001e e e good evening everyone oh sorry I know it's only two Tuesday uh Rob Anderson proud superintendent of the Boulder Valley School District Welcome to the March 2025 superintendent honor role how many of you have been to a superintendent's honor rooll before there you go well this is going to be a lot of fun uh the best of the best in bbsd are here we're going to get an opportunity to celebrate you all this evening hopefully everybody got plenty of food um food drinks outside so please if you get hungry as we go through please feel free to to step outside um one of my favorite there's we do these three times a year favorite evenings of the year for sure and before we start I'd love to take a moment to recognize the
002Boulder Valley School District board members who are here in attendance so board members when I call your name if you can please stand to be recognized our board president Nicole Raja board vice president Beth nnick she is almost here our Treasurer Alex medler board member Jorge Chavez board member lenia Quinn lenoa board member Kitty Sargent and board member Jason uner I want to thank our board for their service to our community these are very difficult Service uh roles uh that play an important part in our school district so thank you all board members for all that you do so for those of you that are being honored tonight just a few housekeeping notes when we call your name come on up uh if you're here if there's administrators coaches teachers folks that are with you
003from your school we'd love for them to come on up here as well um when you coming on up you will be given your your um a frame with from what from our board member volunteers and with your award then you're going to come over here to the left we'll talk a little bit I want to be able to give you an opportunity to talk about your accomplishments uh with everybody here in person and we are recording this so if you have family members that were not able to be here uh and uh you can have this for uh to be able to share with those folks um afterwards we'll take a photo and then you'll be able to get a chance to sit down any questions pretty straightforward we're excited to celebrate everybody this
004evening so we're going to start off recognizing someone today um and this is something that has never happened before in the Boulder Valley School District I've been doing this seven years three times a year 21 events this is a first last month Monarch High School sophomore Shayla Martinez made history she became the district's first everever state champion in girls wrestling Shayla come on up so I'll talk a little bit about Shayla as she's getting her award she became the first district ever state champion in girls wrestling she wrestled for the Broomfield Eagles team team she conquered her bracket during the three-day meet at ball arena in Denver claiming the Class 5A girls 190 pound championship and finishing the season with a near perfect record of 29 and one yeah that's amazing Shayla so from what
005I understand you had quite the evening the the lots of supporters cheering you on including your dad and other family members tell us about the moment when you won bbd's first ever girls State wrestling championship um it was a really great moment I got to celebrate it with my family and the people I was closest with it was like it will never be forgotten well we'll never forget it either it was the first here in bbsd so so now but I understand you're not done as 5A state champion you have your sight set on even bigger meets and from what I understand you're planning to travel to Fargo North Dakota in July to complete the USA Wrestling Junior national championships tell us about that and what are you doing to get ready to bring home
006a national championship to Boulder Valley I'm going to put in the work outside of school and become the best version of myself I can be to achieve what I want and my goals so to do that I have to be the best and work my [Applause] hardest yep so to clarify Monarch High School student Broomfield High School wrestler Ginger Ramsey tell them great day to be H I always great great to be Eagle all right Shayla last question what's your favorite finishing wrestling move the one that puts them all away the one that that made you 29 and one my low single you heard it Fargo North Dakota watch out for the low single Joy me congratulating Shayla Martinez we're gonna take a picture over here time to celebrate some more state champions so this
007winter the yotes also claimed a number of championships in the pool this time I'd love to welcome up members of monarchs swim team including Gwen Christensen Audrey Shambo who I don't think is here but want to recognize here Eliza Lennox and Sophia banjo who I'll mention attends peak-to Peak Charter but swims for Monarch ladies come on up get your Awards and then come on over here so we could talk about these state championships so as they're getting their Awards let me tell you a little bit about um what they've accomplished so this group won the 4A state championship title in the 200 medley relay with a School record breaking and All American consideration time of 14608 so I'd love to each of you to introduce yourself and just share with us what this moment meant
008to you and I know several of you this is not your first time being up here in the superintendent's honor role if I'm if I remember correctly so uh tell us your name and what it meant to you hi I'm Eliza um I'm a senior at Monarch and um I've been swimming my whole life and I think that there's nothing better than I don't know putting in the work with your team and getting to see results like that and as a senior and just like finishing out the season um it meant the world to me hi I'm Sophia banjo and as a freshman I was so honored to get to swim with these amazing seniors and it just meant so much to be able to swim these incredible teammates I'm Gwen Christensen and because of
009an injury I didn't think I'd be able to get to swim to at state so just being able to go to State and swim was already everything and more and then even winning state was just beyond anything that I could imagine yeah so I mean we're talking about a school record All-American consideration but I have a critical question for you all was the district's new cell phone Policy important in you all keeping your focus and setting that new record yes or no no I'll take that as a yes that's a yes set yes everybody um now at the same time at the same meet Audrey defended her State title in the 100 breaststroke and broke the school records in that race and the 200 IM and Eliza also won two state titles of her own
010in the 50 and 100 yard freestyle allies said that is fast that is amazing not only did she break school records in those two races and swam All-American consideration times but she also is named The Daily Camera swimmer of the year for the second year in a row and the team where's Amber that's right they also earned the 4A State runnerup honors congratulations sco yotes let's give them all a [Music] hand Amber you got come appreciate you all hey we'll diplomas in a couple months yes so now before we stop celebrating state championships in swimming we have one more Champion to honor Hazel Hillman of Boulder High School why don't you come on up Hazel over there as Hazel's getting her award let me tell you a little bit about what she accomplished at the
011Veterans Memorial Aquatic Center in Thorton the panther Jr claimed both the 5A state championship and both both the 100 yard butterfly and the 100 yard brush stroke and set Boulder high records in both races so Hazel have a question for you um I understand you swam all four of your races during the second half of the meet which is somewhat uncommon and challenging how did you manage your time and manage to be at your best for both your individual races um I think this is something I do in club a lot too so I feel like I definitely knew I could do it and I knew how to do it and I think I just you know had a good mental state and you know I was really ready and I really wanted to win
012so I think that really helped me as well and my teammates were there supporting me so that was really important incredible amazing let's give Hazel a round of applause and we will take a picture [Applause] so for our next awardees last month HOSA which stands for the Health occupation students of America and is the association for future health professionals held its annual state leadership conference conference in competition and Boulder Tech students won the top award in three categories so let's have Gabriel Gabriela Fernandez Angie Manning Miriam genter and Sal Hickok come as they're getting their Awards I will uh share a little bit about what they were what they won and this was during the event at the Sheran Denver downtown on February 18th through the 20th Gabriella won Gold in Behavioral Health Angie and
013Miriam won Gold in search skills and salwin gold and Pharmacy science and so I'll ask you just to introduce yourself share what high school you go to and tell us a little bit about the competition that you won I'm Gabriela Fernandez um and I go to Boulder Universal the online school um the other question G uh which you w okay and awesome okay I'm pretty awesome uh so I did the beh Behavioral Health competition um basically 100 question test about um just kind of all sorts of stuff related to behavioral health um you know substance abuse mental illness um various therapies just kind of all that sort of stuff um and yeah I've always been interested in the brain so it's pretty fun um I'm Angie and I competed with Miriam um as a team
014we competed in search skills so that stands for a community Emergency Response Team so we like basically practiced how to save people if we were a part of a community like Emergency Response Team so like in disasters or like Mass casualties things like that huge round of applause let's take a picture [Applause] so next we're excited to celebrate some youth leaders that are helping to lead some of our sustainability work sustainability is very important to us here in bbsd I would ask the members of the bvsd green youth Council to come on up all right if our green youth Council will will stand here in the middle I'm going to tell everybody about what you've accomplished then give you a chance to to talk a little bit so members of this Council have been busy
015uh they've helped form the green youth Council leadership team designed six optional Elementary School lesson plans contribute to the development of three new climate literacy courses here in bbsd build the Seal of climate literacy rubric which will be something that we'll be able to recognize seniors with who earn that at graduation audited the bbsd courses and opportunities that can lead to the Seal of climate literacy designed the Seal of climate literacy application process and then presented it to our partners our CL our sustainability Partners created a seal of climate literacy opportunities for midd and Elementary School students and advocated for additional climate science as we work to revise science standards that is a lot another round of applause for these amazing students but that's not all they've done something else additionally they've been invited to
016speak at several community events including the first ever Colorado youth climate Summit you are looking at true student climate leaders leading throughout the state state of Colorado so I have a few questions I'm going to hand the microphone this way and then whoever wants to answer the question you can answer the question if you don't pass pass the microphone down talk to us about how part of being part of the green youth Council has helped you develop leadership skills or which accomplishment of the green youth Council you're most proud of or how does participating in the green youth Council contribute to climate literacy environmental hope and action in bbsd or anything you want to talk about that's cool that you've done because you've done a lot of awesome stuff and introduce and just say your
017name and your school hi I'm Audrey Knight and I'm a junior at senturus high school and the green youth Council has given me the opportunity to help make change at the district level and encourage students to advocate for the climate in a way that will make a lasting impact on the future hi I'm KY Testa I'm a senior at Fairview High School and um I definitely learned a lot of leadership skills through the green youth Council some of which being like communication both with like our leadership team up here which has been a lot of fun and also with like adults in the district and like figuring out how to like make a balance between like working with people yeah I'm Ryland I go to Fairview High School and I'm a senior um I'm most
018proud of getting the seal climate literacy up and running in the school district it's a great opportunity that senior graduating seniors can receive when they graduate and just help spread climate litery across the district which is really amazing hi I'm Harper hatch I'm a seventh grader at Nevan plat middle school and being part of the green youth Council has helped me learn how to do a lot of cool leadership skills and help out the environment and also and then I've learned how to set up and like produce a lot of things and talk with adults which I think is a really important life skill hello I'm Isabelle Rus agular I'm a junior at Boulder high and being part of the green youth Council has been such an amazing experience I feel so inspired by my
019fellow team members and I'm so proud of all that we've accomplished so far hi I'm Owen I go to Boulder High and um I'm just happy to try to help make uh bbsd more sustainable and be part of like it really helps with leadership and community and I feel um very accomplished hi my name is Katherine Campbell and I go to Southern Hills Middle School um one accomp I'm proud of all the accomplishments but one accomplishment that I'm most proud of is our first Elementary curriculum um course it is about green youth I sorry I don't know why I said that um greenhouse gases and um their impact on the Earth and I feel like it it helps climate literacy because we're helping teach students about it from many different levels with different activities anything
020r with and help helping well anything many diff with within many different subjects and we also help give them something to look forward to by learning about it hi I'm Ira Testa I'm in sixth grade at Southern Hills Middle School and I think the green being part of the green youth Council has really taught me a lot about not only like having ideas and making plans to like help the environment and like pursue your passions but also like implementing those P plans to make real change happen in our [Applause] community I am so proud of all of you this group of students it is it is really neat to watch kids with a passion put in the time energy and effort to make a lasting difference in our school district in our community and in
021our state another round of applause for the bbsd green youth Council I am not J we need to squeeze in a little bitul everyone [Applause] do you see why this is one of the favorite evenings of the year to be able to celebrate our amazing students our coaches our sponsors our teachers and our incredible parents a round of applause for all of our parents here that have supported all of our students in in creating these just amazing opportunities uh that's all we have for our program this evening uh if you don't have anything else going on we have a school board meeting coming up uh we do have plenty of food so you don't have to go home and eat um but really appreciate you all coming tonight thank you for the support that you
022provide for our school district so proud of all of you kids proud of parents proud of our community everybody have a great evening thanks for joining us e e e [Music] I would like to call to order this regular meeting of the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education for Tuesday March 11th 2025 board members May attend and participate in meetings by electronic means in accordance with BC policy BME and state law Laura can you please call the RO Chavez here medler here nnick here Quin Lin AA here Raj Paul here Sergeant here anger here thank you now like to turn everyone's attention to the screens for our land acknowledgement this evening [Music] recos [Music] bbsd [Music] res I would like to remind everybody that the mission of the Boulder Valley School District is to
023engage is to create challenging meaningful and engaging learning opportunities that alter and Thrive and are prepared for successful civically engaged lives good evening everyone thank you for joining us in person here tonight and for those of you joining remotely we're glad to have you observe and participate in our meetings at this time is there a motion to approve this evening's agenda move by lenia second by Beth Laur can you please call the role Chavez yes medler yes mnik yes Quin L AA yes Raj Paul yes Sergeant yes anger yes motion passes we will begin this evening's meeting with a work study session we have one topic to review School attendance area policy JC Dr would you like to do the introductions thank you board president Raj Paul board members uh so board members we're back
024again talking about policy JC we were with you earlier this semester uh to give a high level overview and the team has put together um some more detailed feedback uh based on your feedback and some things to consider as we look for some direction as we continue to move forward with uh the potential adjustment of attendance boundaries and so with that I'll turn it over to our assistant superintendent of operations Rob price thank you Dr Anderson good evening everyone uh always hard to follow a superintendent's honor rooll with attendance boundary so uh thanks for teeing that up course but no other than Glenn SRU our senior planner and myself to uh lead that up so as Dr Anderson mentioned tonight we're just continue to build on the work session the previous work session was held
