement. Uh bicycle education, we brought that back. Um it was took a hiatus from COVID. It's back. We were out at Pioneer. Jorge, thank you for cleaning up our cones for running clubs. We're out there teaching bike and we were taking him out on the nice open space there. A super fun time there. will be at um Lewisville Elementary um later this month. And then encouragement um we've got the trip tracker program. It's currently at 43 schools. Go to the next slide. So trip tracker. So um Jason,

119I've kind of heard you talk about how we have these fun like events. We've got bike to school day and walk to school day and then and then what? And so trip tracker is our kind of sustained encouragement program for the whole year. So um every month I send out a survey to um parents and and older students um and they report to me about if they walk, bike, roll, take the school bus, take the RTD carpool, park and walk, basically anything but a single family car in the hug and go and uh they get trip tracker dollars. It looks like little Monopoly money and they can spend it. We've got a couple dozen different businesses. think ice cream, used bookstores, think Gateway Park, bowling. They can spend these monopoly money like real cash and

120get rewards for their their green um choices. So, this program has been in place for 15 years. And so, what that means is that we've got BBSD kids who have completely grown up with Trip Tracker. So, we kind of initially thought the program Monopoly money, it's going to be elementary and middle school. Well, now we've got high schoolers who like, I've been doing this my whole life. I want it now. So, Fairview has signed up and they're one of our shining stars. They're they post some really big numbers. So, that's been really great to see. And like I said, in the last year, participation has been up 21%. Uh we saved over 700,000 pounds of carbon um from the environment. I can download from our bus routing software how far everyone lives from school which

121interestingly enough the median distance is 2.1 miles for the whole district even with open enrollment. Um and so I can calculate how much carbon we're saving from the environment and I awarded over $83,000. So yes, I have a drawer of $83,000 of trip tracker monopoly money dollars at my desk. And then our students generously uh donated 6,500 back to our schools and 4,100 back to local nonpartners, local nonprofits, I should say. Trip Tracker is generously sponsored by our partners at Boulder County, the city of Bowler, the city of Lafayette, and the store owners. I um with the grant money that I get from our government partners, um I reimburse stores 50 cents for every dollar that's spent. that they're contributing to. So, it's truly a community effort to uh make our environment cleaner and get

122kids healthy. Really appreciate that. And the government um partners, this helps them meet their sustainability goals. So, it's kind of a win-win. And then safety collaboration. So, every month I meet um with traffic engineers from the city of Boulder, Boulder County. I meet with some of the other cities, too. And we've got some exciting initiatives coming up. Um, Boulder County is just starting the RFP process to hire a consultant to do a a countywide safe route to school action plan. The thought with this um plan is to be more proactive rather than reacting to um crashes. So, that is starting and so we'll have a safety plan for um all of our schools. That's exciting. Boulder County is also leading the initiative for a vision zero plan. Vision Zero, the goal is zero traffic deaths,

123zero serious injuries. So they're currently making a plan for Boulder County and incorporated Boulder County, the city of Lafayette, and the town of Superior. So that's going to set in motion some good safety improvements for those areas. Broomfield is also in the process of doing a transportation safety action plan. the same kind of thing, looking at their streets to make improvements and doing a transit study to try to get more RTD service to Broomfield. Um, Ced DOT has been, that's the Colorado Department of Transportation, excellent partners. So, over the last 20 years, we've done 27 safe routes to school projects with them totaling $4.5 million. So, a lot of infrastructure, a lot of crosswalk improvements, bike lanes, that kind of stuff. Um the city of Boulder has just recently um went through a process to

124update their pedestrian crossing treatment guidelines. They let me be a pro a part of that process. So I got to give them feedback from the mom with a kindergartenner perspective. That's going to set the the stage for some amazing improvements to um crosswalks and more rapid flashing beacons, more bulbouts, uh more speed humps, those kind of things. So that's really exciting. And then lastly, we've had wonderful support from local law enforcement. Um the city of Boulder police have um come to Centennial Middle School to do some more patrols. The Boulder County Sheriff's Department asked for a list of our bus stops in the unincorporated county area and they've done some extra patrols for people running our stop signs on our buses. Um, even when we had an incident in um, Lafayette on Baseline Road that

125you know about, the police were out there immediately doing extra patrols, writing tickets, um, doing what they can to make it safer. And then lastly, I just wanted to leave you with um, automated enforcement is the future. It's coming. Um, and so the city of Boulder has experimented with that and they they focus on some corridors that we were getting complaints on from families like Lookout Road, Valma Road. Um, this is going to be um taking over and making things, I think, a lot safer in our school zones. And then lastly, I just wanted to circle back to um bike and roll to school day is coming up on April 23rd. We're going to have lots of celebrations around the the district, bike rodeos, all kinds of stuff. And we would welcome you um to

126join us in biking and walking to school. And with that, we'll take questions. Thank you for that presentation. Board members, who would like to begin? Kitty. So, I think you pretty much answered the where does the trip tracker money come from? So, do did you say we have a grant and that's where our piece of it comes from? So, I get a a budget of zero to run this program. So, I have to get all um grants to pay for that 50% that we that we um reimburse the businesses. So, I um it's mostly from our um government partners like Boulder County, City, Boulder, City of Lafayette. gotten some other grants like from the Colorado Department of Public Health, things like that, but it's all grant funded. Well, you're doing a great job with zero

127money from us, so that's a win. Definitely. And um I have another excuse me question. What is Did you say automated enforcement? And can you tell us automated? So basically camera enforcement. So that's kind of camera that flashes in your eyes and then you're blinded. Well, hopefully you're not blinded and you can't see the kid walking in. It's going to be um more than just like right now it's mostly um stop light running and there's will be more speed enforcement too which um we know that speed is a big factor in how severe crashes. So enforcing speed limits is extremely important and automated enforcement is the way to scale it up and really make it impactful. So it's the things that are already happening just not where but it's new. Um so the the running

128a stoplight that's been in place for a while. Um, but the laws just changed and so the city of Boulder is leading the way. So that was like the Valmont, the Lookout and I could see our other partners, City of Lafayette Superior following suit and doing more and more um automated enforcement. Okay, thanks Jason. Um, thanks very much. Uh, I have a bunch of questions but maybe sticking to the transportator the um your piece of it. Um, you mentioned, you know, so I know one of my kids goes to Creekide and there's been a number of improvements in the neighborhood, Martin Acres, Morehead, uh, around, you know, kind of curbs and, you know, kind of traffic calming things. Yeah. and you kind of alluded to it that there's been some partnership, but I've been curious

129to know how much it seems like every time there is a and it's something I know we're meeting with the city Boulder City Council later this uh school year and I'd really love to raise this because I feel like every time there is a transportation improvement project, we should be one of the first calls that the city makes or or vice versa to be able to coordinate to make sure that you know that perspective is taken into account. So could you talk about kind of what that looks like and how you know not not necessarily the Martin Acres project but yeah you know where you know what that looks like when you partner with Yeah. Every time the city does a project they do public outreach and so they do work through me and I'm

130like and they show me the project I'm like oh you probably want to talk to this and this and this school um to get out like the the public engagement um part of it and then they talk to me um about projects. I will say their bias has been to tell me about the ones that are within like a half mile of the school and I keep telling them every street is a school street like something can happen everywhere particularly with you know all of our open enrollment that's happening and that number is growing and growing. So we're having all of this cross transportation so truly every street is a school street. Um, so I'm really happy to be serving on some of those committees for some of those big global projects like the the

131vision zero for the entire county and the safe routes to school action plan. So um, I get on there and I um tell them about my experiences back in the day when I was biking with a, you know, a kindergartener or a kindergartener with a baby. Um, those are the the vulnerable road users that I'm biased towards as um, the moms with little kids. are they you said that they have if I can follow up that they see the kind of the school's involvement or district involvement like within a mile of the school they don't yet kind of have this vision type for the city of Boulder like they don't yet have a vision of like anytime there's a street improvement we should consider kids going to school and you know that kind of stuff

132or has that's what I've been trying to encourage them more and more um with because that particularly with the safe routes to school that 4.5 to 20 million in the 27 projects, they're generally within a quarter mile of a school. And um I'm just saying it's a whole ecosystem. Our buses are on these roads. We've got bus stops. We got kids walking and biking. We have parents driving and car pooling. Um so we produce a lot of uh movement around the the county every single day. And um yeah. So Okay. Yeah. Well, like I said, we we are meeting with the city. I don't know what the process is for developing that agenda, but it's something I feel like we should prioritize. It's a natural partnership. There's no reason. It doesn't have to cost anything

133extra. It just seems like, you know, we we should have similar goals here. And it's great to see there's alignment, but it sounds like it could be improved. And it could be more, of course. And I'll I'll just give you a heads up that there the city is collecting um information or input on Fulsome right now. So, um although it's not necessarily really close to any one specific school, probably have lots of students and families traveling on it. So, um Google it, get on their website. They've got three different plans and cast your vote. Make your comments. Um yeah, if I can ask just one more question on this issue, the the um bike and roll the school. It's, you know, it's uh it's great. I feel like at at least at our the schools

134where my kids go, you know, there's at least a 50% increase in the number of kids that are biking. Um and I don't know what it is. Is it the snacks? Is it the like, you know, activities? But I would love and I don't know what is involved or the cost, but is it is it possible to do that more often? And I know we have the weather factor, but you know, it seems like the more we can do that at I mean, even just sending out advertisements that don't involve snacks or a huge cost. Yeah. You know, that alone I would imagine would have an impact on emissions because I just see, you know, the bike racks are packed. People are locking them against all the fences and so we're overflowing. It has an

135impact and so maybe just, you know, monthly or quarterly, it seems like the more we can do that um you know, the better. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to to host a huge party every week. Um, but I will say back in the day, like when my kids were at Heatherwood, we did walk and roll Wednesdays. Um, and that kind of kept it going. And so, we do like a little mini party every Wednesday. Um, I don't know if you saw our video with the Coline Beatsy Bus. So, every Wednesday they're riding as a group. That's kind of a big party. Um, the trip tracker kind of keeps a little momentum going. And then there's some interim um events we could do more with. there is winter um bike to work day that we could

136um you always put it on the calendar but we don't really plan anything specific. And then in November there's Ruby Bridges walk to school day. That's kind of a new thing that's taken over the nation of kind of like celebrating um transportation and racial equity like and how they interplay in that role. Um so that happens every November. Um and they put out some really great resources even for teachers like things they can do in the classroom. So that's something we can put on the calendar for November for next school year. Alex, yeah, I'm I have some bus questions, but I for Amy, I'd like to ask you first. Um, how big is your team? It's me and then I do have um like three bus aids who help me um count the money every

137so they make the packets. Um, I do have one bike instructor under me that um is teaching um every once in a while a crossing guard, but we're a pretty lean team. Yeah, I would I would just point out as we figure out our priorities, clearly I'm sobered by um our bus discussion and super excited by our RTD and you know, people going. So, it seems like every kid that we might otherwise be busing that is not and every carpool that could be a single vehicle um and every mom riding an electric bike with a kid and a toddler who's going eight miles like uh is a win for the rest of our budget. So, um it might be that if we can figure out what our highest leverage things that you're achieving as an

138individual with with three people helping count the monopoly money, um we should invest some more in as a district and that the returns would be not just happy kids and better air, but um save us money on buses, whether they're electric or diesel. So, I'd be really curious to know what you could do with a little bit more financial or HR resources that would get more people um out of their current transportation stuff that we'd like to avoid. Thank you. I appreciate that. And in my heart, I do feel like biking and walking, it's um the best thing to save money for the district, to save the environment, for the kids' physical and mental health. I think it's one of the best things um we can be doing. And so I would appreciate any extra

139support you can give me. Well, and I uh if I may, I would I would add I mean I think for those watching at home, this is another one of those great topics for someone working on a dissertation or a master's degree to really model out the dollar investment in what we're doing to support biking and walking or RTD and what we would save from investing in um having to buy increasingly still diesel buses in 2042 under those plans. So, um I I think we're missing missing an opportunity to invest a little bit and get more people there. Like I would be curious to know this kind of thing someone could study right away is on the the bike rack usage in our elementary and middle and high schools and figure out where we actually

140could use more bike racks and go ahead and build those and prioritize those in the short term. Alex, I already know that. So, we do monthly um bike counts at schools. So, I've got data and I can see where it dips in the winter and comes back up in the spring and and we do definitely have some schools where at the peak the fall and spring season, think like Fairview and Southern Hills and Louisville Middle and Centennial Middle School where we are um overflowing the bike racks. And so, I'm looking for grants um to to get some more bike racks. Well, maybe we shouldn't rely on grants for this. And we we are not we have added a significant number of bike racks over the short amount of time. Creekide being one of them. So

141uh I will I just want to emphasize um city of Boulder has been an excellent partner in all things transportation. Uh they are limited. They have constraints just like we do. Uh but they I feel like they reach out to us on every individual project ask us for our input. Can they always do what we ask them to do? No, they can't, but they have been an excellent partner. I just want to emphasize that. I want to put a plug in for some of like sitebased initiatives. I Amy Thompson is great when schools call her and say, "Hey, we need help with flow of traffic in our parking lots or we we the students are counting the bikes every month and we need more bike racks and I think you're doing a great job and

142there is continued opportunity. I mean, at the district level, we can do some things, but sites can do other things as well with PTO support and different things, parentled walk, bike, roll the schools that are not necessarily coming from district comms. And so I just want to shout out for all the work that you're doing there. I can see it where my kids go to school. Um, Trip Tracker has been something in our family forever. And when they first started taking the RTD bus to school, it was with our neighborhood Eco Pass. And then when zero fair for air for clean air came out like they were the only ones on the RTD and then grow I'm glad to see it's double because I've noticed anecdotally along like the skip route there are way and

143more kids every single year even throughout the year as more students ride there's increased comfort level and to Alex's point if 20% of our transportation mode in our district is a bus and the costs are very significant really capitalizing on the other ways in which kids and staff get to school that's positive for the environment, positive for their bodies is a really good way to think about how we use our money. And so continue to support those efforts I think is really important at the district level and at the site level. And um lots of improvements and I'm really glad to see that your team of one is pulling this off. And a big shout out to the businesses that do participate in the trip trackers. I mean, Gateway is packed when at towards the

144end of the year when the weather gets great, weather gets nice, that is a hot one for kids to spend their money on. But it does like that having those businesses participate really does make that program robust. So, shout out to our community partners for that. And back to my previous comment again, I'm still thinking about the cost of electrifying our bus fleet and the fact that it's 20% of our students are taking that mode of transportation. And so those return on investments are something to really think about. And to Dr. Carol's point earlier, how green of a option that is does also depend on the XL XL's use of how they're electrifying their grid, like how what are they getting using to electrify their grid. So, not always within our control. Board members, other

145questions or comments? Alex. All right. This is a small one, but I'd be remiss if I didn't speak to the impassioned stakeholder group we have of beautiful seven-year-old girls who are pushing us to get rid of the idling in cars and the parking lots. So, we can add that somewhere. I would feel like I was representing the constituency of the incredible advocacy of our uh anti- idling community. Kitty, yeah, I had two other questions written down and I forgot to ask them. So with these chargers we have at schools that the public can come and use, do we make money off that? We make enough money to offset the electricity and the software costs. Okay, that's And do we have any of the faster chargers in, you know, at public places or are they just

146the regular ones? We No, we do not. Okay. Yep. We have some level three for our buses, but not for cars. Okay, thanks. In our last purchase of vehicles, I noticed we purchased a lot more a white fleet, smaller vehicles. Can you speak a little bit to as enrollment declines, our transportation routes are shifting, how the size of the vehicles we're purchasing may or may not shift, and how that can also impact environmental efficiencies reached if we have vehicles at capacity. Yeah. So, um, as you saw, I think 128 of our our vehicles are 10 years or older. Well, times have changed. Our routing looks completely different. When we, uh, ch changed our routing back in 2019, we have less kids riding than we did at one time. So, what we are doing now is

147trying to rightsize our fleet as we renew the fleet. So, for example, we need more 14 passenger buses and less 71 passenger buses. However, that's taking time if we're only replacing a bus about 10 buses per year, right? So, that is what we're working on right now is to rightsize that fleet, making sure we have the right 14 passenger, right number of suburbans, right number of 48 passenger, 71 passenger, right number of wheelchair buses, etc. So, um, Andrew is not presenting today, but Andrew Thompson sitting here in the front row is our fleet manager for transportation. So, we work closely determining what those numbers are and and as we place orders, making sure we're thinking through that. I appreciate that because that's something I've been hearing from the community wonderings about non full buses that

148are running and the environmental impact and how that's impacting our sustainability goals. And so, it's a good talking point for us to say that as we're turning over this fleet, we are trying to rightsize, but there's going to be a space in which you might see buses that are not at full capacity. And but we're we're aware and we're we're working on that. And the other thing to think about is our buses run two tiers. So they pick up a school or they pick up drop off at a school and then they you know they pick up and drop off at another school. They might be really full at that first tier or the second tier, but not on the first or second. Does that make sense? So we keep that in mind. Also, the

149way tiering works, um sometimes you'll see half empty buses, but the second tier they're full, for example. Thanks for that, Jason. And then Kitty. Um, yeah, I think you know, Alex described the bus conversation or the bus presentation is very sobering and it really was I appreciate all this. Uh, but it's really eye opening to see, you know, I'd love to electrify tomorrow as as I'm sure all of us would, but to see the cost and to see that, you know, the in a time of limited resources. So, you kind of alluded to it. I know this is probably not the right time to you know given the volatility in kind of the world right now. Um but you know maybe pre this volatility if we could go back to that thing what was the

150trend among school bus manufacturers and the likely kind of expectation that those costs would be you know at least closer to you know what a you know a diesel or propane you know right now it's what 400 to 150 you know was there a kind of long-term trend line again pre maybe that's no point in saying that but kind of pre these last few months and tariffs um where you know we could look to 5 years down the road and say you know that's probably going to be 250 instead of 400 or something like that. What what were the kind of industry assumptions around that? We've been working closely with two different consultants on electrifying our fleet and no one would ever promise numbers or anything but everyone thought the prices would just continue to

151decline. And as I mentioned, there was a number of bus manufacturers that are supposed to be coming online. And again, that's yet to be seen, especially with what's happened at the feds. There was a lot of money that was freed up at one time for luxury school buses. Um, that money is no longer available both in the state and at the federal level. So, um, I can't answer your question because I don't know, but we thought the numbers would decline. I have not made that assumption in this analysis uh because we just don't know what will happen over the next four years. One more question and I forgot to write this one down. So, um, on the slide where you talked about how many single car trips there are and, you know, all the different

152ways kids get to school, is there any way that you've been able to keep track of how many people drive their kids to school just to take them to school and how many people drop them off on their way to work? And I don't know if that's possible, but I would think there's a big difference in the two because if you're driving to work, you're going to drive to work anyway. But, you know, like I said, there may that may be unknowable. We would have to look at past surveys, Kitty, to pull up uh those numbers. I don't have those numbers tonight. And I'm not suggesting that you take on extra work. I just wondered if it was something, you know, that you been able to do. Yeah. Dr. Anderson, excuse me. Sorry. Um, first

153of all, I want to thank our team for the significant amount of work that went into putting this presentation together. You got to see some of our superstars in action today around sustainability and transportation. So, I want to thank the team. Uh, appreciate the questions. Let's talk direction. Right. This is something that the board prioritized as something to investigate. Uh there's a there's a spectrum of of moves as a district we can make. Smaller moves. Let's put up some more bike racks. Let's get Amy some help potentially to see what she could do. Right. On the smaller moves, bigger moves. Let's consider an Operation Tex mill levy override to begin to expand or accelerate some of these programs. Let's consider um direction as we're considering our next bond. Is sustainability a critical component of that?