025on January 4 14th and for our community members that are just starting to pay attention to this discussion I thought it was just a good reminder why do we have school attendance boundaries um boundaries help us balance resident student population uh across schools boundaries help us plan for facilities Transportation other resources based on expected enrollment boundaries determine which students qualify for district provided transportation uh attendance areas help us maintain that community and uh uh neighborhood cohesion that we talked about in that January meeting and then they help us with long range planning as we use attendance boundaries to anticipate uh shifts in population shifts in demographics they help us guide facility Investments Etc um just think it's key just to bring people along I know we know that or we uh pay attention to it
026closely but those that may not I think it's a good reminder for all of us um in January um I thought it was be nice just to come back again on what we heard what we believe we heard from the STA from the board so um just as as a refresher these were the major themes um we heard the need to examine enrollment Trends across regions to understand how student populations are shifting uh there was an interest in analyzing how School uh choice is influencing enrollment patterns particularly where choice schools are drawing students from and their resulting impacts the neighborhood schools a priority was ensuring students stay together as they transition between elementary middle and high school and an emphasis was placed on fostering no uh neighborhood connections to strengthen School communities we discussed the
027importance of equity in school access including the role of busing walkability and ensuring all students have viable School options there was a request to look for Trans Transportation efficiencies um a focus was placed on maximizing pedestrian access when we can and then there was a just a note to consider sustainability in our review and all of the options that we uh bring forward to the board so just at a high level I guess I'll stop there you feel like we've missed anything this is how we've built our presentation tonight and would help us guide as we're thinking about May I'm seeing one thumbs up but at a high level is that covered fantastic all right so uh you do have a hard copy of our attendance boundaries this first slide is just a visual representation
028of all of our neighborhood schools and bbsd uh really categorized by Elementary level and you will not see this in your slide deck I PDF this in but um we'll layer this on as we move forward with the color coding now we layer on the middle level feeders over the elementary so the elementaries again dark blue lines uh middle level feeders are now in the color uh with the legend over to the right hand side and now the dashed yellow lines and I apologize you'll see red we changed it at the last minute just to make it clear um now you'll start seeing the high school feeders and how the now you'll see Elementary feeding in the middle middle feeding into high school so this map really becomes important as we're starting to analyze the
029different attendance boundaries um in the elementary at the elementary level and within the regions themselves so again as we discussed uh you asked us to look at this from a regional approach we presented these regions to you when we reviewed the dashboard um but want to highlight some just key indicators so uh we we've divided the elementary levels those five regions tonight we're looking at North Boulder and South Boulder and then at the may work session we will look at the other three regions and the middle level feeders just to make that clear um over on the right side we have metrics that include the focus schools charter schools and our non-charter schools for each of the regions so you'll see the total capacity um the number of Resident students living in that area the
030number of En ened students attending schools within that region and then the overall utilization which is the enrolled students divided by the total capacity just to make that clear um the schools that are shown in green are the non- neighborhood schools so those are the focus schools or the charter schools and again uh just focusing on North Boulder and South Boulder tonight wanting to keep the discussion within the hour uh slot for the work session so at this time I we'll turn it over to Glenn screw senior planner who will cover the data portion of this thank you so the first area we're looking at is uh North Boulder you can see the list of schools uh aligned um on the right there for the most part we tried to follow um uh High School
031boundary uh feeder systems or at least the boundaries for these schools of course you saw in the previous map they don't they're not very clean so we did have to convert that into whole elementary schools but um for North Boulder we can see the schools that we're including in that North Boulder area and on a map this is what it looks like uh with all of the subsequent schools um when we look at the area as a whole uh we see that North Boulder is the largest area in terms of capacity uh in the district of all the areas we're looking at at over 3600 students um with South Boulder being second at 3,400 uh it's the second larg lest in terms of Resident population the students that live within the attendance area would live
032within North Boulder at 2400 uh but is only a little less um which is only a little less than the largest uh about 40 students less than lafayet and area which is currently our largest uh area in terms of Resident population um it also has the lowest utilization rate of any of the areas that we're going to be looking at uh at this meeting and the next meeting uh at are at 60% uh % capacity of the entire area Glenn I have a question there sure relating to that comment you just made in the slide before the utilization rate being 60% lot of um what's the utilization rate for say South Boulder comparable when you take out those choice schools do you have a sense of like if you took out the choice schools how
033it shifts utilization rates for our different School boundaries uh we can certainly look that up I don't have anything um really M um ready to go with that but what is complicated about that is you have so much students going back and forth and intermingling it's hard to isolate certain schools and say that you know and compare that to the resident population without considering those Focus schools Charter Schools right and it just kind of relates to one of our goals on the first side you showed and that's that side that breaks on the the communities is that there the location of our choice schools are not spread evenly throughout our schools and it's I know attendance boundary discussion straight up doesn't talk about that but when we look at North Boulder versus South Boulder and
034the populations that are M traveling south on a daily basis to provide those extra 800 students to those choice schools it's just an interesting asteris I think on that slide you just showed about utilization because it there are so there are far fewer choice schools in North Boulder that are in South Boulder well the kitty will you give me a little bit of background on why I see that there's a resident population and then a capacity yeah um and and I agree with Nicole I notice also where our charter schools are but is it important to break them up in these five buckets like this I mean what tell me why we think that's important to break them up into five buckets North Boulder South Boulder Broomfield um it was a request of the board
035at the last meeting to to look at it but actually it is a standard standard way to look at boundaries as a whole uh instead of is a way of just separating out into into smaller components about where we have certain issues and where we don't and be able to focus in on those areas a little bit more and knowing which areas to focus in on yeah my question was just about for the choice schools when you're talking about utilization you look at the students whose addresses lie within that area and they attend one of the choice schools in that area as part of the utilization or not so the utilization is going to be based on enrollment not on where they live and so it's really looking at all of the schools and you
036total up the utiliz the the capacity for all of those schools and you total up the enrollment for all of those schools and then that's where we get that average number thank you I thought it meant of the people who live there who is utilizing the schools in that area so this slide takes us to uh overall enrollment trends that we see forward North Boulder um starting on the on the left side with the darker bars showing the past Trends uh which show a a five-year change for both enrollment and um resident students a decline of about 540 students for both of those categories over the last four years uh that averaged about a four negative four percent year over-year loss um compared to a negative 1.8% l loss for bbsd as a whole so
037more than double what bbd's uh losses have been over the last five years and then moving to the right side uh the lighter bars are projected um and and much as we've seen in the rest of the district we're projecting uh continued losses but not quite the same rates that we've seen in the past uh with a projected loss of about 270 about half of what we did the last five years uh with a year-over-year loss of about 2.7% uh and currently the capacity for North bould Boulder as I said was 60% and the overall capacity is uh noted by that dotted line on top uh so we're at 60% now under our current projection Trends uh we're looked at at looking at about 53% capacity in five years overall and this chart uh was
038pulled right off the dashboard uh which has a lot of good information uh regarding open enrollment um and so when we're looking at this on the left side we're seeing the resident student population so those are the students that live that combined North older uh attendance areas on the right we're seeing the enrollment uh for those areas and we look at it this way we can see right off that there are more students OE out from their neighborhood attendance area there's about two uh 1,23 that are that do not attend their neighborhood School uh and more of those and the students that are o open and rolling into North Boulder at about 733 students uh for a net loss of about 230 students for that area as a whole uh 42% uh open enrollment out
039for North Boulder as it compared to 36% for uh the district as a whole so also a higher rate of students leaving the schools in North Boulder um when you look on the lower part uh the trend lines on the bottom there we also see a lot more uh open rollment activity over time uh from The Last Five Years um the percent of students not attending their uh the school and their attendance area in 2018 was about 34% but that's increased to 42% uh in 2024 and also in terms of the com the um composition of enrollment North Boulder that's gone from from 28% open enrollment in 2018 to uh 36% open enrollment in 2024 so I have a question about some of these numbers um you know from the dashboards that we looked at
040last time around the enrollment dashboards not the last time the time before um you can look at each of these individual schools right 48% of students that live in Colin's catchment area 10 Coline 50% of those students live within CR views catchment area 10 Crest viw the vast majority of those students are going to UNI Hill I mean that and so it's Crestview Coline Whittier are really supporting to the a great extent uni Hill population um and my wondering is how does that how is that reflected in here so would that be that chunk that's out to focus School in here so it again but it's like a focus School within the reading room this gets a little bit muddy yes yeah and that would be an out out specifically to focus on so there's
041a lot of ways to split this up between the outs and we've done our best to to represent that thanks and is colomine considered a focus school or is that a neighborhood school because it has the Dual language program there right so what what's that one considered go ahead a neighborhood School uh I believe I'm not sure the exact definition I think it's the Strand uh that it's uh that it's related that's added to that program to that neighborhood School uh this is a further refinement uh of the open enrollment information shows uh the breakdowns uh for the neighborhood attendance area the students in those areas uh broken out for the individual schools uh with the darker blue areas representing the uh students that are are live in that attendance area and attending that that
042school uh and the green area is representing students that are attending a different School in bbsd uh than their neighborhood school and but live in that attendance area uh the combination of the two lines shows the complete um neighborhood uh population for that that attendance area so we can see Crestview has close to 700 students living in the attendance area uh but about half of those are actually attending Crest View um when we look at this uh we can see that uh of that th23 students that I mentioned earlier uh 557 students attend another school uh in North Boulder uh with uni Hill being the predominant school there um another 4 and uh eight or 466 rather attend uh another BBs School outside of of North Boulder most of those are going to be in
043South Boulder with the predominant school there being a combination of bcsis and high peaks uh we also see at least in terms of looking at it uh in a neighborhood um attendance area that flat irons Heatherwood and whiter uh are are at or below uh the two round uh Mark shown on the red line on the chart now looking at I'm sorry Kitty yes I have a question so not all the numbers add up in here so is are we to assume that the numbers like where it says attend different region oh no that's not true how how do we account for the numbers not adding up well there are other schools that they open enrollment to I was just showing the top three schools okay going to okay got it got it thank you
044and on the flip side this looks at the enrollment composition uh in North Boulder um similar with the dark blue lines uh representing the students attending uh their neighborhood school and the yellow representing uh the students that are open enrolling into those schools uh in the the little orange spots at the end representing out a district um we also threw in uh the little triangles to show what enrollment overall enrollment uh look could look like in five years based on projections um and when we look at it this way of that 733 that open and roll in um from bbsd 700 541 are coming in from another both North Boulder school so that actually lines up uh with the schools of uni Hill and foot and wooder uh are the ones uh top ones owing
045into from North Boulder uh but 192 less than 200 are owing in from outside North Boulder and we'll see with South Boulder it's a a very different Dynamic uh in terms of those coming in and out of their area uh we also see similar to the uh neighborhood um uh chart that we saw before flat irons Heatherwood and Whittier uh are all at or below that two round mark when looking at it uh from the lens of enrollment so when we are looking at this information and looking at at what uh types of boundary options uh um um are available to us uh both the maybe in some situations help balance populations especially near schools that are uh low and population and also uh Rectify uh some possible or strengthen uh Community connections and Transportation
046uh we came up with a few uh options for uh boundaries that uh could fulfill some of those goals uh the first one we looked at was an area east of diagonal Highway currently in Crest View uh we do know Crest View has uh a pretty large number of students in their attendance area but always the complicating factor with this is looking at the number of students actually attending it as well um but it is an area that is uh that northern part of it especially is attached to gun barrel uh has uh about 500 single family detached and about twice that um multif family housing that is on the west side of 63rd but part of gun barrel uh that currently is attending uh Crest View uh so one possibility is to move that
047into Heatherwood it is already part of that gun barrel Community um and um would in that way is a is a natural fit for that it does um have about 52 students right now currently and about 60% of those are attending Crestview um and uh and then uh we have a few attending Heatherwood and then uh the remaining would be opening rolling out to other district schools uh another um complication with this scenario is it also involves uh Middle School um either having to follow through with a Middle School boundary change as well since uh that area is currently in Centennial and Heatherwood is in plat so you'd either have to follow through with that or live with another split feeder area another option uh we talked about uh last time are the the non-contiguous
048areas that we have in the district um this one is in Whittier uh it's a area predominantly um uh graduate student housing uh with CU just across from Boulder High uh small area uh in the 80s was uh designated to go to Creekside uh we're not exactly sure why uh unlike some of the other efforts that they did at that time but right now it only serves about six students um it um you know from a transportation administrative um uh Viewpoint it's an unneeded complexity to those systems uh and given the small number of students um seemed like uh another natural fit to bring that more into the Wittier Community uh that surrounds it I should say in the past that area has been closer to 2025 students and as some of the construction that's
049going on in the area regains it probably will will get a little bit closer to that level over time and then lastly is the Creekside uh area west of Broadway so you know Creekside has that hourglass shape this this is part of Broadway uh and could potentially send that to Flat Irons uh it's an area that currently has about 48 students uh has a natural barrier with Broadway being right there a natural separation um about 40% of those students uh attend Creekside um and with the rest uh attending other bbsd schools and a few attending flat irons currently um this one unlike the Crest View area one uh the middle and the high school as well are in the same would be the same uh regardless of which Elementary boundary we see um I think