154uh your policy board members dictates and correct me if I'm wrong Rob how far away from school we transport with buses right what would that do uh do you take another look at that so uh there's a presentation and information item not a work session item in particular and this doesn't happen to have doesn't have to happen this evening but we're presenting this information in response to a board request and So to the extent that unless you say otherwise right given the cost associated that Rob has has um has presented and and today isn't the time where you'd have to decide those big things unless you directed us today. We'll be we'll continue to keep this as a priority and continue to make small moves as they make sense within our overall um with overall

155budget and strategy. uh unless you direct us otherwise. And so just making a statement and almost a question of clarification because there are things that we could do to move this and accelerate these further. Um uh not you know not in competition from other things if we staff up and we bring the people in place. Um so there are opportunities just to be really clear on what it is we can do as a governance team around this. So would pose that question to the board if anybody would want to respond or if there's no strong feelings. So let's just see how things go and we could potentially continue to have this as a topic as we prioritize moving forward. Even more maybe more of a work session topic in in in a future semester to

156see how things are happening, how have the grants shook out. I don't want this to I don't want this to be a oneandone for the board because it feels like this is a priority. Uh but I want to make sure that we're meeting expectations. Jason, I was going to say given the high degree of uncertainty that we are facing at a state and federal level and the impacts that reach into many facets of the services that we provide, I think continue to consider this and wait and see how the dust settles before we make any big changes. I I I think even mentioning an MLO or adding that in a time of market instability and people are having to make hard choices at their households and it just that would feel the timing is not

157right. I think we need to understand where we are in the context of everything and make choices that continue to meet our sustainability action plan goals. Um but and and keep an eye on this as things change but potentially not can committing any dollars or exploring additional dollars until we understand how everything is going to shake out at the state and federal level. That's kind of where I'm coming into this at. Okay. I agree with Nicole in terms of this is definitely not the time given the the vast uncertainty we have with what's going on in markets and what's going on in the economy economy. And even if that were stable, seeing the vast difference in cost between running an electric fleet versus, you know, something powered by a fossil fuel. Um, it's hard to

158justify spending that much more money, at least this quickly, without having that money come from somewhere other than us. Um, because we have uncertainty in terms of what our funding is going to be as well. And I love the aspiration we have for, you know, it' be great if everything we did was 100% green and we had no emissions. And I don't see that happening anytime soon, but taking things incrementally, looking at what's going on. You know, I would certainly, if I were here to vote for it, would be in support of going to the taxpayers at some point. But I agree this is not the time because we are fortunate to have such great community members who um support our work and you know the whole county benefits from the foresight that our taxpayers

159have in terms of here's what's important to fund. But um I agree unfortunately now is not the time. Um, I I agree with those comments, uh, Kitty and Nicole. I do I do think, um, you know, Dr. Anderson, you said something that there's there's things we could do more aggressively that are not in competition with our current priorities. And so, obviously, given the uncertainty that Nicole and Kitty mentioned and the timing, you know, this is maybe not the time, but I I would be curious to know what, you know, beyond what's presented here, I mean, if we really want to reach those goals, you know, we're not we're not on track to do that at this with these current actions. I mean, we're we're on track to make progress and reduce emissions, but we're not

160on track to meet the goals that we set. Uh, and so, you know, I'd be curious to know what those moves are that we can make that are more aggressive that, you know, does not don't have to be done now, but at some point we should be considering in the in the, you know, coming months. um that you know again it's easy it's hard to know what those things that would be what could we could do that that cost money that's not in competition with things that we all care about but if there are things I think I I at least would be very interested in seeing what else we can do to be more aggressive on this front biggest things you can do bonds mill levy transportation those are the two big ones right

161um to the extent that that that we went for bond on dollars that would increase efficiencies. You know, old school older buildings are inefficient, newer buildings more efficient. And how close did we get to net zero um at um New Vista? Uh New Vista has an EUI of 38. So to be net zero, you want to have a EUI right around 30. So we're real close. And then the idea is you can put solar on the building to offset it. So the four new schools that we built in 2000 that we opened in 2017, they are all net zero cap. So if we add solar to those buildings, they could be officially net zero buildings. I I would say so those are are the big things. Um you know, the question around, you know, if

162you continue to shrink routes, right, does that meet our goals but then push more cars on the roads? I don't know how you'd even know that, right? But I mean theoretically you could change you know transportation is only mandated for special education students in the state of Colorado. All their transportation is is transportation that we provide. Uh you know I would say going fromund and how many routes did we have were up to 130. We went from 186 to 130. That was pretty significant. And for those that were on the board on the time know and understand that uh not everybody was psyched when we did that. I think that there were some people that were were bothered. So, I mean, I do think that that it's going to take money to reach those goals.

163Jason, I don't know that you can't it's just not turning the lights off at the end of the day or, you know, like these are big energy moves that we would have to make. Um, and then transportation. I would say I commend the team for having a plan. I would say though to to to further investigate what it would actually take, we would need to bring in a consultant to do the study as Rob was referring to. Um that would be the next maybe not huge move but the next march in that direction around transportation. Um uh and then as we're thinking about next bond thinking about what that could potentially cost I would say that when we do our facilities study which we'll do like we'll do an analysis of our facilities before we

164go for another bond we can keep an eye on that. I mean we could we could do that right Rob? to be honest and our team has been talking about it. The lowhanging fruit, I can assure you this team has thought about the lowhanging fruit. The next big thing is Miles was talking about electrifying our buildings etc. This idea of a sustainability component of our bond makes a lot of sense. We have a community that believes in this work. And if we think about a capital improvement planning committee coming together, thinking about what the next bond would look like, looking at solar, looking at electrifying our buildings, looking at transportation, which could be a part of a bond program. We haven't included buses before, but definitely could be part of it. That does make a

165lot of sense. been prioritizing that with the list of everything else that we want to do, more efficient buildings, newer buildings, um addressing some of the um issues that we have with our learning environments with a lack of natural daylight, some of those other things. So, if I were to look forward and I were to guide the board, if you looked at me, it would be a sustainability component of a future bond and thinking of it that way. And hopefully times will be a little bit better in a future bunk because I'm thinking about our current bond and the rate of inflation and construction prices and again timing is everything when it comes to these things. Alex, I saw your hand up. Yeah, thank you. Um uh I agree with everything people have said from

166the board in terms of prioritization and direction and timing as well. Um, I also think so much is sort of in an unknowable mode for thinking about things like infrastructure and energy spending in the next decade or so. Even if we weren't in the current political environment, we'd still be in a technological environment flux. So, I think modeling out too far in time is really pretty hard to do. Um I will say though in the meantime our high lever partnerships like not just with you know city and counties but with RTD seem like high leverage points that we shouldn't give up on or that we should consider part of our you know broader strategy is to influence the other people who are moving people around and uh figure out how we do that well and

167internally uh like the numbers it takes to do the infrastructure to create a single bus charger pale in comparison to giving Amy Thompson more staff resources to do more partnerships in individual schools to get more people out of the buses and onto their bikes. So, I mean, I think we can when we think about community engagement and we think about what we're doing on the individual campuses, um I'd be like I think some of the soft stuff we could do uh would would be higher return than figuring out a solution that ultimately costs, you know, $112 million or something. Along the lines of that a little bit, one thing I've been thinking about the start of every year, I get a lot of questions about what time do your kids get to this RTD stop.

168Do our do we work with our school do our schools work with RTD to kind of backtrack and and and help their community understand what time at what stops they might want to hop on a route that gets them to school. That's an RTD provided route that's not our route. We Oh, thank you. We do provide um like a master bell schedule to RTD every summer. Um and so they can kind of look and adjust and they do make adjustments for us and they do what's called school trippers where they put an extra bus on a line around school times. Um but RTD has had some of the challenges that we've had in transportation um with getting enough drivers, but they're they're getting better kind of like we are. And so there are they are

169approaching preandemic levels. They're not quite there yet. Um, so to answer your question, yes, we they do look at schedules, but also they have limitations. Um, and so they can't do everything that we ask. Yeah. And maybe an opportunity for our students that are really eager to get involved in this work at certain sites and helping solve the problems in their specific schools. Another really cool development is um both the county and RT RTD just hired a new youth engagement um specialist who um I've talked to and she's willing to go out and do like back to school nights, presentations. She can even bring an RTD RTD bus to schools. So they're really looking to do more um interaction with families and kind of educate about their services. Great board members in Oh, sorry Dr.

170Anderson. So, so one idea board members you so here's what I'm hearing uh you know right now continue to do the work you're doing look for lowhanging fruit and opportunities potentially a next step and I don't know if you've had the resources or the support to do this have we ever contacted the parents of families that are within our walking and biking zones that we designate per board policy to find out the reasons that are getting in the way for kids not walking walking or biking. Um, and would that be something that maybe we could put together as information gathering as lowhanging fruit to begin to move forward to something it feels like everybody believes in? We've never formally done that. I've always thought, you know, maybe what I guess what used to be ADU

171would be an interesting just add a couple transportation questions. I will say a hidden gem of the trip tracker program is every month my last question is tell me about your successes and challenges getting to school and I get the best comments like those are the ones that I share um with RTD or with the counties. Um so that's been kind of a jump but formalizing it to like a more robust survey um I think would be good for knowing those reasons and good for figuring out this like consistent mode share board members. I think that's something that we can do if you all are in support of that. Uh it may be allow us to give better, more pointed data and feedback to our partners within our cities. It may identify some and and

172maybe help rep prioritize some some road work or bike lane work or um you know um routes. I know that we work really closely with our safe routes, so maybe that's not the case, but maybe we'll feel I don't know. I think that you don't know the answers to this question unless you ask them. But that would I think feel like a a good next step. And I believe that we could isolate within schools families who live within those like we could we could isolate the right subset of parents and um and and do some information. We can we we'd have to think about timing. It might not be until the fall until we do that just because at the end of the year you want to make sure you get good return rates. And

173so um as long as everybody's okay with that, I think that would be our next step. Alex. Yeah. Um, totally agree with that. I would just say, um, to again, don't think too small about what the transportation route is. There's a lot of people out there on their ebikes going pretty darn far and so we shouldn't think too small about what the affected community is you're ser surveying. And I would also I'm would be curious to know having been in elections 18 months ago what the status is of the city's implementation of its effort to make sure that our parks and public spaces that included our sidewalks and bike paths and multi-use paths are being um prioritized to make them safe and easy places for people to use. So if we're making progress on that

174and there's other going ongoing city investment to make things like that safer and better, I would suspect that's one of the things that a parent takes into consideration in our district. Thank you both for your very thorough presentation. Much appreciated. Board members, we have one more information item this evening. It is the 2526 preliminary budget. Bill Sutter will be presenting this topic tonight. Mic check. All right, we're good. Thank you, President Raj Paul, members of the board, Dr. Anderson. I'm here to present on the 2526 preliminary budget. Uh I have made a few adjustments and additions uh to the slides at the end of the deck. Uh 20 slide 27 to 29. just made a few adjustments. I'll speak to that when I get there. Uh but we'll add these u the full deck uh

175updated uh to the board uh board docs file uh after the board meeting. So just a quick rundown of the agenda. I'll run through uh the budget development timeline and milestones, uh the input gathered, our enrollment projections, uh preliminary budget adjustments, uh and next steps uh moving forward on the timeline and milestones. Uh again, this is um a repetitive uh presentation that I include. Um when we last spoke about the 2526 uh budget development cycle uh we had a significant amount of data and input in January, February, and March to work our way through. Uh we've done that. Uh we're up to the big bright red line there. Uh just uh graying out the uh items that we've moved beyond and uh we're winding down on the data inputs that we get uh in the

176cycle. uh largely uh it's the legislature finishing up its fine work in the next four weeks. Uh now we're moving on to balancing uh the budget for adoption in June. Uh again, we've released uh staffing uh the major uh commitment of uh budget dollars for the district. Uh we started that uh right before spring break uh and even a little bit before uh as the slide notes. Uh but um we're continuing uh to update uh those staffing uh needs at schools uh as we move uh through the final uh stages of the school year. So the takeaway on this uh the budget development process uh does span many months. Uh we have a couple more to go and there are numerous options for input uh and the relevant data information and information uh coming in

177all the way up till uh budget adoption in June. So I'll pause there for just a moment uh and see if there's any questions on uh the process up to date uh or anything. If not, moving on. Nope. Dr. Anderson does indeed have a not so fast, Bill. Um, and this is for the board and for the public as well. And and I I I want to first acknowledge that the complexity of our budgeting process, uh, the limited amount of time that that I think Bill has in front of you all. We could literally talk about this for hours. Um, in in in terms of transparency. So, as Bill presents this budget board members um and community members, you know, as you're building budgets and for those that that work in businesses um who have

178big budgeting processes, right, we use an incremental budgeting process versus a zerobased budget process. There's a lot of really and Bill's looking at me and you tell me if I say anything that's that's that's off base, but from a general budgeting perspective, right, what you'll see today is the adjustments and changes from last year's budget based on revenues and expenditures as we're building the budget. And so it's not we don't all we don't we've we've tried to include some slides to give the totality of the budget so you can get a sense of the size and scope of the increments up or down. But because of our contractual obligations, because of our collective bargaining agreements, because 90% of our budget is people, right, you can't do a zerobased budgeting process because everybody would then be

179on one-year contracts, right? So, it doesn't it doesn't make sense to we don't zero out the budget, see how our priorities shifted or changed, and make make tons of changes and adjustments. There's core business that we do that rolls over from year to year. Uh and so it's important to kind of set that as context as we pro provide this budget because what Bill will talk about are the changes year overyear as a reminder to our public anybody who wants to get in specific detail. Uh we do publish once our you know and and again you know our budgets are based on assumptions right and very much assumptions in preliminary budget because we still don't know what the state budget's going to be. We have projected enrollment depending upon which state budget means how much

180we'll get per kid. So we don't know how much we're going to get per kid. We don't know how many kids we're going to have. And so you know as as we take input and as we think about what we've prioritized, right? Um and you will see some adjustments that we've made last some budget adjustments from last year to this year and and we'll we'll highlight those. But I just think that it's it's not something I think I've ever stopped and paused and said publicly around the different ways that you can budget. But, you know, in talking with some board members, I think it's a good clarification uh that we're really talking about an incremental budgeting process and really speaking to the increments because the core business that we have and we do is already

181set um by by agreements that we've already made. You can't zero out your budget every year and rebuild it. Uh but when there are new investments and we're doing new things, board members, we've done this one of two ways. either we build it into the overall budget so it's recurring or we put it on one-time dollars or in the case of weighted differentiated funding in the great in the case of some of our grad plus supports we set aside categorical dollars for multiple years but not forever like so you so you can either do it we're going to do it until we turn it off we're going to do it one time see how it goes or we're going to do it for a couple of years to to either accelerate deepen work, so on

182so forth. So, just wanted to give a little bit of that context before Bill got going. And Bill, if I said anything inaccurate there, please stop and correct me. Um, from an accounting perspective, I don't know if you you would describe that as incremental or zerobased, but just from my budgeting experience, that's how I describe it. Yeah, absolutely. Um, nothing off base there. I will say uh the one of the challenges with talking about zerobased budgeting uh particularly on an annual basis uh is it really upends the stability uh of the the organization and the system uh if every single year there's some expectation that that there's going to be deep change uh across the organization. So, Alex. Yeah. Uh, thank you. Um, as one of the people asking questions about this, I just want

183to be clear. I hear nobody on the board suggesting zerobased budgeting. That hasn't been anything anyone's talking about at all. I recognize that we do incremental budget from year to year. My questions are based on understanding the proportionality and um scale and scope of those incremental changes, not going to zerobased. I understand that would be chaos and not at all conducive to us pursuing our values and goals. So that's that's not what anybody I don't want anybody on the audience or the community to think somebody on the board is suggesting that we go to zerobased budgeting because that's not at all what any of my conversations have been about. No, no, no. I I Yes, that's a good point of clarification. We didn't have the board was not suggesting zerobased budgeting. I was just speaking

184to budgeting in general and budgeting with collective bargaining agreements. And so I do think that we'll get to some of the proportionality of the increments, right? I just also think that uh setting the stage for what school budgeting on a year-to-year basis is for your person in the general public and knowing and understanding the challenges and complexities. So I apologize if I insinuated that board the board was suggesting zerobased budgeting. Um if that were the case, I wouldn't have brought it up here. We would have probably had a conversation prior to that. Um I'm just trying to give some clarity to the public as we present. Yeah. Uh absolutely. And and that was um the focus of my comments as well is uh it comes up in the community conversations. Occasionally, uh people hear this

185term and and suggest, you know, why doesn't the district do it? Uh and uh it's particularly disruptive. And so just pointing that out. uh not a suggestion from any board member. And just what just one other point, Bill, and and as we've watched our district accountability committee continue to try to figure out how to hone in on how to get budget feedback from our community, like like I think that, you know, there's there's more to be more to learn about statewide budget, how we get our money, how we do it, our budgeting. And so the more context and clarity we can have these conversations, I think helps. All right, moving along. Uh, budget development input. So, uh, every year, uh, we have conversations around, uh, the the focus of budget development, uh, and sort of

186what are the the big rocks that are included. Uh so uh topline employee compensation uh strategic initiative investments uh particularly around special education, bilingual education uh grad plus uh and the strategic plan implementation and then of course addressing achievement gaps, opportunity gaps and disproportionality. Uh and then last but not least uh inflation which is uh continuing to put pressure uh on some items in the district. So from an input standpoint, uh there are numerous uh committees and organizations and uh statutoily required uh input opportunities and uh this is just a a suggestive list. Um it's not that each of these organizations or or committees or councils have uh had a conversation of um hey give me your budget input for next year. Uh but generally speaking any conversation that happens in any committee tends to

187be about the budget in some way shape or form. uh our transportation and sustainability conversations. There was budget uh information and items sort of woven in there. Uh and so all of that is feedback and input to the budget development process. So, while it may not be as clear-cut as the uh district accountability committee's uh required statutoily required um recommendation process, it certainly is uh part of the budget development process. So, and then the last item on there, the 16 topics at 11 schoolboard meetings. So, uh I've just listed these in here. It's uh as much a reminder for the community and folks that are watching of the kinds of things that the board discusses that are all part of budget development. unified improvement plan, uh, declining enrollment uh, data uh, review and work sessions,

188the Renee Crown Wellness Institute research that we've been doing, uh, the adoption of the unified improvement plan, the universal prek update, the strategic plan updates, when we do our audit, uh, that's reviewing how our finances were in the rearview mirror, but it informs how we're doing currently and going into the future. And again, multiple uh uh enrollment uh reviews and discussions uh the DAC budget recommendations coming in January, long range advisory committee, and then of course uh the strategic plan updates. There were fewer items this past year uh than in uh previous years. Uh but there were a few topics that were uh related but not necessarily specific. Uh the charter application uh policy revisions. There certainly has been significant conversation at the board level on policy revisions which feed into uh budget development. uh

189enrollment and open enrollment, uh student fees, graduation requirements, charter school policy. So, there's lots of conversations again that are all piece of uh the budget development and the things that um uh put constraints or uh guard rails uh on how we develop the budget. So again, I'll pause there for just a second and see if there's any questions or uh items of interest of the conversations that we've had. I just want to say I thank you for highlighting that. I think the budget is something that's challenging for a lot of the stakeholders in our community, for parents to to understand. School finance act is not an easy thing in the state of Colorado. And what we continue to say as a board and what staff I hear continue to say is the decisions that we

190make with a strategic plan and at policy level and all these things, everything we do, every every decision we make has a fiscal implication whether you see it outright or not. And the more we as governing bodies continue to stay tightly aligned to the strategic plan and the work that's within that, that really is driving our financial decisions in probably the biggest way. staff is a big part of that. th that's I don't think our community understands the degree to which those decisions have really significant financial has a significant financial relationship and and even as a board like we're not always talking about direct dollars and how we move them around and which buckets they should be in and sometimes I think our community expects that a little bit of us but the conversation that

191we're having that's related to budget is these are our priorities these are the things we need to continue to work on and improve on and because we are focusing on those things there's inherently ly resources associated. So, while those few slides feel like not necessary to go over, I think it's actually a really important important point and I appreciate you making that. So, moving on into enrollment. Um, no real surprises here. Our declining enrollment uh is continuing. Uh, this does follow front range uh overall in Colorado and national trends. Uh but our efforts are continuing to slow or mitigate that. Uh continuing on the high quality uh prek uh program that we have, our enrollment preferences that were updated uh and the things such as school revisioning uh in Heatherwood. So uh while we are