050you know B makes a great deal of sense on a lot of different levels I am curious about the other two non-contiguous areas that are within the column by catchment area that you did not decide to present you could explain that a little bit yeah those excuse me those areas have much larger populations uh that would be impacted by the change I I think from what we can tell the destratification efforts that those were created under in the 1980s still remain uh so there would be a bigger uh a bigger lift at looking at um uh at disrupting that balance that's been created with those so I think those are the two primary reasons lania I think my curiosity since we're kind of working through this is the importance of the feeder system because when
051I look at this I think that that you know I see that e and C would not affect a feeder system right that's what you said and so we only have a but I do would like to kind of hear from everybody else about what their thoughts are on feeder system because I think you know um our feeder system into plat is already splitting up several schools this would make Heatherwood split into several schools and I'm not sure if that was the direction we're going I don't have a real strong opinion about it but if somebody does I'd like to understand that it's something I was looking at with a I mean for an elementary keeping the neighborhood together makes a great deal of sense like in diagonal is a huge barrier you're not going
052to have elementary kids crossing diagonal to bike and walk to school um so from a straight Elementary School feeder standpoint that shift is really logical to me and it I think this is where I am struggling looking at each of these areas separately um and at different times because they all have such a big interaction and so I agree I think like some of our feeder schools ele Douglas is is a disaster for feeder schools like there are a lot of I think that complexity is important I think you know how are we how are we trying to clean that up or not clean that up um I Know It actually drives open enrollment patterns to a great degree I I mean I live in my neighborhood catchman area for El school is Foothill Elementary
053that divides into two different middle schools it drives open enrollment decisions when friends on the other side of Iris I mean literally iris is split in half north side of Iris goes to Centennial south side of Iris goes to Casey and it drives those those Middle School patterns Drive OE decisions in a really big way so I think it's hard and and this gets to like my way down the road as we say like this is worthy of exploring final decisions will be occur after like we see all of these pieces together and can weigh them or what is the plan before we get too far in the Weeds on some of these questions exactly that right now I believe um we have a three-hour work session scheduled in May so what we were going
054to do is take what we heard the night bring all five regions back to you along with the middle level scenarios that we would come up with based on some of the uh options that were considering and review it all during that three-hour work session so that would be the intent um and to continue to build on the data that we already have if there's other data that you would like to see as part of the presentation we can bring that back to you but we wouldn't be deciding at that meeting on anything we'd still be a study session and if I can follow up on the um the catchman Zone thing I mean I think it's uh I think when the kids are of your Elementary School are choosing different places it increases the
055incentive for the other parents who hadn't thought that they might want to open enroll to open enroll so and then we know that that isn't a a cost-free exercise in the stress of parents and everything so if you know they had many parents would prefer not to exercise open enrollment um for middle school and choose a different one um but they may have social pressures from their kids to do so to figure out how to make that work you know so I see the the benefit of having the cohesion from the elementary feeding into the middle um but I also want to make sure uh that we're being open to the open enrollment into our middle schools right and so as my own kids were in community monasi and getting back into Southern Hills was
056an exercise of getting to know the neighborhood schools and being integrated into it so I mean I just think it it is super complex and at the same time we want to honor the ability and expect the parents to exercise the choice so even if we change it people will still choose for lots of reasons but I think to Nicole's point is I hear you what you're talking about is reducing that impulse to exercise Choice when it really wasn't so much programmatic is sort of driven by the division of the elementary school in the first place and then kids are going different directions so parents have a reason to go different directions that wouldn't be there if they were all in a Feer pattern was that what you're talking about and just to set some
057expectations we are not looking to make any decisions um we're looking for some guidance from the board on the options we presented we need to analyze all of these from a logistical standpoint we need to get Transportation involved we really this is um just looking for further Direction the same thing in may we will not be looking for direction we'll come to you in May with a community process just a draft of what that may look like but this is these are changes that would likely take effect in 26 27 nothing will impact next year's attendance boundaries just to be clear about that and I will say you know one thing about a and C both so Creek Side and Crestview are the two elementary schools that if everybody decided to go to they would
058well exceed capacity and so I think there's like that log logical argument as well for shifting that portion of C into flat irons and then shifting that portion considering the shifting of those two things as we kind of think a little bit further down the road so for me like the there's a lot of logic there a has the biggest like question mark around Middle School feeders and the extent to which that comes into play but um I do appreciate the fact that in those two situations you're trying to level set the resident capacity to what's actually physical closer to the physical capacity of our schools in those two areas and we talk about Community connections and I it does raise a question for me about the degree University Hills location and where it population
059is coming from how does that impact the connection to that school um how does not all the students that could potentially walk to school or have that be in their backyard what how does that Foster Community connections and when we have a lot of schools that are not at capacity um Pro programs can exist anywhere in my opinion you can move a program the facility is a facility but it's just worth it's something I think a lot about all those kids hopping on the bus and driving down Broadway from basically the same three neighborhoods and so just Community connections with some of those choice schools is something I would like to consider in um future conversations Alex yeah I guess I mean I I I would like to consider and talk about that some more
060but I I also want to keep in mind um when our Focus schools uh have a particular Mission or Focus that they're doing they are creating a community and it's not a geographic community and so there's the great as a community monor parent there's a lot of mon you know CM parent Community is a real thing and I think uni Hill has that from its history and and and approach uh and but I realized the idea of like when we deal with Geographic and walking communities that's a totally different thing so I just want to re recognize that sometimes Community has multiple layers too okay any more questions on North Boulder we're about to move to South Boulder so South Boulder and the list of schools um there and in the uh attached map um
061associated with that school you can see on there uh you know quite a few more of the focused Charter Schools represented by the buildings on the map uh when we look at South Boulder um it's the second largest area as I mentioned before in terms of uh capacity in the district at 3,400 uh um seats so to speak um it's the smallest area in terms of Resident students though at600 uh with just being a little bit smaller than uh Broomfield at at closer to to 1800 um in terms of utilization though even with uh the small resident population it's it's closer to the middle of the pack in terms of utilization uh at 71% and the trends for um South Boulder we can see the the resident and enrollment lines have flipped we now see
062the enrollment is quite a bit higher than the resident population year-over-year uh we see that Resident population declining over the last five years uh by about 400 students uh with enrollment being a little bit more at 450 um and average year-over-year uh less than North Boulder which was 4% South Boulder is 2.7% uh still above the uh District average of of negative 1.8% but more than North Boulder in terms of projection similar we don't anticipate it to uh decline as fast as it has in the past but we still anticipate uh a year-over-year loss of about 1 Point negative 1.6% uh around 200 students um and its current capacity of 71% is expected to decline uh about five points or six points uh by 2029 and looking at Open Enrollment sorry oh can you say
063more about just why you think the South Boulder decline is going to slow more than the other places is there any big picture explanation for why it's slower in South and North Boulder well you know based on past um the past declines of uh weren't as steep as they were for North Boulder uh and also based on uh upcoming um rejected kindergarteners from uh from births and uh which is probably one of the major components feeding into it and then then it assumes that you know your uh uh average um basically migration rates and then out of the area are about the same oops and the impact of uh open enrollment for South Boulder uh we see you know a flip essentially from North Boulder we see fewer students open and rolling out of their
064neighborhood attendance area uh we see about 600 of of students uh not attending their neighborhood school and leaving um but where we see uh uh closer to 1235 students open rolling into a South Boulder student so almost twice as many uh coming into the uh choosing to uh open roll in as there are choosing to open roll out of a South Boulder school um so a gain of about 300 or 630 students as opposed to North Boulder we saw loss in the low 200s we also see um the outs the open rolling out of a school of their neighborhood school is about the district average uh Compared to North Boulder which was about 42% we do see a same a similar Trend in terms of increased open rollment activity uh as North Poler but not
065quite as pronounced uh the percent not attending their neighborhood School in 2018 was 32% uh and that now has grown to 38% in 2024 uh and the percent of enrollment at in South Boulder schools was about 50% in 2018 and that has ticked up to about 56% in 2024 the latter one so that's uh in 2018 basically half 50% of the enrollment was composed of of students that were open enrolling choosing to open enroll into the schools and that's ticked up to 56% and looking at the attendance area by School uh similar chart uh with the blues being resident students attending their neighborhood school and the green uh uh students attending a different school um we do have the added complication of the dual enrollment areas which uh those students if they're elected to choose
066their um they're one of the two neighbored schools and it's represented in that school here so otherwise if you see the green lines for the optional areas those are students that are choosing a school other than those two that they could could uh can go to in that dual area so of that six oh excuse me can you tell me what the optional Bear Creek in Creekside and optional Bear Creek Mesa what this means do those people not go to Bear Creek or Mesa or are they not attending an non thing yeah so if it's the green bars mean they're not so in the case of Creekside and bar Creek they're they're going to another bbsd school besides one of those two so this would imply that 100% of the kids in the joint areas
067are not attending either of the schools in those joint areas um no so then the students that are attending either uh Boulder um or bar Creek or Creekside are represented in in those schools as a neighborhood kid so if we were trying to understand how the joint areas work it might be helpful to know where the ones from The Joint area went to compared to those that went somewhere else besides the two so when I I look at this it looks like there's 50 kids in the be Creek Mesa District who don't go to be Creek or Mesa but I don't know anything about where the other where the other ones are going yeah that information is in the Matrix too that we can so we can bring that up easly enough so in South
068Boulder of the 600 that are uh not attending their neighborhood school we see 435 are attending another South Boulder School uh with community monor and bcsis and Horizon about the same being the big contributors or big yeah contributors to those schools uh we only see 168 um attend a different region so this is far fewer than a North Boulder um many more of the students stay in in in South Boulder than in North Boulder and then we see bar Creek Douglas and Mesa at or below uh the two round mark according to the neighborhood population and looking on the enrollment part I think the big Takeaway on this is just the amount of yellow on there uh the yellow for this is are the students o Open rolling in again a big part of that
069are the the choice School the focus and charter schools in South Boulder uh which only receive open enrollment um but we see quite a bit other uh pretty large contributions in the other schools as well so of the 1235 opening rolling in from uh another bbsd school uh in South Boulder 452 are coming from another South Boulder School uh with community monor bcis um and Horizon being the main schools that those students land in uh but we see more owing in from a different region so again flip-flop from North Boulder where we actually have more students coming into the area than than leaving the area and those coming in from a different area uh the primary schools are bcsis high peaks uh Horizons and Community monor I'm really struggling with the fact that the South
070Boulder residence area has the smallest number of students and the big the second largest capacity of facilities um and I'm thinking ahead to our facilities management policies that are coming up and just how we think of the district as a whole um I'm wondering I think from an environmental standpoint probably not the best a lot of roads in there I there's not a lot of access a lot of congestion a lot of driving um but I'm wondering just some context about how we ended up in this situation was it there was there a time where there was so many neighborhood kids and that we you know and past decisions to close schools did not really result in US removing the facility but created a vacuum that PO popped up tooy schools I just feel like
071as far as putting schools where our students are it makes South Boulder is um counter to counter to that practice so you know it's anecdotal from kind of what we hear over the years and and how it came this way but I do know the round of school closures in the 80s probably had a part to do with that and uh and repurposing those schools um to uh Focus programs um the other part of that too is in traditionally North Boulder has had a lot of the growth uh in the uh 80s 90s and 2000s to some extent so you know we had the capacity in the South and it allowed us not to have to build new schools in the north uh having those Focus schools there and you know it's interesting you know
072we talk we've been talking about this for a while and we haven't received very many emails on this um access to these Focus schools I mean it's not easy when they're in like the farthest corner of School District if they were in the smack dab of the middle you probably increase access um to to those schools from a different variety of people but is that something ever worth entertaining like the location I mean increasing access to these these Choice programs by putting them in a geographic location where it is easier for more students to get to them versus in the far southwest corner of our district I just want to jump on with that band Point too I mean when you look at the one of the earlier slides and all the focus schools and
073charter schools are in green and it's very obvious that we have a higher concentration there in South Boulder and I think I appreciate your our speculation on the history of how this happened that perhaps we close schools and then put in Focus schools but to Nicole's point it doesn't feel fair or right that so many folks in our district can't access our Focus schools readily and clearly we see a lot of people clamoring to access these schools right somewhat at the detriment to our neighborhood schools so I think it it does bear kind of underscoring that point and I don't know what we can do about it but it's something to to think about more deeply if I would add one historical point and then one other way to think about this we closed schools
074in the 80s and then we had a charter school law enacted in 1993 and people were proposing uh charter schools and people were thinking about how to avoid having charter schools and they encouraged people who were thinking about having a monory charter school or a Regio amilio charter school or a core knowledge Charter School to create a focus school and voila we have Community Monas bcsis and high peaks um as Focus schools rather than as charter schools and as Focus Schools they're in District buildings and the buildings that we had over time they more often moved like Community monor moved around and eventually ended up in South Boulder so it's sort of there's this programmatic side to the the focus schools that was in part a response for district seeking to control its innovative schools
075and have them be part of the district rather than Charters and the sweetener to that was to give them buildings and to make them part of the district for all sorts of support services and that's why we have a bunch of really great focused schools been part of our community for 20 plus years one of the things to think about and I'm not sure I'm going to look at some of the enrollment and I note that 56% of the families in some of these catchment zones are not attending their school and they're pretty excited about the school that they're attending so I'm I'm excited that we as a district support all that public school choice and provide Innovative options that parents want and the flip side of that is people don't attend their neighborhood school