192on that declining enrollment path, uh we have uh started to mitigate that uh and we'll continue those efforts uh into the future. So board members, you know, as we have presented this in the past, Bill has presented a a generation like a like a kind of a standard to give a sense of how enrollment when it goes up or down, how it impacts our budget. Uh but that was with the old school finance formula, right? So a hundred kids used to equal the what we'd say a million dollars, but it's a million dollars. Right now, if averaging changes, that number changes. We don't know that yet, right? It's definitely not going to be five, right? It'll be four potentially. Um, and as the finance formula changes, that number changes. But, uh, so just as a

193just to be clear, we don't know how many kids we're going to lose. We're estimating based on a couple year trends that it's 150. That's before any of the new immigration policies that have been been been leveraged. That's before um the past week in the stock market and e economic that's before people started losing their government funded jobs. So none of those things are necessarily built into this estimate. This is based on trends, not the events of the past um few weeks. I just want to be really clear on that. And if you want me to stop like commentary like giving color commentary on the budget, you just have to, you know, give me one of these and I'll stop talking. But just to provide context. So now moving into uh the preliminary budget. Uh

194so uh the focus of this conversation will be on the general operating fund. Uh the reason for this is the the general operating fund reflects the major activities uh of the district uh and has the revenue changes that can be directed towards uh a variety of uses. They are not restricted like bond proceeds. You can't use bond proceeds to pay staff. uh everybody knows that and understands that I think internally maybe not externally but uh we've uh uh continue to to u remind folks that uh while we might have budget challenges on one side of the equation. Uh we have passed a bond and we sold those bonds and we have those dollars to spend on the bond program but they can't be co-mingled uh with uh general operating practices in the district. Uh same

195goes with uh debt surface. The uh principal and interest payments on those bonds those are collected and have to be spent on that. They can't be redirected towards anything else. Uh so the highlighted changes to other funds are due to the impacts uh that these these accounting funds these other funds that I mentioned uh are uh often largely um get their resources from the general fund. uh the override dollars, the school finance act dollars come into the general fund and then they're uh transferred out to these other accounting funds uh where those uh spending activities happen. So here we have uh what we'll call the base budget summary. So the idea here was to uh show the revised budget for the current year uh as adopted in January uh and then show the total dollars

196that were included in that uh of a one-time nature. Uh so board policy uh has is very uh clear on the use of one-time resources uh and they are need to be directed towards a one-time uh spending. Uh reserves are also included here as a one-time item. Uh reserves are are a savings account uh are similar to a savings account. Uh they they don't get spent from year to year. Therefore, they carry forward into the next year. So, it looks like they're reoccurring dollars, but really they're a one-time pot of money, and if you spend them, they are gone. Uh, and so why do we have reserves? Uh, the bond rating agencies, so when we sell our bonds, we get more favorable uh interest rates, which saves the taxpayer dollars. Uh, if there's a significant

197drop in revenue, it protects us. Uh and then also state law and the constitution and board policy require uh the district to have reserves. One one other back when one other benefit of having reserves if we is if we have cla cash flow issues, right? So luckily today there's an interest fee loan program that's that that that the state allows us to participate in. um if for whatever reason that were to ever go away and you needed to be able to pay people and the re and for whatever reason your revenues were delayed or something happened. I've been only I've been in a district where this was the case and we we ended up spending on down our reserves and and repaying those things out. But if you have cash flow issues, having reserves can

198allow you to get through some of those things. Absolutely. Especially for a district that's heavily reliant on property taxes, which we don't collect until the second half of the uh fiscal year. Uh we borrow about hund00 million from the state, that interest- free loan program. So we would have to have a hund00 million in cash in order to be able to uh to provide that cash flow for our 25 to$30 million monthly uh payroll uh that we have. Alex, thank you. Um, this is really helpful. Uh, for our viewing audience at home or for us up here on the front, um, what really is the middle column here represent? So, those one-time transfers, when do they get made? Does the board vote to approve those? Have we already done that? What's the process? Like, how

199would you describe that middle column? Uh, just the transfers or all of the numbers in there? uh all the numbers in there. Okay. Uh so uh in the uh budget document uh and in the resolution for uh the the I think it's like six or seven uh resolutions that come with the adoption of the budget. Uh there's one that is uh use of beginning fund balance uh which uh in each accounting fund uh states the uh amount of fund balance or one-time resources that are used and those uh activities or u planned spending that are related to that that spendown. And that's what this re represents. So we want to make sure that just for that first line the revenue that $2.2 $2 million that we clearly understand that there's $2.2 million in the total

200budget that's not going to be there next year. Uh so the total revenue will naturally drop by that amount because of whatever the projection was for that particular line item in revenue on personnel. Those were all the the items that uh Dr. Anderson mentioned that we have identified as a one-time uh expenditure uh supporting class size our uh staffing reserve uh some of the initiatives that we have uh undertaken. So we're just identifying all those things that are uh only going to occur in that one year. weighted differentiated funding and personnel that that is that is assigned through weighted differentiated funding would be in that bucket as well in a in a different fund that but it's in a different fund so it's not in the personnel fund thanks for the clarification bill lenia bill

201remind me even though I've seen this so many times right um what is it what are those one-time non-personnel do dollars that are 23 million that will not be um textbooks, uh carryover dollars, SRRA, um uh I think we had some utilities in there in a one-time basis this year. I don't remember all of them, but we have it clearly identified in our 200 pages of budget document. Alex and I appreciate your indulgence of my trying to just understand this. So the the way I see this out of the total of all those there's something like you know 98 million that's one-time expenditures in our 2425 budget that are over the base budget and then do we every year is that about the right same amount of one-time expenditures that we have each year or

202is whatever that total is of that central column is that a normal year's version of one-time expenses or is that bigger smaller That's that's the kind of insight thing I'm trying to get get more of. Uh the textbooks number is I think a little higher than normal. We did u uh set aside some uh fairly significant dollars. It's like 7 million uh for textbooks uh in this current year. um personnel uh has been uh a little higher recently with our staffing reserve that we've uh been leaning on uh particularly as we're declining enrollment and have more inefficient schools. Um [Music] the SRRA carryover hasn't been very much. That's pretty consistent from year to year. three to 500,000. Um, so I would say in some instances it's a little higher than uh long-term track record uh

203but fairly similar to recentish years and and the reserve is always going to be 7%. Uh correct. And we have a we have um additional reserves beyond the 7% 3% TABER and 4% contingency. Uh we have a district reserve that we set aside a couple of years ago uh just to protect us. Uh and there's some um generally accepted accounting principles uh that you have to have reserves for um prepaid items, things like that. So um yeah on the revenue side uh so we have our net uh per pupil revenue change. The this includes a 2.3% inflation factor uh enrollment decline uh and the new school finance act. Uh in that new school finance act it is uh including the four-year averaging. some going from five years to four years. Uh it's a 15% implementation

204of the new school finance act. Um it was a 18% as adopted last year. Um the overall enrollment decline of 230 and I believe it's about 370 uh funded students decline because of averaging. Um we had some larger uh declines previously uh which is um sort of pushing up our uh actual change from year to year. Uh we are seeing uh so I've also included the 25% mill override. So as uh per pupil revenue goes up uh the override goes up. Categorical funding uh is required to increase by inflation. Um but as inflation increases the pool uh enrollment decline affects how much we get. Uh there's also if there's shifts within the state uh in those particular categorical funding buckets uh special education, transportation, uh career and technical ed uh English language proficiency and gifted

205and talented. Um and then these net other revenues. Uh again we have to include things in here just to make it so that everything adds up uh when we start going to finalize and balance everything. Um some plus uh revenues and some minus revenues uh for a small uh incremental change there. um we are uh projected to have uh a continued increase in the local share uh exceeding new revenues. So as the school finance act uh uh is structured and the revenues are driven off 27 mills of our uh net assessed valuation that is projected to go up by uh 4 and a4% uh which is about 11 million more in local property tax collections just for the school finance act. uh and we're only collecting $5 million more. Uh so we're continuing to uh

206head on a trajectory of being fully funded locally. Uh there's a lot of factors that go into that. Uh but um it is headed in that direction. At the point that the district becomes fully funded, uh that 27 mills will start to see uh a credit against it. uh and property tax rates will uh go down, but that's uh not in the relatively near future. Pause on revenues there. I have a question about how confident you are on that PPR change number given new legislation rolling out daily, which we'll talk a little bit about in our legislative update on school how the school finance formula is going to shake out. like how how confident are you plus minus on that 5.1 mil? Uh pretty confident. Um the the work that has gone into I'm not

207happy with it. we'll say. Uh but uh confident that the the direction that the speaker and the governor uh have taken the state budget um and putting in place this new school finance act and trimming back uh where they need to. They do still have or had a$ 1.3ish billion dollar uh state imbalance. Um so I'm fairly confident it's going to move forward. Uh this was also developed more than 4 days ago. Uh and so if the economic conditions for the state will change significantly which Colorado has uh industries, agriculture that will be impacted by uh this tariff discussion. And so uh the next state budget uh or state uh revenue update is not until June. Uh so that'll be after um the legislature adjourns and everything. So I I wouldn't be entirely surprised if

208there was a special session if things really went sideways. Um but that would be um sort of fear-mongering here. um those would be conditions that would change the reasonable projections that have been developed up until this point. And the other thing I wanted to highlight in the previous slide, we talked about being down about 150 students, but I think you said because of the way averaging works, us losing our biggest class sizes, we have smaller class sizes coming in, the funding shift is about for 380, do you think 350 350 students? And so I think that's something for our public to keep in mind that as as we continue to have those larger classes continue to roll off and we have more of those smaller smaller grade levels, we're going to lose per people funding

209that's disproportionate from our actual enrollment shifts. And then I saw Alex's hand and then I think's hand. No, if you could connect the is the 6.9 million uh increase in revenue. What will happen to the 430.6 million that's on the previous slide in the revenue for 2425. Am I thinking about that wrong or is that a different revenue line? Uh it is that revenue line and it will be applied to the 428.4 at the end. Okay. It say that last part again. uh that 6.9 million in new revenue, new ongoing revenue will be applied to the 428.4 million in the top right uh box. So the the base for 2526 would be the 428.4 again or will we do we create a new base that's different than the 2425 base for 2526? All right, I'm