076as much but I don't see that as a net loss I see that as communities where people are going to the school that they think that bets meets their kids' needs and so one other option to consider in this is we have have under enrolled neighborhood schools so rather than say shift Community monor to a north campus and trade it for something else I might suggest we explore how we take some of our other campuses that may be under enrolled and encourage them to become Focus schools with a program that lots of people would want to choose and go to so that we would provide more focus and alternative options in northp or in other parts of the community within the district so one other way to think about it Kitty lenia Jorge so just
077in terms of the history of how we got here what I'm wondering and you may not know this off the top of your head but how many of these schools were around when baby boomers were in school like were built in the 50s or the 60s I me sure a number of them were and that would ex I mean it schools that are old enough that have served you know bumps in population that would be a reason to have a lot of schools in one place and then the Millennials came around and that kept them open so I I don't need an exact answer yeah we do have lists of of that and you're right it does follow booms um you we had big boom in this in the little bit of Boom in the
07850s and then a big one in the 70s very large one in the 70s and then the other one again in the 90s so a lot of what you see in Boulder I think uh are are the 70s and some in the to the 80s so this muddies the water for me significantly so thank you I appreciate that it's great information I it's a little muddy for me um so then where I go with it is what I feel like is important and what I feel like is important um I'm with Alex I think school choice is very important and I it's a law and we need to support but Community continuity would be where I would fall and giving families the opportunity to be have their community and be Bust from that Community for
079those kids then to all go to middle school together and be bust there together that that is um what community would look like and I don't think that we can do anything one way or the other on how we're going to see the open enrollment people are going to open and roll where they want to go and I agree with you having strands would be a great idea I think Heatherwood is trying to make their steam strand work I think that's great but what I would be interested in in looking at this presentation again would be okay here are my middle schools what if I took my middle school catchment area and you know I made it so that everything went along a feeder line I would love to know that could could that work
080in terms of numbers could it work in terms of Transportation so that all those kids going to Heatherwood are all going or the Douglas kids are a great example all those kids going to Douglas well can they all go to Plat you know and then are all and even going maybe backward engineering this might be of interest to me too like does plat really need to split up half the people go to Boulder high and half the people go to Fairview I don't know but there could be a reverse engineering way of looking at it that would be more of Interest maybe that's why I had the discomfort in the first place of looking at North Boulder and South Boulder I would like to keep kids um in terms of their transportation option if we
081could keep kids together I would really like that this is really complex right I just keep feel like getting deeper and deeper the more we talk about this uh and I'm looking at this I'm still trying to wrap my head around this and then the dashboards that we did a few weeks back to see how those overlap and how we you know I'm care less about the history more about how we move forward right where the capacity discussion fits in with this as well and and to your earlier Point interpreting this when there's schools that don't have a neighborhood in there as well because that that tells a different story when you have a region that has more students than are actually living in the area but then you go to the schools and none
082of them are meeting more than two rounds or at capacity and including some of the focus schools which are completely open enrollment and they're somewhere in 50 to 60% and so I'm not sure how we weigh how we weigh this or how um that's a lot of schools in this one small area um and they're cannibalizing each other in terms of students right and so I'm not I'm not sure I have a question except that I have a lot of questions I guess is kind of I can put that just why I put those thoughts out there I you I'm not a back one slide all of the data is really important to understand but this tells the story here we're really talking about trying to balance resident students and we can make a lot
083of adjustments but we really don't know how parents react until we make an adjustment it has been a long time since we changed attendance boundaries it might not hold parents still have choice they might still do what they're doing over time they might end up staying with that attendance boundary and we get 70% that attends their neighborhood school and 30% still open and roll and we achieved what we wanted to five years from now and I think that's what we're going to have to try a small a few small moves there's not a lot of moves that we can make and hopefully you see that within the resident student numbers um unless we make some really hard decisions right so that that to me is kind of where we're at tonight is we're bringing forward
084what we believe are about the only moves we can make with the tenants boundaries in these two regions um and we'll look at middle level and we'll look at how that feeds into High School Etc at the next work session but really what we're getting at is there's not a whole lot of moves we can make with the resident students that we currently have Within These two regions Jason that we can come up with so sorry Rob J I'm wondering and I don't want to make this even more complicated but I'm wonder you know when you took us back to this slide this is really helpful because I think put Focus schools in South Boulder when actually three of those schools are not at all in South Boulder at all that people consider South poer
085is really confusing this conversation and so I wonder I know it was based on how we asked for Geographic you know division but I think that's really confusing putting all these you know let's go back to that slide High Peaks bcsis what else um yeah I mean Doug Douglas is not a choice but I think Horizons they're not in South Boulder I mean as we think of South Boulder and so I think that is like as I think about this conversation you know there's this like you know South Boulder's under capacity but then they have all these Focus schools and I think the request that we had of you all to group them in Geographic areas maybe is making this even more confusing than it is because when you went took us back to that
086slide that just showed the neighborhood schools that actually shows there's really you know there's really only five neighborhood schools in South Boulder but then when you go back to the second slide it looks like it's you know so I don't know I don't know maybe there's something to that for me that is the confusion and I think it seems to be I don't want to speak for anyone else but that's a confusing part and so maybe we asked to include that but maybe separating that back out again might make more sense because I think this is just adding unnecessary complication to an already complicated issue Dr Anderson I'll make it even more complicated how many kids live in the neighborhoods of those Focus schools and that's why they go to them a couple things um
087I I've worked with our team to we have to first and foremost the board has done a good job of ensuring through the policies that you pass that we're not going to have a well 30 years ago kind of a conversation and that as we think about the changes we make on we have a rhythm set in policy every five years you have this conversation and I don't know how you could think about solving any other problems Beyond 5 years out I think that that's the right cycle um I do think that the you know it's you've got these you know the location of focused schools I mean the question we're asking is is it the location is the reason that they go to the focus schools or is it the program I mean that
088would be the question right do you go to BCS and high peaks because of where it's at or if that got moved somewhere else would you still go right would you have to provide transportation or would you still be able to transport I mean those are those are blind spots I don't I don't think we we know those things um and uh and I think that that's kind of some of that's what's complicated because I would guess that if I lived right by Horizons right I may just go to Horizons right and if my kid the kids I went to preschool went Horizons then I'm probably going to Horizons and but it's a choice it's a charter or if I live in BCS and near BCS in high peaks like there's a lot of bikes
089outside of BCS and I like I know that like that there is a community there too so I do think that you know what Rob said I think is right in the sense that as we get on this path of trying to balance there we have no modeling available to us to predict what people will do unless you take away choices right like like you could make it more predictable and then you could take away choices I'm not suggesting that you do that right for the sake of predictability so the smaller moves that I think that that Rob and Glenn are looking at um would be interesting to study and understand to then be able to put together some trends that would allow us to continue to do this cycle you know because it's not
090a we you know we reson schools in the 80s WE reson schools in the 2000s and now it's 2025 I think that our community needs to know and understand to maximize our efficiencies with the changes in budget maximize our efficiencies in regards to do we want to be investing millions in buildings that then we're not going to be able to use like there are reasons good business reasons to get on a fiveyear cycle to begin to hone some of these things in and feeder patterns can be important if folks follow them right Community Schools can be important if folks follow them Focus schools can be important if it's actually the focus of the school that drives the kids and it's not the location of the school and I just think that they're uh you know
091I said this last time this is a big old knot that we're trying to untangle and you do it one string at a time you don't if you pull them all at once the knot gets tighter right so trying to think about ways we could start to do some moves to see what happens will lead us down the path on what we potentially need to do next um with the idea that we do have a big overarching process um with the longrange advisor committee if schools are getting too small like we're we're advising people and then we're reacting right we have that process that we've set up uh remember the attendance boundaries is one piece and then the focus programming is another piece as well you know if if if it's the interest of the
092board we think this makes sense if we start to go and start to ask people at Focus schools why do you come to the focus schools right is it the focus is it that your friends go here is it that it's closest to your house it might tell us the appeal of the Focus schools which might lead us to believe that goodness gracious maybe some of these focused schools would be better off and better served and more access in another place but if you don't know all of those things I think it's really really tough so you know in in honoring the board's policy and request attendance boundaries we're sharing lots and lots of information with the understanding that the team has come up with a set of six potential uh moves at this presentation
093that that they're working towards that feel like the best next step in trying to figure this out so and I think that's right and I think what complicates it for me so I would second that exploration of CH of choice schools and the why they it's also really hard we'll draw the lines for five years I love the fact that we have the five years another five years we're going to be looking at them again I I really appreciate the fact that we're trying to make logical rational decisions around the wise for these boundaries I think that's really important um it is really challenging though from a perspective of we have all these schools that are nearing 50% capacity when I first started on the board the very first declining enrollment presentation I received was
094that at elementary school and I looking at Robin because she gave it the ideal number of rounds at an elementary school is a three- round Elementary School and now we're marting like a two round as because it's the AL process is when we get to two rounds and below in Your Capacity we really have to have a hard conversation and as time goes by the trends we continue to see are our schools are going to continue to not be at capacity or approach that um those thresholds that elre has identified and I think that's what makes it all harder when you're looking at all these schools that are not at capacity um and so it's and I know they're two tangential they're two different things but it's hard not to look at them together so
095that's um I guess really where I'm coming into this is that you know the three round ideal the two round one and a half round elre threshold and then these neighborhood lines which don't always I mean there's not a lot we can control because choice is state law and we're going to have choice but we have a lot of facilities and at some point I know it's not today at some point we're going to have to have fewer facilities and I think that's just that's just part of like what's at least going on in the back of my brain so just and I know we haven't gotten to the final considerations for South Boulder yet so I want to make sure we get to that slide sorry Alex yeah um I really appreciate uh the
096whole discussion tonight and uh all the information from the presentation I really do um I I appreciate the impulse of trying to figure out why people are making the choices that they make and if it wasn't in state law I'd still want us to have it as a district policy that we supported public school choice amongst our community because it's a value apparently almost the majority of the family have um and it lets them uh you know get schools that they think match what their kids are doing so I'm I'm supportive of having schools be different from each other in certain ways and for having parents you know pick the schools that they want and create communities that are not Geographic while I also support everything else about geographic community and efficiency in the schools
097um and I also appreciate that we're having the discussion about the five-year cycle of the attendance boundaries knowing that uh people don't um stick in the attendance boundaries a lot for lots of reasons so it's it's a it's a soft noodle to push something forward but at the same time it's really important to homeowners when they purchase their homes and uh they've made decisions based on it so it's a pretty high value thing that's Laden even though we also have so much choice but finally when I look at the like slides 10 and 17 the ones that have the attendance area student composition for both North and and South and I see how big the green parts are I guess I I'm struck by what is it that's going on um not just for where
098people are choosing to go but why they're choosing not to attend their school of residence and for me the long range process um is maybe putting off too long the discussion in the other schools about what you could do programmatically that might make more families stay in your school and so are there things we could do um in the classrooms with higher ratios of green that would make those schools stay above the 300 mark or even get to the 450 Mark or whatever it is we think efficient and we want to do um so I I'd encourage us to think programmatically about what it is people are choosing do more of that kind of program in the other schools likewise I think when we think we lose the uh parents of neurodiverse kids or the
099kids who take their dyslexic kids to Hillside we should be thinking about how do we open some Hillside like programs in Mesa Elementary School and serve dyslexic kids there more how should we do that you know in in Crest viiew um and if we did would we have less Choice happening and more people staying um at their neighborhood school and can we think about programmatic things that also help us get the efficiency of the buildings um retain people who might otherwise leave for private schools or homeschooling um and also balance this so I gan not to add the fifth layer of complexity to something that's already complex but I think we should be thinking about programming and we use that information about choice not because it's an inconvenient thing where people are going too much
100to the South it's like well okay they're going to bcsis the high peaks they're going to community monu we do want to know why so that we can help more people stay in the district and have more programming closer to them that they want um which I I think is a great impulse and helps us on multiple fronts to dial it back just a bit um in terms of what we're doing here for the attendance boundaries in terms of timeline and changes and impact um we're not deciding right now we're deciding later this year and they would the any changes that we make to attendance boundaries would kick in in Fall of this is yeah the fall of 26 unless the board directed us otherwise and we believe the timeline required in order to change