210confused. Um yeah, you would add the you would add the new ongoing revenues to the base and then that would be the 2526 base. So you would add 2 428.4 + 6.9 correct and that would be the 2526 base. That would be the new base. Okay. Okay. Uh let's see where are we? Transfers. Uh so again as new revenue comes into the general operating fund uh charter schools uh receive their dollars via the district. So as we collect uh local property taxes as part of our funding uh that is moved over to the charter schools uh for uh the school finance act and the overrides as part of our contracts and um uh statutory requirements. And then for the risk management fund and athletics fund uh we have some uh inflationary uh adjustments related to

211premium increases uh and uh transportation uh there not changes in programming uh but just inflationary increases. So those would all add to the base of those current expenditures today. Correct. So the charter schools fund is 1.6 6 million plus what's already being transferred transferred over to the charter schools what already exists in the transfers in the charter school fund. Yep. And I have that total as one of the adjustments I made to the slide. Uh let's see compensation. Uh so what we have uh built into the budget at this point uh is uh no cost of living increase uh salary schedule movement uh for all employees on existing salaries uh schedules and uh within contracts. Um nothing else included for other negotiating negotiation items. Uh and $ 1.5 million increase for the 4.6% 6% premium

212increase uh in health and dental uh uh premiums. Uh we did a major restructuring of our health and dental program uh with the support and assistance of the benefits committee. Um major restructuring. We're in open enrollment right now which is uh going really well. I think employees are learning uh things about their uh employee benefits um because we're going through this uh active open enrollment. Uh everybody has to actively open enrolls over uh so that uh people are getting more informed about their uh benefits and what's available to them. Uh so back on slide eight uh I said employee compensation is a focus uh and this total uh does exceed all the new revenue uh in the general operating fund. Um and so like again it's a focus of the budget development. Um, oh, so

213TBD, I want to highlight that. Uh, at this point, this is board members a preliminary budget. We're in negotiations, right, with all of our bargaining units. We have not and we're going to discuss compensation as one of our items within BVEA. And Nicole, you were there, so you saw that. And so I don't want uh these are just things that we haven't determined yet. Uh just want to make that clarification. Alex, and just so I can catch this, our revenue two slides up or is going up 6.9 million and uh the cost of compensating our people without a cola is an $ 8.5 million increase just dealing with the extra cost of the dental insurance, health and dental insurance and the salary schedule movements. Right? So I'm understanding that right. So to the extent that

214we were to negotiate a cola, we would be taking that out of somewhere else that's come. Yes. Uh budget adjustments. Uh so um after uh compensation u as a main focus uh moving into the staffing formulas. So uh we make budget adjustments uh to address that inversion uh of new expenditures versus new revenues. U these adjustments are largely uh due to declining enrollment. Um we annually make adjustments for declining enrollment. Um there are many components of the staffing formulas that are not as linear uh as a classroom teacher staffing formula. Uh and so we included and have made a number of um other staffing uh formula adjustments to rightsize uh some of our schools um that uh we just haven't up until this point um made those adjustments. We've got additional student supports uh for

215ILC classrooms and MTSS uh utilities. Again, one of those inflationary cost increases. uh translations. Uh so translation services have been uh on one-time dollars uh for a couple of years now. Uh so this includes it as an ongoing expense. Uh BBSD online uh which is a tuitionbased uh option for students to take classes over and above their normal class load. Uh we're moving that out of the general fund, just the accounting for it, uh and putting it in the community schools fund where uh those staff uh uh manage that program. And that's one of the revenue changes, those those other revenues that I mentioned that sort of net together. Uh so it doesn't impact the general fund. It's just taking all of the revenues and expenses and moving it over to the community schools fund

216uh for management purposes. Uh and then attrition savings. Uh so as staff turnover occurs uh there's uh uh attrition savings uh within uh all of the compensation. Uh and then we are uh further tightening the budget a little bit uh to the tune of a million dollars uh from our projected ongoing uh spending based on our mid-year analysis uh that uh we completed uh for spending projections up through uh second quarter or December uh and projected out towards the end of the year, end of the current fiscal year. Uh so we're able to tighten the budget a little bit more there. So, uh, $4.1 million of budget savings, uh, from these, uh, budget adjustments. Bill, I will just make a point. Um, all these items aren't necessarily equal in terms of confidence. Attrition savings is

217a projection, right? you know, so that so based on recent um uh market activity to the extent that that could prevent or or um impact somebody's ability to retire, right? I mean, you know, we we don't like you these are based on trends, right? Like that we've projected out, right? So to the extent that we that could change or adjust, I think everything else um outside of inflationary cost projections for utilities, but we're only talking about, you know, that's only $500,000. Uh the additional student supports, that's hard money, right? So think about that. You know, we've adjusted these staffing formulas to account for the loss of 350 plus students in our student count. Uh but in losing that we've had to increase our additional supports in special education by two almost $2 million. So, just

218kind of lifting this up a little bit, Bill. Um, just for the general public to know and understand. And this, you know, this projected budget variance, we continue to tighten our belt around our margins, which can get a little bit scary as you start to think about the uncertainty with some of the other trend data if things start to change. But we feel confident in that variance adjustment. Yeah. Because when we're talking about projecting uh compensation and uh cost of staff and staffing formulas, uh we're projecting where we're going to be uh what 15 16 months from now. Uh so it's all the staff turnover that's going to happen between now and the end of the year. People that are retiring, uh people that don't come back, uh the non-renewals, all that activity. Uh and

219then um who gets hired? Uh and is it um a first year, second year, third year person that's non-renewed and we hire somebody back uh that has more experience and they actually cost more um or vice versa, somebody retires, a very senior member of the staff uh and they're replaced with somebody who's uh newer to the profession. So like all of that movement um is cooked into these numbers. So again, just thinking uh that that is the projection uh timeline and horizon that we're looking at. Just a note on the revenue side, its revenues, property tax revenues come in uh into August. So we're projecting property tax revenues that we certify mill levies for in December based on October counts uh whatever six, seven months from now. So like there's a lot of uh of

220um uh reasonable assumptions uh but they truly are assumptions uh looking forward uh well into the future. Here's a summary of uh these uh changes. So, uh, on the revenue side, uh, we did have, uh, ongoing revenue included in the current year budget that was unspent, uh, that came out of the revised budget process. So, um, there's ongoing revenue available, uh, compensation, budget adjustments, and transfers. And so we do have an ending balance of about $2 million projected um going forward uh that will uh be built into the budget as we finalize uh and see how the state budget uh shakes out, see how negotiations shake out uh in the next couple of months. Alex. Yeah. Thanks, Bill. This is one where I I think I you could help me understand this and maybe help

221the audience at home understand it. So the the these are the sum in and out of the adjustments we're making to our previously updated budget and so makes sense that they're only 2.1 million off or or that that's the next balance that we have. And then that's out of a like is this out of the 660 million total spending or the 430 million. So how put 2.1 million in perspective for me for what the corpuses of are of these things like I I if you'll hold that thought for about four more slides we'll get there because it'll I've got it all summed up with all those changes I think. Um so if we don't cover it uh we'll come back. So this is all the ongoing uh changes. Um moving into the one-time changes. So

222uh again as back to that much earlier slide where we had the base budget and the one-time dollars that are included in the current year. Uh these are those one-time expenditures that we're including uh in next year's budget. So, our staffing reserve uh we do have additional special education support uh uh uh moderate needs programming. It's a pilot program uh to uh see if we can um uh not spend as much on uh sort of the high needs classrooms. Uh subteer incentive pay. We're continuing that incentive pay program that we have. and then a co a couple other small adjustments uh in human resources, communications and curriculum uh for uh continuing some activities that we're currently doing. So, this is all in accordance with policy DB, the annual operating budget where we identify these specific

223items that are funded with one-time resources. Um and also in accordance with the budget development focus on special education support uh and compensation reserve Yep. That was I didn't mean to scream at you. Uh back a slide. I just wanted some clarification on on for the board and the public on two things. So So the our moderate needs program board members, this is a new program, we we're finding that as we increase our are the needs the needs the number of students served on IEPs increased is increasing. We're finding a that we need a space to serve these students between resource which is the lightest touch services we provide and intensive which is the deepest support we provide. And so that's why these moderate needs where kids are probably have more needs than than we

224can serve in resource but maybe not enough needs to service in some of our most intensive programs. And so that's where those that moderate needs program is is is is going to sit and we're going to kind of see how that works. And then the subteer incentive pay, I just want to be really clear. We do not at this point know how we'll deploy that $1 million for substitute compensation. Board members, we've heard a lot of feedback this year in this boardroom and in other um venues around substitute pay. Over the past three years, we've tried to solve this three ways. Three years ago, we were doing surgebased compensation, right? Think, you know, your Uber drivers and uh then we just did a base pay increase and then we've done we're going to pay people

225who work more days trying to increase coverage. So our team will do do an analysis of those three models to determine what model we'll move forward with next year. So before um and we're not going to we're not going to to do that until we get the the data through the end of this year so we can know and understand. So so it's here in the budget but the compensation model we still have to decide on. I just wanted to make those points of clarification. Bill, thanks. I have a question on this slide. In the past couple years, the board has invested significantly in curriculum. This is a much smaller number than we've seen, but it's an adjusted number. It's making me wonder a little bit about when um for all the different curriculum renewals

226we've done, is it still science and social studies that haven't had a full readtion or where are we with our curriculum? There's a significant amount of unspent dollars in the current year's budget that will carry forward into next year. We just don't we project to spend out all uh non-personnel budgets when we do the midyear analysis because authority exists to spend it. So we don't try to guess on how much is going to be carryover or not. So, but we we know that those um dollars I I want to say it's around $5 million maybe um that will carry forward uh into next year for curriculum. I appreciate that because I know that curriculum spending has had a significant impact in students and kind of really working towards our goals of horizontal and vertical alignment

227and is doing wonders. And so, I just wanted to kind of see where we were heading with that curriculum. Thank you. uh one-time reserves and transfers. Uh so the Taber and Contingency Reserve uh three and 4% respectively. So this is on uh new spending. Uh so about $700,000. Uh and then we've also included $4 million transfer to the differentiated school support fund uh to continue that initiative. It's not changing the program that exists. We have a three-year model in place right now. This is just setting aside dollars to be able to continue that uh into the future. So So to be clear, we're extending weighted differentiating funding another year out board members and um as as as we every year we should be investing in that fund if we wanted to continue, not wait till