101attendance boundaries would take us to that point okay I I just want to confirm that get that clear and then the you know it's like there's 54 students who are now in the area who would be affected but they'd be grandfathered to not have to make changes that is that correct we would that's a board discussion we would need to decide that okay so again changes wouldn't take effect until that 26 27 school year but I think that's a that would be a board discussion on who is impacted who's grandfathered in we would need to analyze that and bring that back to you okay that's that's help thank okay so similar um scenarios to North Boulder looking at South Boulder and some ideas there um I think the um uh be Creek Creekside dual area
102similar to the non-contiguous area and Wier um although there's 37 students that live in that area only a small number actually utilize the the creek side option um in fact uh historically that number has been more of two and three I think it's like seven this year I think since the new buildings bumped it up a little bit it's still been well under 10 uh in a while you know you have that natural border with Broadway uh for that Community Connection uh and certainly geographically uh that neighborhood is is much more connected to uh be Creek Mesa uh side of of Broadway and similarly this is just a small area next to it it's actually in creek side but it's on the west side of Broadway uh it's a a collection of of of uh
103single family detached and multif family units uh currently only housing about four students uh but again I think if we would consider a b is a natural uh adjunct to that uh and keeping that Broadway uh boundary um intact and finally is that this is the the other half of the creek side and uh Flat Iron's boundary with uh it being represented again uh in the on the creek side boundary side of the north South Boulder split that uh we designated for these areas so just to open it up for discussion we've presented five areas to you and I guess I would ask the Border any five of the options that we presented off the table or would you like us to further analyze these areas and bring those back for discussion in May along
104with the other regions that we uh did not talk about tonight Jason just on the the previous slide about the three options for South Boulder uh those all make sense for all the reasons you talked about geographic you know continuity the the Broadway line um but if I go back up to uh I guess it's slide 18 that shows the yellows and shows the projected 2029 enrollment if we look across these two slides most schools show you know some decline you know 25 to 50 kids here shows Creek Side of a decline of a 100 Kids and then all but then all three recommendations take from Creek Side so just want to get some I mean I get all the reasons why but given those projections does that make sense yeah so this is you
105know a rinkle I think in looking at this these um attendance area and the same is true with Crest View as well um up north where yes looking here we can see Creek Side uh has a lot of students in their attendance area um but it you not all of them go to Creekside so there is a a balancing act with looking at the enrollment of those schools and the number of students that uh that occupy that attendance area I'm sure that all five ideas are worth exploring I was thinking about um in North Boulder on Section a um if you brought that into Heatherwood could you and I know now I'm switching over to South Boulder but could you give 505th is the delineation moving from Douglas could you move the delineation to 55th
106or wherever it is move the delineation so that more kids could go into Eisenhower I guess I'm trying to I'm trying to backward engineer that you could take those kids and not send them to Centennial from a and send them to Platt because those Eisenhower kids certainly don't need to go to Plat they could go to Manhattan if you moved their boundary that way and made it a smaller for platform there since you're adding those other kids that would go to Centennial did I did I that was so unclear I'm so sorry that was so unclear but I know what I'm saying I'm trying to say that that if you're GNA send these kids to Heatherwood and they're and most of the kids everybody from Heatherwood now is slated to go to Plat unless they're
107open and rolling instead of saying okay part of you are going to go to Centennial make sure they can all go to Plat by taking those Eisenhower kids and sending them over to Manhattan trying to balance it that way so I'll say this noted and we'll bring we'll bring it back in May for discussion is that all right yeah I'm just concerned about then further fractioning people yeah as they go to middle school we need to dive in the middle level um and that work will happen this month and next month and then we'll bring that back in May but Point noted similar to my question on the North Boulder side rationale for keeping the Bear Creek Mesa dual enrollment area here rather than partitioning it or doing something different when we're getting rid of
108some of the other dual enrollment areas we can look at it I mean right now there's no Transportation efficiencies to be had it seems to be working um so I think our thought was is why why change it there's really um no no efficiencies be had but we can continue to study and bring it back if we need to but we did have that discussion no I just wanted like us to comment on why we're if it ever you know the public ask hey why did you not leave that one but you left that one again it's coming to having back to having really logical thoughtful ration rational around why we're making some changes and not other changes so that's fine we don't need to study any further you did not feel like it aligned
109with our party to begin with so I'm hearing somewhat General support to bring back those five options we'll analyze those we'll bring back the other three regions we'll bring back the middle level feeder um and some recommendations on there we'll also bring back just a draft timeline what that process may look like if we were to move forward with changing attendance boundaries just to answer some of the questions that came up tonight how does that sound for the May work session that sounds great and we have more than an hour for that one we see you said we had three we have three hours for that one yeah that Alex then Kitty and then kitty yeah I haven't put in my input but all of these options make sense to me one thing I like
110seeing is drawing boundaries along major thurough fars so kids don't have to be you know cross Broadway or Foothills but I also would like see to the extent possible to keep elementaries all going to the same middle I don't think it's as important for middles to all go to the same high school because things change so much in high school for kids than they do you know between elementary and middle but I in my opinion and I may not even be here when it finally comes to a vote but I would like to see elementaries all feed into the same middle school yeah uh to put this in perspective between South and North Boulder I count like 198 kids covered out of the whole thing and two changes that are being done for four kids
111and six kid sort of counts um the four and six seem like they're getting to sort of a Dom Minimus thing where like I assume we're making that change because it's just efficient for us in the long run for it to beang changed otherwise making a change in our Maps over 10 kids over two changes seems like not not worth the the gas so I mean I think we do want to figure out how we're justifying the changes that seem to have such uh minimal impact on kids one is transportation efficiencies for sure two is there's six kids now and as Glenn noted there was 25 kids there just a few years ago so I would suggest if we're going to make the change we do it now when we're impacting the least amount of
112students we gain those efficiencies back from a transportation perspective and then move that forward board members any last questions before we move on to our student moment for this evening thank you for this presentation I was really thoughtful um to be continued but um I think I can say for all of us that you continue to take our feedback iterate really think through um through this process is it's important to all of us so thank you for that board members we are before we change the organization of this evening because we have had some patient guests in the back of the room we are going to Pivot over to this evening's student moment um since we started and thank you all for waiting for us to get through that I know um our first portion
113of that evening wrapped up a little sooner so we were carrying out with the agenda but Dr Anderson would you like to do the introduction for this evening student moment thank you board president Raj Paul and we're excited that student moment is back tonight we'll hear from a group of students who are newly published authors motivational speaker Stan Tucker visited the school last year and encourage students to participate in a competition through his nonprofit organization leap for literacy there was quiet a reaction with about 45 students choosing to submit their work five of them were chosen for the big honor of having their books published and this is a picture from last November if you look at our screens um with where several of the books were unveiled we'll have Kelsey Shear Monarch's teacher librarian
114introduced our student authors and I understand she has a special surprise after we hear from the authors themselves so Kelsey I'm gonna hand it off to you great it's my pleasure to in uce our published authors tonight last year we welcomed Stan Tucker who introduced the share your story Contest out of 16 National winners four books five authors were chosen for Monarch prek we're thrilled to celebrate these talented students and their outstanding achievements the fact that their books are in such high demand in our library is a wonderful reflection of the impact they've made we'll begin with a synopsis of Cara Stevenson and Cara Cockerham co-authored book that's going to be read by one by another one of our student authors as Cara and Kira could not join us tonight then our other young authors
115will share their publishing and entrepreneurial Journeys eie hi um this is Cara Stevenson and cir Cocker's book um what starts an ordinary evening whoa I can't talk what starts as an ordinary evening for Oliver and Lily becomes increasingly more bizarre when they meet and beend a stranger a stranger who is unlike anyone else they've ever met in this world more bizarre more bizarre yet this stranger claimed to not be of this world but offers to show Oliver in Lily his own can Oliver and Lily trust this compelling stranger and if the stranger is telling the truth what does this mean for everything that Oliver and Lily know to be true and this is a picture of their original illustration on the left hand side and what their published cover looks like on the right hand
116side so next you are going to introduce and then next up is L Roku next we're gonna go roko is gonna go next okay so hi my name is Roku I'm 9 years old and I wrote a book when I started did I felt good about it but I was scared it might not be published so I tried my best I decided to accept the a challenge because I made a promise to stand during his presentation my book is called don't look at me it's about a monkey who is really shy about people looking at him at the zoo and he runs away uh with his friend penguin I chose this because I I like animals and I was new at Monarch and I was shy the hardest part was right wrting the words for
117my actual story to work through this I got help from my family I learned that a good story has flow has a flow what I discovered about myself while my book is make while making my book is that even though it was difficult a difficult project I was determined to finish the book last spring something amazing happened I was invited to Atlanta for my book unveiling I I even got to uh be a guest author on YouTube show on a YouTube show called The very airy Library it was so exciting to visit another part of the United States that i' never even been to and be honored for my book now that I'm an author I feel special about my book and accomplishment I want to write another book next I hope my publishing Journey
118shows you that kids can participate in Stan project and make their own books thank you next up is L hello my name is Lea and I'm excited to share my journey of becoming a published author at just 12 when I first heard about the writing contest I was thrilled to have the opportunity to share my writing and pursue my dream of becoming an author my book is called Zenovia and it is about a kingdom where everyone is born with a mark to determine if they are good or evil however the main character Blair is Bor with both marks Blair grew up in a small rural town and faces discrimination prompting her to embark on a journey to prove that she is an evil in the end she discovers more about herself and a kingdom than
119she ever thought possible I chose this topic because it reflects the complexities of identity identity and the struggle against stereotypes during the writing proc I struggled to stay focused and keep writing but with the support of my parents peers and teachers I persevered this experience has shown me that being a leader takes determination and willingness to put in hard work much more than people often realize this past fall my book was unveiled during an assembly and I was interviewed by several news outlets now that I'm a published author I feel more confident in my writing and even more eager to continue my journey my writing Journey this experience has inspired me to work hard and continue writing and sharing my stories with the world thank you [Applause] next up is and that was Lea's original
120illustration on the left and the published illustration on the right the step tool yes definitely don't need that good evening I'm Eevee Lesley and I'm 13 years old today I'm here to share my journey of becoming a published author and the lessons I learned about leadership and Entrepreneurship along the way it all began when I heard about Stan Tucker share your story program initially I felt overwhelmed at the prospect of writing a book however I decided to do it anyway which taught me that perseverance is the key to success my book titled anomalies explores the theme of friendship and camaraderie I chose this topic because I want an experience similar to my characters and when I write I can in a way experience it through my characters this experience showed me that the that authors
121identify with their characters because some of the things I put my characters through were parallel to my own life or what I wanted from my life the writing process wasn't without challenges the most significant obstacle I faced was getting bored when writing it to overcome this I just powered through this experience reinforced the importance of completing it because I felt accomplished and realized hey I can actually do this throughout the publishing process I gained Insight on how to how difficult it is this made me realize that bringing a the this made me realize that bringing a product to final publishing require requires intense editing and revising immense cooperation between everyone involved and how difficult I am to work with now as a published author I feel a bit overwhelmed but at the same time really
122excited this accomplishment has inspired me to write more in the future I'm excited to apply these lessons as I continue to grow as an author I'm so proud of myself and happy that my book will be officially unveiled for the first time tonight and this moment means so much to me and I can't wait to see where this path takes me thank you okay so Edie has not seen the uh final published book yet and Lea and Roku are going to present it to her I'd like to face this way if that's okay so that EV can see it as she unveils it as well so Lea and Roku do you want to come up here and present this to EV I'll also put the cover up on the screen so everybody can see it
123as well right are you ready okay [Music] all right what do you think it's so pretty it's so pretty you want to show [Applause] everybody thank you so [Applause] much thank you all so much for being here tonight to share your stories and your process board members any questions for these students Kitty so I have three questions the first first question is where can we buy these books I mean seriously can we buy them where on Amazon great and the second is do you all own the copyrights to your books excellent and how many of you have agents already good for you this is very exciting Beth no questions I just want to say a huge congratulations guys that was really amazing inspiring work and all of you were so articulate and wonderful and thank
124you for sharing that tonight can I ask that we as a board get emailed the titles and and authors so that we can go find them and buy them and oh fourth question do you have copies of them in your library we do I board members aren't you glad the student moments back what a highlight we're so proud of you all what an incredible accomplishment and proud of um your school and your parents and our entire Community thanks for all that you've done and this is just the beginning so exciting to have a authors with us this evening thanks [Applause] everyone for members we are going to take a short break while we reconvene the boardroom e e e [Music] welcome back to the board meeting everybody um as we reconvene we will begin with
125the superintendence report Dr Anderson good evening next up on the agenda is the superintendent report this evening I apologize board president Raj Paul uh members of the board but if give me one moment apologize for that delay good evening everyone so we have one item for tonight's superintendent remarks uh last week bbsc had the incredible opportunity to take over the Colorado Department of education's Facebook and Instagram accounts we made to Sure highlight what what makes bbsd the place to be as you may have seen if you were able to on be on social media that day throughout the day we showcase the Innovative program sustainability initiatives and student centered experience that set our district apart from our sustainability efforts like Coline Elementary 's BC bike where kids ride to school together to Boulder mod to