228the end of the three years and try to find $12 million. That's not how that would work. You spend a year, you invest a year. That's the model. And if there were to be significant federal changes in the near term, this is also another opportunity to use those dollars to offset some of those impacts. If Title One dollars go away, right, we need to have a plan, right? So to the extent that um the weight to differentiated funds in that could backfill some of that or we could rethink those things. Uh that's a worst case scenario. We have no indication that that's going anywhere. I want to be incredibly clear about that. Uh but uh having that money in that account is is a bit of a of an opportunity for us as well. Uh

229a little summary. uh projected $13 million available on one-time resources uh and then u spending um 11ish million. Uh so there's a balance of $1.8 million available in one-time uh resources uh to be allocated. We're still working through the budget uh development process. We have uh additional requests uh that are still being vetted and uh scrutinized. Uh so when we get to the next iteration of this um we'll see where where they'll all those shake out. So this is the slide uh that includes the base funding uh the new one time, the new ongoing and the total uh projected budget for the general operating fund. So hopefully this uh captures the question that you had board member Midler. Um base revenues 428.4 uh from the previous slide. Uh new one-time resources are projected uh $13

230million of one-time resources. new ongoing 6.9 million uh total uh resources 448.4 uh I won't read all the numbers off here personnel non-personnel transfers and reserves uh and then each of the uh ending balance numbers for the base new one-time new ongoing uh and total available. So uh the budget as it stands right now it's preliminary. Uh we have been uh in this place in the past where this is a negative number. Uh and there's still work to do. Uh we've been in the place where there is optimism that the state legislature will provide more funding. I'm not in that place uh at this point. Um but I'm also not pessimistic about where it is um absent the last few days of market turmoil. So we'll see how that shakes out. Um so we'll pause

231there for a second. in in future iterations, Bill, if this slide is helpful for the board, the the one column would be the new base because you'd have to back out the one time from the total to get the new base funding. So, so just, you know, as as we're trying new new ways to clarify this for folks, board members, you could give us feedback now, you can give us feedback later. Has our conversation helped? Do we need different visuals to articulate what we're sharing with you all to kind of de get in a little more depth and clarify? But that would be the one piece and looking at this bill. That new base would probably be helpful. Alex, yeah, I'm I don't mean to uh be the one asking all the questions. I'm just

232trying to understand myself on this. And I appreciate uh this last slide. I guess my questions before had been like if id backed up to the one-time expenditures, let's say on slide 23 or something, and I wanted to understand special education support or subteer incentive pay. Um, again, I want to know what subteers pay is total in order to understand whether 1 million for the incentive pay is a big number or a little number. So, when I it's it's good to know how we got to 6.6 million on slide 23. Um but to uh Nicole's point, the curriculum onetime expenditure of 0.2 million is on top of what is the actual curriculum expenditure in a year for the district. So I don't know how to evaluate 0.2 million as a curriculum number in the absence

233of knowing what we spend on curriculum and that doesn't show up here. I only get the total of the budget adjustments against what the budgets are. So that's where when I'm asking like well what is what is a 1.1 million special ed support thing in the context of understanding what we spend on special ed. I get to understand what it is in the context of adding up the incremental changes which is I understand why we're in incremental budgeting but I don't know how to evaluate if that's a big number or a little number a good number without knowing what it's relative to. Um, so that's where I'm I'm pleased to see uh, you know, slide 26 give me those totals and then I can make everything add up. But all the items in the previous

234slides, I really I'm just I have to I don't I don't know um how to understand them other than the way they affect the incremental budget. And I feel like as a governing board member, I should be able to understand how we're prioritizing the effect the services for kids with moderate disabilities, not just how we achieved an incremental change to the budget. So, if you go to slide 22, Bill, I have an idea. Um, board members, if you'll indulge me for a moment, uh, you know, potentially, Bill, we could add a another column that is a percentage of the total budget, an up or down, right? Like so it's just one more column, right? So the 6.9 is a percentage up or down of ongoing revenue plus new revenue. Now that's easier to do on

235slide 22. On slide 23, what makes this challenging is because these are new these these are one-time expend like so so the special education support that's that's all new dollars. That's that's that's not ongoing but it's one time, right? So, so there that would be that goes from 0ero to 1.1. Now, what makes it complicated is we typically have an instructional staffing reserve and this is more than we typically budget, right? So, we typically we're budgeting $2 million in staffing reserve. We've budgeted more in staffing reserve because of the uncertainty of what's happening and because of the inefficiencies. subt teacher incentive pay. That would be a 0% change because that's what we had in there last year. That's what we have in there this year. Um human resources, that's a 0% change because we're continuing

236that FTE to continue to try to recruit people. The communications that's continuing that's the same as it was last year. So let so let me think about how we would articulate the one-time expenditures as more or less or similar to the year before like maybe comparison to 2425 budget versus an incremental change over the balance. Um and and then uh and then maybe that would be more clear in regards to how it's going up or down or how it how it um relates to the whole if that makes sense. Yeah, I think um that would be one one thing that would help a bit, especially with the one-time expenditures that exist sort of as their own thing. And then like for special education support, I'm super excited about 1.1 going into moderate needs programming. I'd

237like to remember what percent that is of what we spend on all our special education programming. So there's sometimes there's different contextual things that give meaning uh to these numbers and the percent of one-time stuff from last year's one one time makes sense. The also is the percent of like well how big is the overall spending on this so that I can know like this is a pretty small incremental change from one year to the next and we've always making a small up or down you know 1% 2% of this expense but I don't know if these are one or 2% changes to expense or 40% changes to expense because I don't know what the full expense is of the thing. So that's where I feel like I'm in the dark as a board member

238um trying to interpret this. So to clarify, um it gets tricky because we're using really big numbers and then we're using really small numbers for specific categories without the larger categorical numbers. So you can see the comparison like if we were to go to uh um like we don't have our personnel budget broken out by special education, regular education, so on and so forth. So um let me work with Bill on how we could do that in the future. Certainly, we want to make sure that we articulate and and share the budget in ways that you all fully understand. Approving and being involved in the budget is a big responsibility of this board and this governance team. And I want to make sure you have what you need. Um and so and so let us

239go back and see if we can't do some work between now and the final approval of the budget getting you some of that information beforehand. Um I don't think we have we have all of the data and information. I don't think it's it's a heavy lift. It's just it's just putting it together in a way that that you all would understand. And one thing I I always think about the budget year-over-year also is we see it we see very discreet components of the budget at different times. Right? So now we're seeing the incremental change as we're preparing or this preliminary budget. The last meeting we talked about um the the previous year's budget leading indicators on this. So we're seeing different chunks at different times sometime of the budget and sometimes months go by and

240it's hard to sometimes remember all of that. And part of me is also wondering as me to help bridge that gap a little bit potentially is during our extended day work sessions if it's just a budget deep dive we kind of do the two things together so that information is a little bit more fresh on overall budget plus the incrementals if that would be a potential way to help as well but I think some of the timing between and how we how we look at this budget in very specific ways at specific times throughout the year if that creates a level a barrier as well. So, just throwing that out there. Kitty, I was wondering if if it would work to put a a link in here where you could click to get a bigger

241context in rather than having the slides and the presentation overloaded with information because that's that's difficult for me to process. But if I could discreetly look at one thing, call it out, say, "Okay, I get that." And then, you know, put it away. We consider a we could consider a couple of options. Links that drive down to more detail or an executive summary that sits by the highle presentation. Um, uh, we could think about either one of those, but here's what I'm hearing that, you know, the board's not questioning what we've budgeted. you just want to better and understand what it is and how it builds into the context of the entire budget. And I think that's an incredibly fair ask and we'll work to make sure that we do that. Um, and so I

242appreciate the conversation today around the budget and the feedback. Alex, yeah, I really appreciate that. I I just want to be absolutely clear. I I have great respect uh for Bill and his team. Lenny and I serve on the audit committee and we get in-depth briefings on the budget and never had a question not answered satisfactoryy and you just dive into so much detail. Um but and I've asked most of the questions on this section tonight and so I' I'd like to know from other board members, am I the only one who doesn't get it when I see, you know, 1.1 million for moderate needs and I don't know if that's a big or small number and I don't know how to interpret it. Um or other people have that are do my questions make

243sense to you? Um, and is the place I'm pushing us to constructive to how you'd like to understand this? Because I don't want to I can talk to Bill and have a private meeting and get my questions answered, but I don't understand this when I look at this presentation to in order to make substantive interpretations of it. And so that's why I want more and I like to know if that's just me and I can I can figure it out myself if it's just me. I think it's really important to have it very well understood up here and that helps our public to understand it and that's why I am a proponent. I don't want it to be a super heavy lift for Bill because I agree with you. I can always sit down with

244Bill and we and I can understand only because Bill does like a mind meld with me and I'm like, "Oh, okay. I finally get it." But I think it's really important for our public to understand it and particular as we go into um negotiations with BVEA. These are challenging times and we don't really know what the future brings, but we want to all be on the same page as as to what the information is. So I want to be sure that um those people who need to understand it outside of this room can also understand it. Jason, if we're going around the the board here, um, you know, I can just say I I really appreciate, you know, I think the the budget process can be intimidating for even people who follow this stuff and

245get regular updates. And so I appreciate Alex, you in particular, you know, kind of just asking for more clarity and context. And I think all the things you've asked for um are reasonable to the extent that they are, Dr. Anderson. And um I I I appreciate that. it would help me because I look at some of the stuff too and I, you know, don't know what to ask and so you've kind of at least asked some of the questions that I didn't know I had but um but I appreciate that. So, thanks Jorge. Thank you for the presentation today. Um I I appreciate the focus on the budget and the details and the greater context that you've been discussing today as opposed to the process that that we've seen so much in the past. Um

246and I I agree. I think having the greater context about the overall budget not just the changes I think would be helpful but even just today the discussions about the what numbers are unstable what are we waiting on you know what's likely to change and why is I think is really important that context has been very helpful so so thank you Dr. I understand that it is never too much work to be to improve. I just want to be really clear like this is a big part of our job and responsibility. My responsibility as superintendent is to bring you a superintendent bring you um a budget right that's balanced and that you understand and so I take this very seriously and so I really appreciate the conversation that we've had at this board table this

247evening. lots of really good questions, lots of this is the type of stuff we should be talking about more more rather than less. And so, um, I just want to be really really clear that, you know, don't worry about the workload on what it will take to get this right. Let's work on making sure we get it right. And um we have an excellent team who absolutely can answer any questions you'd want on budget, has managed this budget in an award-winning manner for decades, and uh they want nothing more to be able to then to be able to present you a budget in a way that it makes sense that you understand it. You understand the volatility, you understand where it's stable. Um and and we want everybody here to have confidence in what we're

248doing. So, so I really appreciate the this conversation to allow us to to improve this process. I'm just going to add one little thing that will um be some context for this. Uh there are one to many relationships in what's presented here which will pose some challenges. Right? So all those compensation increases, there's special education staff in there that are getting compensation increases that'll increase the comp the total budget for special education services and every other service in the district that um sub teacher incentive pay. Some of those subteers are for special education teachers that'll show up in the special. So that the the the goal has been to try to summarize at a high enough level so that it's not super confusing but also provide enough detail of what the the change really is

249about. Um, so we'll absolutely work on uh what those comparative things are. Uh, but they're not going to align perfectly because in a oneto- many relationship that sort of breaks the comparison in some cases. So know that going forward, but we'll take a crack at it. Lolia, Bill, I might like um this is just kind of for future. I think that sometimes I have a low understanding of reserves and why we have so many different types of reserves. And I think that would be another thing where it would be great if the board would have a really firm understanding of all those different pockets of reserve and therefore then our public can have a good understanding of that. So that just might be something we put in here because when you say it sometimes I

250I mean I counted at least four different kinds of reserves. Right. But there's maybe more than that. Yeah. Six or seven. Right. Right. Right. Right. All right. Catching up here. Summary. Other funds. Notable items uh to other funds. So, uh there's uh 20 odd uh other accounting funds in the district. Uh these are notable changes uh to some of them. Uh for the community schools fund, uh we are closing the district print shop. Um uh with the restructuring of uh the technical education center on the hill now Apex um the space didn't exist anymore. So we're uh transitioning out of having a district print shop. Uh and then as I mentioned before that transitioning of the online tuition based classes uh from the general fund into the community schools fund uh for the preschool fund.

251Um it's the second year of the UPK structure. Um I think this is important to point out there is zero increase in the funding for UPK from the state. Uh while the focus of the fiscal related legislative work uh has been on the school finance act and the new school finance act uh and the failure of the legislature to adequately fund schools, the legislature quietly restricts the ability of districts to adequately fund programs by not keeping up with inflation. So for the current year it wasn't kept up with inflation and now going into next year uh there's no proposed increase in uh UPK funding from the state. So again these are just further constraints on uh the general operating fund having to support uh the programming in other areas that uh we receive funding from

252the state for the athletics fund. Uh again, these are included in those transfer changes. Uh but uh just to point them out again, uh inflation uh security for games and transportation costs. Uh a $3.1 million total transfer is the ongoing transfer for the athletics fund. Uh risk management, uh $400,000 for district insurance premium increases as property liability and workers comp. Uh it's a $7.8 8 million uh total uh ongoing transfer. The new number would be this this number. Uh and then charter schools uh 1.6 million estimated transfer for uh per pupil revenue and overrides and enrollment growth. Uh and that's a $36.4 million uh total ongoing transfer uh for charter schools. differentiated school support as mentioned, $4 million on one-time transfer. Uh and the food services fund. Um just sort of waving a flag here.

253Uh that uh there's no there's um transfers related to compensation. Again, that big compensation number that was included several slides ago includes compensation for the entire district. Uh again, since these other areas, other programs in the district are supported largely by the general fund. Um that's included in one number, it'll be a transfer eventually. So that's another one of those complicated factors, but uh there continues to be shortfalls in funding from the state from this income tax increase that was passed, uh Proposition F. Um there will be uh two income tax statewide income tax uh items on the November ballot to increase funding. Uh if they don't pass, uh the funding will only be for schools that qualify for community eligibility in January. And uh the way the legislation is written to put these ballot

254items on uh it's as of um November, which means after the federal legislative changes would have occurred and it could drop the number of eligible uh community eligibility schools from 37 to five. Um and so it would be down to just Arapjo Ridge, Sanchez, Coline, Justice High, uh and Hion. So, um we'll see how that uh ballot question uh pans out. Um but this could be an impact uh that we'll see uh in the current year uh if there are changes that are needed uh in the um uh midyear uh related to this. Um it's I think we get about five to six million uh from the state for uh funding uh related to uh the free meals for all program. So, it's a it's potentially a big impact. I have a qu Oh, sorry,

255Dr. Anderson. I'm just wondering about communicating the potentials impact of this to families and thinking about when we went from had the pandemic money and we had universal free lunch for a period of time and then we didn't for a little bit and then it was back again. high degree of confusion, high degree of board related communications that we received around this and it doesn't the more I continue to watch this one feel incredibly promising and it will be incredibly disruptive to have a November change in programming. And so while while we wait to see what happens on the ballot, I think messaging to families at the start of next year that things could potentially change to the best of our ability would save us um a lot of some degree of heartache from our

256community if there is a significant shift. These midear shifts, no matter what they are, are a challenge. I was going to say the same thing. uh probably an early fall topic for an information or a work session item on the impacts and what that would look like and how we would have to turn those things back on in short order and the labor changes and the costs or what would the what would we need to set aside to keep it going for the rest of the year like we like we'll have to have a conversation I think in the fall as a prioritization so Laura add that to the prioritization list is everybody okay with that I mean I just don't know how we don't talk about that in the fall. Alex, well, and I

257guess uh in addition to the board discussion, I mean, I do think the other part is adding it to the sort of ongoing communications piece even before uh us as a board. Uh and then next steps uh so on May 7th, legislative session ends. Um so, uh that school lunch uh item is pending legislation. I don't believe it's been passed, but it's in process. So, we'll know for sure uh in the next four weeks uh whether whether that pans out as far as even uh coming forward uh to the voters. Uh we'll be continuing to refine our numbers as projections come into greater focus. Uh things will change. Uh absolutely. Um hopefully not significantly, but uh we can't control the legislature uh nor the federal government. Um and certainly we'll provide an update if something

258significant does happen. Uh otherwise we'll be back at the end of May uh for the presentation of the 2526 uh proposed budget. The end. Thank you for that presentation, Bill. Board members, we've had a lot of questions on this topic. Any further questions or comments before Bill gets too far away from the podium? Thank you. Seeing as there are none, we will look forward to hearing from you again on May 27th, unless big things change at the legislation between now and then. Let's hope that big things don't happen. So, thanks, Bill. Okay, board members, one final information item this evening. It's a big night for information and that is the legislative update which for which I will turn it over to Dr. Anderson. Thank you, board president Raj Paul. Uh big update is around school

259finance. So um we've built our assumptions based on um the bill it is House Bill 1320 uh which is the school finance act. Um, I will tell you that the district stands with Case Casby Rural Alliance. Um, in we are in an amend position on uh trying to to get a few other pieces of language uh into the school finance act. uh CA uh is in support but is also asking um a s for sustainability within the the school finance act. Uh the school finance act uh goes out in you know four or five years for full implementation. Again I think there's questions in regards to the sustainability of that and so uh more to come on that. Uh in the meantime, there is another school finance um bill that will be dropped uh we

260believe shortly. Um and that will uh do a couple of things. Um it will require education funding to come off the top of the budget, the general budget. So, uh prioritizing K12 over other priorities um uh and uh a few other other uh corrections around uh the transitional budget years. So, uh still in the same ballpark. I think a couple different ways to get there. We'll continue to keep you all posted. Uh and uh and that's what I have uh for uh for a legislative update. Nicole, I didn't know if you have anything else to share. No, board members, I mean, our focus continues to be on this school finance wild west. One thing I I did want to share came to our attention bill that we had supported, board members 20, Senate Bill 2586,

261the social media use protections bill, passed with a two-th3 majority, but my understanding is that the governor is considering a veto for that. And so there are folks that are looking for some advocacy. Should you be willing to do that to encourage the governor not to veto a bill that creates protections for social media users? So I just 258 Senate Bill 2586. So and that was one that Judy Mal and Kyle Brown um got on and co-sponsored. So, that was just an update there because that was one that we had supported publicly and um is now TBD as it's heading towards the governor's desk. Any other questions about the legislative session? Then we will move on to action items. Consent grouping 7.1 personnel item 7.2 approval of minutes March 11th, 2025. 7.3 acceptance of donation

262Eisenhower Elementary. 7.4 4 Amendment to Peak to Peak Charters Charter School Capital Construction Funding Agreement 7.5 Contract BC Interior 7.6 contract with environmental designs LLC 7.7 contract with Stone Brook Exterior 7.8 contract with Tyl Roofing Inc. 7.9 Epic Placements Contract Amendment 7.10 10 GoG Guardian fiscal year 26 renewal 7.11 resolution 25-08 disposal of non-ontiguous land sliver near Sombrero Marsh 7.12 resolution 25-09 non-renewal of license contract 7.13 grant Boulder high school adilante city of Boulder 7.14 grant career and college connections adante plus city of Boulder 7.15 grant career and college connections concurrent enrollment CDE 7.16 grant gifted education Universal screening CDE. Board members, are there any items you would like to pull from consent grouping this evening? Hearing none, we need a motion to approve those. Moved by Kitty, seconded by Jorge. Board members, any discussion

263on items? Lolenia. I would like to give a public thank you to the city of Boulder for funding Adalente and Adalente Plus. Um, as I came into this position, I was less familiar with some of these grants and this is one that I greatly appreciate for um, helping some of our students with the greatest need. Any other discussion items? Board members? Hearing none. Laura, can you please call the role and consent grouping? Chavez, yes. Medler, yes. Quinn Linua, yes. Raj Paul, yes. Sergeant, yes. Anger, yes. Motion passes. Board members, we do not have any action items this evening. So, we are now on to the final topic of the agenda, which is future agenda requests. for members, any items you would like to add for consideration at our prioritization meeting in June? None. The list

264is growing, we added one from Dr. Anderson earlier this evening. Well, board members, seeing as there are no new agenda items to add, that is our wrap for this evening's agenda. Thank you for your time. I look forward to seeing you guys next week. Meeting is adjourned.