126our outstanding school lunch program lot of fun getting to share our story with a Statewide audience BBC is shaping the future in education in so many ways you missed the Takeover be sure to check out the Colorado Department of Education social media accounts to see our posts it's the best their social media accounts has ever been so uh that is all I have for superintendent remarks this evening board members any questions for Dr Anderson seeing as there and on we'll be moving right along board members there is one person signed up for public participation this evening that person has since canceled so we'll move on to the next item on our agenda which is board communication board members who would like to begin Kitty so a couple of things I always look through the staff
127changes for every board meeting to see who I know is either being hired or retiring or something else and so I want to welcome Christy gordineer who was a detective with the Lewisville Police Department and she's being hired as a school safety advocate so that was nice to see and also just want to give a shout out even though they're not here anymore the Youth of the green what is it the youth the green Council I'm so proud of the those kids it is so wonderful to see how passionate students are about our climate and about what it means for our future and by adopting these new courses that they helped create we're going to be teaching kids how to think critically how to evaluate um research to know what's you know what's believable and
128what's not and with any luck we will produce a generation of leaders who will actually do the right thing and try to get us on a track where we don't destroy the world we live in so really proud of them and then the other thing is just talk a little bit about the elck meeting last night we talked about some of the things we heard about in our work session but we talked about Middle School specifically and a question that came up well it didn't come up publicly but it came up was what does the board want want from El in the future because they're not going to be um making um what is it not rub I guess rubrics for middle and high school the way they did with Elementary because they're such different
129models so it's something for the board to think about do we want them to continue and if so what do we want them to do you know it's it's a group of people who at least now have some experience in giving advice about this but that's you know that's going to be up to us to decide uh shoot I took some notes at the elra meeting and we're they're in here somewhere hang on that's not it sorry it's probably one thing so sorry for not being prepared um yeah one of the things they talked about were the programmatic challenges of smaller middle schools and that's something we're going to have to think about and also talked a little about um Eldorado and all of the um open enrollment out and um Robin talked about you
130know working with parents and trying to figure out why is this happening and what can we do and that was pretty much it did I miss something Robin that I okay that's all lenia I had the opportunity to attend athletic Review Committee and I wanted to let our community know that uh chassa has approved women's flag football as a support as a sport in our state now um what we are doing currently in bbsd is trying to understand if there are enough students who are interested in playing this Sport and so we'll see a survey go out to our student body uh either this spring or first thing next fall there are also Community organizations looking to gauge this interest so if anybody wants to be connected please feel free to email me and I'll
131connect you with the community organizations that are um really really interested in doing the women's flag football thank you Alex yeah um I just wanted to uh report out I U Been having sort of office hour coffee coffee breaks um had one last weekend and just wanted to share some of the things I heard from uh parents in the area um heard from a couple parents who were dealing with special ed identification issues children who'd had an iip then went off an iip trying to get back on it um some of it seemed to focus a lot on early literacy uh and sort of how um students with dyslexia or reading challenges fit into um our systems and as a not knowing enough of the details it sounds to me like sort of the the
132things that become frustrating around getting from tier one to tier two uh services and an mtss system and understanding what support and services are there for students that don't end up with an IEP um but from the parents perspective I just like to share I hear them talking about the frustration that comes with trying to figure out how to get the right services for your kid and in in both cases people talked about the assessment stuff that they do on their own which for me just continues to raise both like okay people feel like they need to do that and then when they do we have Equity access issues for who's able to do that how do we incorporate those into our process and at the same time sort of honor the parents frustration um
133I just think uh it's remains an issue a point I know we're making great strides in our focus is on early literacy uh the adoption of you know Dibbles as an assessment system should help a lot on that and then our tier one teachers will need help but I just want to say that that that motion it it does show up in how what parents end up feeling like they need to talk about and their frustrations what they're doing for their kids and and I think it's great that we're making progress and I would just like us to redouble our effort to figure out how we affect tier one instruction in a way that um kids that are uh might end up being identified for an IEP or um needing help with literacy are getting
134that support and ultimately I would say as a district uh I mean I think as long as we have an institution like Hillside um uh offering services to people that can afford it um for early literacy that we um are missing an opportunity especially in a world of declining enrollment to not have our competing program and to the extent that our schools have competing programs we're missing an opportunity by not making sure people feel like they know how to access them or advertising that they're there so I'm I'm interested in continuing to have the discussion I think part of it is a followup to the work we've done with our neurod Divergent policy um but trying to figure out how we as a district can um make our when parents are noticing that their kid
135is behind in their reading that like they're feeling like we're being responsive and that we have options and systems that can help them and that those options and systems aren't um requiring families to spend a bunch of money in order to you know access more services so it was an intense discussion and I just wanted to share it with the group I really appreciate uh the input I I get at those office hours my next one will be March 26th 4 to 6 at Trident Cafe if you want to join um uh I also wanted to share um one piece of uh response I had today um I'm I'm excited about the way the changes we made to our graduation requirements um and in particular I think it was useful that we changed the waiver
136process for PE to make it more permissive and encouraging of support um I just want to make sure that our athletic directors and the folks graning those waivers are on board with what the new policy says so that uh for example let's say a student is engaged in a serious dance class that they are able as able to get a waiver for that as someone who's in a competitive volleyball uh Club because I think our our policy was pretty clear on that and I think it would be great if we could get our ads on board with the new policy bmer was just wanted to share I had the opportunity to go to the dck meeting last last week um and it was the first of my information to our existing community group sessions about
137the upcoming School Board elections as you all know very well I get in this space um and I wear my hats very seriously and I can be president business um when I'm showing up as board president and so I appreciate Dr Anderson bringing in the it's really fun to be on the school board because that felt like an opinion and I didn't know if we all felt it was fun so I didn't really emphasize that but when I'm at Community Leadership Academy this week on Friday I will really try to level that up if it if it's okay with the board um be a little bit less serious and factual when I show up um letting everybody know that there is a school board election coming up in 2025 November on that regular ballot and
138there are three um seats that will be up in districts B and F so started that one um I think feels like there was just an election and so people are like another election uh but otherwise feedback was good so I will continue to do those out in the community and then we will have on that April 10th um anybody that wants to come to us we can talk about what it means to be a Schoolboard member so I just wanted to share that looks like that concludes board member comment for this evening so we will move on to our information item on the agenda we have a few this evening actually the first of which is cell phone policy implementation update Dr Anderson would you like to do the introductions thank you board president
139Raj Paul board members excited um to give the board an update uh this evening on um cell phone policy implementation just as a reminder board members and to the public uh we set a policy last last fall that got implemented at the beginning of this school year at all of our high schools and to kick us off this evening to give us an update is our assistant superintendent of schools Robin Fernandez Robin take it away good evening president Raja members of the board and Dr Anderson we are happy to be here this evening to share with you an update about how it's going in our high schools with the implementation of our new cell phone policy to that end I am joined this evening by principal Carlin Carol from centaura high school and ginger Ramsey
140principal of Broomfield high school and they will share with you both their celebrations that they have been observing at both of their schools as well as what are the areas that they're still working through as they are implementing the new policy this semester as a reminder for the public policy jrct was passed by the board on November 19th the revised policy on cell phones and other personal devices in schools requires that all schools PK through 12th grade have also students with cell phones or other personal devices off and away for the day during the school day while on school grounds so while our elementary schools our middle schools and our PKA schools have already had this practice in place but the new cell phone policy is different than previous practice at our high schools so
141this is new to these environments this semester as our High School principles will share with you in a moment the approach has to implementation has been twofold one to reduce the distraction and the well documented downsides of the use of cell phones and personal technology by our students but also to help facilitate interactions among students and to help build relationships between students and adults and so with that I'm going to hand it off to Ginger Ramsey good evening president Raj Paul members of the board and Dr Anderson I appreciate the time tonight to to share with you an update on our progress with a new cell phone policy at Broomfield High our Focus for the month of January was to talk with and listen to students as they learned about this new policy and you
142can just imagine how they reacted some of them my students though willingly shared their concerns and ideas with me our Focus was on creating new opportunities for students to engage in rather than being on their phones in all conversations our Focus was on the positive aspects and how students could be involved with the process parents were invited to two different informal meetings to discuss the policy and how it would work during January phones were collected from students in classrooms beginning on February 3rd we began collecting phones from students in common places open periods lunch times and Etc I would like to highlight some initial celebrations I have seen an increase in student conversations during open periods students are using free time to get class workk completed Chromebooks are more visible and in checking many of
143them are really working on their homework and not playing games students are more engaged in classroom discussions students are sharing activi ities with each other pingpong games puzzles coloring and a lot of other opportunities they are enjoying playing a little bit they sometimes say it's recess for them we continue to talk to students about additional options and we are building positive relationships between students and administrators because if we take their phones they get to see and talk to an administrator at the end of the day and here is some of our kids playing pingpong whoops who would think that high school students would love playing Jinga in the cafeteria students asked for a pingpong table and very quickly we purchased a brand new and for their use initially I thought students would turn in their
144phones to get the paddles to play but instead we have worked on the honor System and have had no issues the table is busy all day long during free periods the cart that you see below our Broomfield uh mascot there is our teacher librarian quickly found activities for students to engage in during off periods in the library so much fun is going in going going on in our library that we are now needing to find additional quiet places for students to study I would like to now turn the presentation over to my colleague Carl and Carol good evening president Raj Paul members of the board and Dr Anderson thank you for allowing me to speak about the many celebrations and increasing connections that I've seen Blossom these past two months at CHS back in the
145fall when the policy passed I got to work I bought a ton of chocolate and I stood in the cafeteria with a sign that said answer these questions for chocolate I had two large Post-it pads that read what do you need from us and what can we provide what do you want my students came and droves and asked for many things but three main things stood out they needed support in connecting they needed to be trusted and they wanted to play together I put together a cell phones needs wish list and shared it with Dr Anderson and Dr Anderson was Swift in his commitment to support and I was able to intentionally prepare my school my staff my community and my students for January's implementation of the policy we began the work on a student
146center that would be complete with air hockey foosball an assortment of games movies and pingpong I.E opportunities for connection this slide is the representation of that work and we showcase it weekly on our monitors students create these slides the greatest key to this shift has been allowing students to be a part of and help lead it for instance the Student Center was designed by student council and the implementation process was designed in collaboration with their input and the input of students I continually check in with them to gauge how we're doing here is some of the feedback on the slide from a survey that I conducted to gauge the temperature initially when we were talking about how to implement it my students asked for an opportunity to show up they didn't want a topown approach
147they stated that if we could remind them at first it would give them to the opportunity to build new habits then they stated if they had games scrimmages movies and other interactive activities they would be able to make the transition we decided as a team that we would give them a grace period meaning we would enforce the policy through reminders in Phase One phones are still not allowed but we don't we won't confiscate we just won't confiscate until the end of January to give them time to form new habits and show up in phase two we would take the phone for a day and that would further build the stamina around building better habits and I know that my other High School colleagues are doing the same in the manner by which it makes the
148most sense in their communities ultimately we are celebrating week eight of the policy and confiscate less than 20 phones a day just let that sit out of a545 students less than 20 a day what I have seen is an increase instead of Joy play and most importantly connection I have seen new friendships form in front of my eyes in fact it's often so loud in the student center and cafeteria during lunch that I can't hear myself think I had forgotten what that sounds like what free play sounds like to truly gauge the impact on the instructional environment and climate I knew I needed the words from the front lines of Education I didn't want to speak for my teachers so I sent out a survey to try to gra gather some quantitative and qualitative data
149the survey asked about engagement Focus collaboration community and achievement on slide nine I share with you two of the survey questions that I posed to teachers one on the focus in the instructional environment and one on the climate of the school and Community as you can see teachers are seeing a substantial impact to the school environment in both places the increase is echoed in collaboration engagement and compliance the jury is still out on achievement impact as they want a semester but initial data demonstrates a strong percentage of positive feedback the anecdotal feedback here demonstrate that this is the right work despite it being a heavy lift I'm going to turn this back over to Ginger thank you as High School principles here are the issues that collectively We are continuing to work through we are
150unified in our goals but the exact Approach at each site is nuanced based on the culture and the needs of each Community as principles we continue to brainstorm and problem solve collaboratively especially as we guide the work with staff students and families and determine the most effective balance between support for our students and enforcement of the policy as a group our our biggest issue is time the enforcement and monitoring of this policy creates a need for supervision and reinforcement we have developed how we can privately cue phone use for students with accommodations or who are using them for classes like Warrior TV Eagle Way news yearbook or digital art as we move forward we are thinking about next steps and determining the most effective balance between support for our students and implementation of the policy
151and with that we are happy to answer any questions that you may have thank you for that presentation we're gonna lenia and then Kitty and then Beth first I want to say thank you guys for doing the heavy lift that is some big work and I know it takes a lot to change even one teenagers have it so I'm super impressed and thank you also for including the challenges and you know I I know that we'll get through it and make our way through it and I'm glad you guys have each other as principles but thank you for including that too um and it actually kind of warmed my heart to see that you need more quiet spaces because people are actually talking to each other I really love that so thank you so the
152first thing I want to say is I wish we had had cell phones to ban when I was in high school and we would have had fun cool things to do at lunchtime instead of standing around in groups and talking but I want to Echo Lan's thanks I'm so pleased to see how well it's going at such an early time in the process and that and looks like we've seen two examples of doing things differently but getting a good outcome at first I was concerned if we didn't tell the schools you know you have to have these packets or whatever that it would be hard but you're I'm glad to be wrong about that um yeah I think that was all I wanted to say I'm just really pleased and even if it didn't impact
153academics which I think it will the benefit for our students is clearly being shown right away in terms of their ability to social with one another and communicate face to face and use actual words and not acronyms and initialisms so thank you so much for sharing and it is a good day to be an eagle I'm gonna say more of the same thank you all so much for your your heavy lift it has been quite the lift I am just want to commend you both and the other um building leaders on your leadership and your um sensitivity to what your different communities needed in making this very uh big implementation change um and I am a little curious there's so much to celebrate I feel like you guys are on the right side of History
154doing all the right things I'm so happy about that um which are there student populations that are having a harder time with this change um drawing from some of my professional experiences I'm wondering if students with special needs or students on 504s some of the Nuance in the in um not having access to cell phones that has that been harder and has there been a population that's had more trouble with it and how's that going sure I I can say just globally first before Carlin jumps in that we've been having ongoing conversations with our high schools both when we were in the planning stages for implementation and now just to progress monitor how the implementation is going what types of support do they need from us what are the the challenges that they are working
155through every day and to your question uh one one interesting challenge that they are supporting students with is there are students who have had the habit of listening to music on cell phones um students who may find that beneficial due to anxiety or you know just other types of stresses at school and so helping to work to figure out how how to function within the policy but also still supporting students with those needs is that's what I would oh okay good Alex um yeah I want to reiterate what everyone else has said that this is really gratifying to hear and thank you for this work and it's good to see the students stepping up um you know and into the opportunity that's there uh I'm super excited to continue to learn um how this goes
156for the rest of the year and and really excited also to see the effort to gather that information from you know the students and staff so we can keep on tweaking I guess one the question I have for the high school level is um is there is there something we can do at the district level that would be additional support that doesn't cost a lot but is there anything else you need that will help you be more successful in you know in the next 12 months at this um no um I feel like we have been incredibly supported um when the students came forward and my staff came forward and parents came forward um I shared that with the district and I felt like it was very Swift and very supportive it's time time is
157time is what we're working through here and um building stamina around the change pretty soon this will be the norm and so it's it's again a heavy lift now um and and it's time but I I feel that the space to talk the opportunity for us to work together the support has been pretty substantial so uh this is a question for Robin I guess uh I remember talking to the new principal at Southern Hills early in the year who had made a transition from sort of mixed enforcement to a real enforcement of the middle school policy and I'm wondering are we seeing other degrees of you know implementation with higher Fidelity into the middle schools going through similar transitions yes you have a good point that despite the fact that we have consistently believed that
158off and way for the day is the best approach for our students and we've talked about this a lot specifically developmentally for our middle school students but you are right there has been a Continuum of of enforcement of that belief and so as we have moved forward with our high schools we've also had increased conversations among colleagues at both the elementary and middle level middle level being of course far more challenging than Elementary so we have been consistently talking about what that looks like for them and they support one another in the same way that the High School principles support one another in being thought partners and problem solving and how to make it maybe not fun but engaging and understandable to students about the why behind why this is necessary so thank you for
159the question Jason and then Jorge um yeah I don't have a whole lot more to add to what others said I'm just really this is the kind this is the report I was hoping we'd get after six months or a year but to have this report at two months in is really a testament to the work you all did I think you know when you read about this happening in other places in the country and the challenges it's more because they've approached it from a punitive way and the way that you talk about this being fun and trusting students and asking for their feedback you know I think that really validates this approach and that you know you've taken 20 phones out of 1500 kids and and so uh really grateful to you all and
160The District staff for making this you know about as seamless and smooth as possible given the magnitude of the change for kids um and just I'm I'm just really grateful to be you know part of a district that approaches it in a way like this that you know sets up ping pong tables and D Jenga blocks instead of you know detention for having your phone out and so thank you for uh to you all and to Dr Anderson's leadership for you know this roll out I know was a lot of time but I think these this you know anecdotal report and hopefully it's the same in other places other schools you know kind of validates you know the decision we all made uh on this and so thanks for for everything you've done thank you
161this is very promising and and I also want to say I appreciate your focus on kind of culture change around cell phones rather than petitiveness has kind of been mentioned and it's great to see this at the same time that we're seeing strong declines in terms of our punitive practices across the board so keeping those two Trends together is amazing this question is probably less um not just about the cell phones but more your goal your point two right goal building culture of belonging I'd like to hear a little bit more of that because I think that speaks to so many different things that we care about in mental health and Community engagement with our students kind of what you're referring to with that and kind of what are your thoughts as you go in
162that direction thank you for that question I think I think it's uh it's so exciting for me it's uh building the relationships with students it it's sitting down and talking with them it's asking them what they're doing it's having them explain to me but it's not just me out in the hall it's teachers out in the hall it's my campus security we've worked very closely with our our campus security to build the positive relationships not the the punitive because that's the one thing I don't uh I have a model up at at bronfield we're not going to get into a battle with a kid we can have a good conversation we can agree to disagree and we will follow the policy but we're not going to be disrespectful and once kids see that once students
163see that then they're willing to come and work side by side with us is what I've seen um I'll go last I I just appreciate the intentionality r phasing in this policy and really doubling down on the element of trust trusting kids to make the right decisions we saw tonight during the superintendent enroll and during our student moment like we see time and time again we have amazing students here in bbsd and when we trust them to make the best decisions for them and their Community they rise to those challenges so I just really want to elevate that um I think that's really an important aspect I am curious to know I high school's got some money to literally play with here are there have high schools spent like the in allocations that were made
164for these fun things like game tables has everybody has all high schools taken advantage of that opportunity and purchased fun things for their students to do that's a great uh question line item by line item I'm not sure exactly who has spent uh what but there has been a lot of conversation among principles uh both about what they are hearing from their students in their schools and wanting to pay pay special attention again to what is resonating with the students in each individual Community because what we know for sure about bbsd and what we love about bbsd is that every Community is slightly different and being able to respond to those needs and those wishes to know what's going to work for our students in our diff in our different communities has been very important
165but we have had a lot of conversation about do you have coloring books and markers what what about puzzles is it just Jenga is it just life-size Jenga are you going to get a new ping pong table or a used one how are we going to do that so in what way should we we approach our budgetary expenditures so uh to the extent that I am not sure that every school has exhausted their entire budget that they were initially allocated I know that it has been both fun and intentional to approach uh providing these opportunities for students thank you Dr Anderson I saw your hand come up just a few things first and foremost I can't thank our high school administrators enough I spent um two years as a high school dean three years as
166a high school assistant principal eight years as a high school principal and I know it is because of the attitude and effort of all of those administrators and our teachers if our teachers weren't doing a good job this would fall apart I want to make sure that we recogn recn that teachers have played a big role in this um and just putting our best foot forward and so just hats off to to our principles our High School principles are incredible um we're so lucky to have them and uh and all of our administrators and teachers the second thing I'd love to point out to you board members is this result is I think um evidence of a process that we use that works right this was an idea that came up then we prioritized the
167idea then we talked about the idea and the board set a policy set some expectations for implementation gave staff the space to implement that in a way that made sense and we saw success and so I think that you know sometimes folks don't understand how how boards work and how ideas from the board actually get implemented into policy and then implemented into school and this was a really hard thing to do but I just think that it highlights that the process that we have and that we followed that we've committed to as a governance Team Works incredibly well I'm just thankful to this board for honoring that process following that process and giving staff and giving your superintendent the space to make these things work on a timeline that that um it makes sure that
168we're successful so I just want to thank thank you for that board members any further questions thank you all for presenting to us tonight our next information item this evening board members are exhibits jo-1 and jo-2 to board policy Jo Student Records we Kathleen Sullivan will be presenting this item this evening good even board members so this is just an update that is coming to you now because we're getting ready for registration for next year and we want to make sure that we're really clear when we look at the family education rats Privacy Act there are really two types of opt out that families um are given by law one is to not have directory information shared that's the sort of thing you would see in a yearbook or maybe an athletic event sort of
169details of a student who's participating and then the other type of opt out comes into play for our secondary students when we look at sharing information with military recruiters which is required by law and also sharing information with colleges and employers so the two exhibits you have are just new forms that we will be using um as part of the upcoming registration cyle so they will work for next year and you've got a kindergarten through or prek through 8ighth grade version and then the high school version so that we pick up that additional uh military employer College information Kitty um I'm wondering because this was possible in the past if a parent can opt out of pictures but not out of the directory so I know there was an option where you know we're not
170going to take your kids picture we're not going to put on the website We're Not Gonna you know use it for anything else but I don't see that on here that's right we had to really clean up some of this area with our student population the way we need to manage these opt outs um we aren't able to maybe slice as narrowly as we used to so that directory information out will opt out of media contacts and all of that as is explained on the exhibit yeah I find that just a little bit concerning just because if a parent who was like me who under understands with my background in sexual abuse how images found online can be used for all kinds of Nefarious purposes but that they would have to opt out of everything
171to protect their child from having their photos available so and then I had another question as well so you were saying the law requires us to share information with the military so how does how do we keep universities military and employers from contacting students do the does the contact from them always go through the school district so those are two separate questions so the contact from colleges that we're talking about here is is bbsd sharing that information with colleges or employers that's what we're talking about it won't necessarily stop the Flyers that come to your home as you will learn if you haven't had College found age kids yet um so this really just restricts the district's ability to share the information that we have with those targeted groups so but I thought you said
172by law we have to share with the military just the law sets up the um the yes it requires us to share information with the military unless a family opts out oh okay I see so because this is saying communication's from so it made me it made me think okay how do we keep the military from contacting our children or anybody else the military comes to us and they ask for list of students and so this would prevent us from sharing that information with the military and then about the pictures is there any way I would be happy to take that uh discussion back board member Sergeant we were we had an awful lot of discussion about this and in order to implement opt outs with Fidelity we have to make sure that it is
173really operationally possible so I am happy to look at that issue again but my understanding is that when we looked at it it really was sharing directory information means that that would include like the school photo and um it's a yes or no box for infinite campus thank you where I've got kids in the district it's a little embarrassing to ask this but so birth date information is available in the directory and who has access ACC to that is something I should have known so that birth date is included in that definition of directory information you would typically see it when you talk about an athlete and you're talking about age you would typically see it in that context but this is for any student correct in PK that's right that is in the board's
174policy board policy Jo and board policy j-r that address student records and that's where these exhibits are attaching candidly I had hoped to have board policy Jo and j-r in Redline form for the board to accompany these exhibits but with the volume of board policy that the board is undertaking these days um we were really only with the time constraints able to get you the exhibits at this point I have a question on the rationale for needing to reopt out every year whether it's for this or some of the other things like students can opt out of Health screeners but if you have a reason to do so you have to opt out every year so question around um is there an could somebody elect to opt out for the entirety of the duration for
175any of these exhibits question number one question number two the way I read this is somebody has to print this or go to scho and collect this fill it out by hand sign it bring it back or email a PDF back which isn't the most convenient in this day and age is there an opportunity for an electronic opt out or does it have to be on a paper with a little bit of back and forth we are we are absolutely working on the digital opt out the next the plan would be to include this as accessible in the Infinite Campus Parent progam portal and it would be completed there that is like any like a lot of things a a longer term project it's just going to take a little time um this is actually
176an improvement from where we've been in that these forms at least reflect current law we've had a variety of forms that were used for this purpose and we're attempting to extinguish all of those with the board's adoption of something new so baby steps there more to come and I would just say in the particular in the high school version of the opt out hor Point I've never actually seen a birthday date listed on directories for my younger ones but um I I appreciate the different call outs for so you could opt out of one and not the other so I appreciate how clear clear that is even if for now it is um paper pen format board members any other questions or comments for Kathleen before between now and this coming back to us again
177so for clarity board president Raj Paul with an exhibit it typically is shown to the board as information and does not come back but if based on the board's discussion tonight the board would like to see it again with the policy that'd be fine apologies for that no I think it's fine we don't need to see that one again take that one off your list seeing as there no are no further questions or um comments on this we will move on to our final information item this evening which is our legislative update Dr Anderson I'll turn it back to you thank you board president Raj Paul board members um all about the budget it's all about the money and uh I will say that there is uh lots of conversations happening at the capital uh
178you know the I believe that the March revenue forecast comes out next week which will be what the budget's finalized on uh did have a conversation with the speaker yesterday they are considering other options besides 1448 uh implemented as is uh the governor's proposal and the old Finance formula with the new 35 million for rurals and so they're they're looking and contemplating other options and opport unities I shared with the speaker um a couple of reminders that number one that we uh would not have moved from a pose on 1448 if it weren't for the trigger language because we did not feel like the money was there and the money was not there um you know she cited a couple of um of things that that weren't anticipated the uh the $350 million approved in
179the ball Initiative for police and the increased Medicaid fund uh um as things that that weren't anticipated um I shared my skepticism that that any model that goes past one year that we would have any confidence in that given the challenges uh you know to try to projects out six years uh is I think is a one year at a time thing and uh and that we are continuing to look at what it is is being proposed so we have the opportunity to weigh in do think that cea case casby are still under the impression of you said you were going to do 1448 with all the money go ahead and do it and don't balance the budget um any other way uh so um I do think that there's going to be more conversation
180around what's happening and uh uh it's it's still pretty fuzzy and and I think there's some some some disagreement down at the legislature on how to move forward with this and so I will continue to stay engaged and continue to be at the table continue to provide our thoughtful input and continue to stick up for the kids and uh and our community uh throughout this process and anyone else who tries to talk to me about anything else in regards to bills or whatnot I just tell them to go back to work on the budget uh there there are some bills that are coming our way folks are wanting feedback input anything with a fiscal note as an immediate no for us um because the budget is the thing that needs to be uh be needs
181to be really focused on and I will say board members I had the opportunity to go to asa's National Conference on education last week uh was honored to present um along with ERS um and um and at counil on small school optimization and share some of the strategies and tactics that we've used to as we faced a cining enrollment was well attended and and well received and and the unfortunately the the temperature of the entire conference was pretty depressed uh the uncertainty what's happening within communities some of the stories that I heard on retaliation through the removal of Grants from some big systems because of things board members said or other things that happened were incredibly concerning and the willingness for this you know for the federal Administration this Administration to take Swift action without
182consideration of consequence um and and it's all about money right taking money eliminating grants um I know of of a superintendent who lost a $75 million Grant uh uh you know the week after uh something might have been said at a board meeting so it is there there is a lot of fear I think nationally um even though I do think that there is a lot of consensus around this idea that you gotta let this is you gonna let these things play out in the courts right the things that are coming out that are being challenged I think last I saw there's 75 lawsuits currently um and so when I do go to ASA and I was part of our large countywide Suburban system Consortium which is the group that I've I've shared with this
183board that's a it's a group of of 25 to 30 school districts High achieving committed to the things that we're committed to supporting all students Equity um we do get very good Federal updates and very good sense of what's Happening across the country it's it's an excellent group I'm proud to be a part of it I'm glad that our District's a part of it so uh we're staying in tune at the federal level I think that uh that that um but I also did share that with the speaker that you know to the ENT that you start messing with our money what are you going to do if they start messing with Title One or title two or uh you know those are big chunks of money right idea what's going to happen to idea
184right we're already underfunded so I just think that there's a ton of concern across the country around what's happening a bit of um folks really just kind of need to catch their breath a little bit um but that's what is happening on the state and federal level the budget stuff is not pretty and it continues to be our big fight um we did take an opposition to a bill on the no the other one the one that we talked about board members that would require the FFA and it had a fiscal note we took an opposition position on that one recently um blue Rising has recently reached out I emailed you all a couple bills that they're curious about what whether or not we would be willing to weigh in in part because we supported
185related bills in the past um going tricky because some of them have either fiscal notes or they decrease Revenue because they're decreasing sale of medical marijuana products and cocy Bin products to kids and so um those two four bills kind of come in two buckets Senate Bill 86 protections of for users of social media and House Bill 1287 social media tools for minors and parents 86 has zero fiscal note um and 1287 has about $150,000 fiscal note those two dovetail House Bill 1136 that was ran last year by Judy Ma and healthier Colorado um putting back some of the things that were taken out at that time so I just wanted to bring board members attention to those too and then the other two um Cel 76 which is being run by our members of
186our delegation who are great advocates for K education but the um concerning the rights of regulation of potentially intoxicating substances that one the goal there is to create consistency in labeling and in dosage of products and to prohibit concentrated psilocybin products um fears around once those hit the market that the concentrated version of the products will become available much like the concentrated THC products have become available that one um has a significant fiscal note in part because they're trying to limit dosage in products to people under the age of 25 and people under the age of 25 are the biggest consumers of those products um so that one on the revenue side is significant and that has been this District's La standing worry about Sin taxes um I think it's going to be hard for
187members of the legislature to say no to that one given the $1.2 billion shortfall so we're been asked for some help on that and then help in opposing House Bill 129 which is marijuana it's a marijuana regulation bill that would actually ease up on the Regulatory and over oversight process of sale of marijuana products which should ultimately make it easier probably for young people to access those products this one has a negative fiscal note so it'll make the budget better because if you're spending less money on regulation and more people can purchase well the state is generating more income and so I just wanted to bring those forward for our friends at Blue rising and because they do fall under our legislative bucket around student safety and well-being um but it's this gray area where
188there are fiscal notes and we've been taking a firm stand on that in other areas so I just wanted to um see if we have any thoughts on those Kitty so I a question on 129 the marijuana regulations do they have a ration I mean I haven't looked at it so they always say IR rationale but is it really to increase revenue or is that just a happy consequence I think it might be a happy consequence it's it's decreasing the regulations around it which if you so it might be a happy consequence I don't know if it's with the intention so what do you know what their rationale is for decreasing regulations I can pull it up in the bill yeah they can sell they can sell more products but Alex um given Dr Anderson's
189leadership on the education accountability task force um I see the fiscal note for House Bill 1278 which is the one putatively putting in the recommendations from the task force is at 5.7 million are we taking a position on House Bill 1278 so I I know that that that um that we have said yes that we're going to support the accountability bill um as as a longstanding I think priority of of this board especially as I've served um I served on uh that um on that task force I I just just just to clarify my comments on fiscal notes and the comments that I made I I think that you know things that that people are cooking up as new ideas that cost more money those things that we've just said no I think that long-standing
190priorities around accountability around you know this idea that that that we've taken a hard stance on making sure that we protect kids in our community from high potency THC and that you know we've advocated for more regulation not less regulation and that these things make sense and you know a fiscal note in the sense that we're going to be reducing the number of high potency THC products that young kids purchase uh so so I just want to clarify my comments that it's that that that uh that what I was sharing was basically when people are showing up hey I've got this new idea will you support it it cost money those hard no things that are longstanding values of the district uh and of this board I certainly um we We are continuing to support
191so thanks for that for that question and I apologize for maybe the flippant way in which I answered the no new money I'm got I'm saying not everything that's that's not accurate valenia I think we have to use common sense on these social media and weed bills so I that's my two cents that's really where I land on these ones too and I I think we it's defensible not that we're just being flipping we're not just saying no across the board but we're really defending um our choices based on our priorities that we set in those four big buckets and our past advocacy and efforts I think these [Music] are opposing the one and supporting the other three have the long-term potential of improving outcomes for our kiddos and I think that's kind of where
192we fall there you know some of the other ones not necessarily having a significant impact on our kiddos maybe creating unnecessary work for no good reason and and so fiscal notice side there are ways we can defend and not but um I just did want to we are all aware that the budget is tight so not to remove that from the consideration so if it's okay we'll move forward with those um those bills any other bills that folks have their eye on or want to talk about Mia did you you said we actively oppose the fafo one Alex um and just one more question on a federal level if uh if the government shuts down in three days at the federal level is there any impact on us or is are we all good have
193to get back to you on that uh don't know that all good would be would be my response um to the extent that uh you know that that that there could be some impact probably on our school food program uh potentially um you know some of our uh other resources uh we can get you an update on that in news and notes on Friday and board members I just wanted to add for those four bills um I just brought up some of them are coming up this their calendared for this week if anybody's interested in providing comment on those you can get in touch with blue folks from Blue rising or um um sign up otherwis okay looks like that's all we have for legislative update board members so we will be moving on to
194action items consent grouping 9.1 Personnel items 9.2 approval of minutes February 25th 2025 9.3 acceptance of donations Monarch High School 9.4 amendment number two for construction at Boulder Tech 9.5 Amendment for in4 Erp contract 9.6 approval of new courses courses renaming 9.7 contract with amplifi education 9.8 final site contract Amendment 9.9 new V High School abatement change order 9.10 purchase order for bearcom are there any items board members would like to pull from consent grouping seeing as there are none is there a motion to approve the items moved by Kitty seconded by Jorge board members are there any items you'd like to discuss elenia I would like to put my full support behind our contract with amplify education um we know that Dibbles is a better test than I ready and I'm so excited we're
195using it and um I would say that I have had no less than five people from our literacy Community contact me to make sure that we know that we are doing the right thing so I'm very very happy happy to support this and I'm happy to see that it's a five-year contract Beth I just want to ditto that I had folks reach out as well and I'm happy to see that we're doing this and moving forward for the Long Haul Alex dito number three on that and nice connection to our early childhood stuff as well I also uh I would just like to note in the administrative retirements as Jonathan dings is retiring later this year and i' just like to give him my personal thanks for his long years of service and incredible amount
196of attention and detail uh for the community of Boulder uh there's really not anybody who's been behind um the use of data in this District more than Jonathan and we owe him a great debt uh for his contributions to our community so wish him well on his retirement for m just want to bring up item 9.6 um on the course approval the new course titling and course approval only because there some inconsistencies in the language that reference policy ikc according to board policy ikc um only there are only certain classes that can be considered weighted and new courses for them to be considered weighted are those for which a student may earn an industry certification credit or credit the post-secondary level so apib of the nature in the listing of courses two music classes are
197listed as new and are also considered weighted my understanding is that they are have a new title they are not necessarily a new course so that's not necessarily in conflict with board policy um and when the policy was last updated it grandfathered in all previously weighted courses and courses with auditions had been previously waved and grandfathered in so language is not clear as clear as I was would love it to be and I just for our public if I would like us to follow board policy we will follow board policy um so it's not that we're changing practice it's just how the words appear in this page aren't necessarily um clear so I just wanted to bring that to everybody's attention lenia yeah why shall we not fix the words then I mean we could
198I I mean so that was one thing I if it was an easy edit just or if there was a way to change that section one proposed course changes to strike um that will now be weighted as previously waited and then the new to new for Wind Ensemble and percussion it could if we could just make minor minor tweaks and pass these along I'd be happy with that we can do that we can update that attachment to make sure it's perfectly clear that it was consistent with board policy and make sure that the corrected attachment is with the minutes great Kitty so I have two questions one is a followup on your comments you said it refers to ikc and yes where how where am I missing it because I'm scrolling through the document and
199I don't see a reference to it's not doesn't call out the policy but it talks about um it's just okay there we have a court a BBC policy on weai grades the weighted grade policy title is ikc knowing what that policy you policy back and forth it was just a um a flag for me it doesn't doesn't say it specifically well good I'm glad I didn't miss it but I I have an actual question which is at the very end of the section oh it's the one about cyber security and it says bbsd has been accepted into the pilots and I don't know what that is okay um so from the back Dr de Cruz said she'll have to get more information on that okay because it almost looked like maybe this was cut off
200because there is no period after the word Pilots but I would be interested in knowing what that is I think if you click on the link it takes you to a website that it's a AP career Kickstarter cyber security Pilots it's a pilot program so I think that's it's part of the title or part of the description I guess so maybe some clean ups but um not changing the nature of this document in a way that we would pull it from consent any other items from consent grouping board members that we would like to discuss seeing as are none Laura can you please call the RO Chavez yes medler yes nisn yes Quin Lena yes Raj Paul yes Sergeant yes anger yes motion passes we'll now move on to the policy action items consent grouping
201portion of this evening's agenda 11.1 adoption of board policy ebce school closings and delays 11.2 adoption of revised board policy ecaf use of audio and V video monitoring 11.3 adoption of revised board policy F FB facility goals and planning 11.4 adoption of revised board policies FF naming of facilities 11.5 retirement of board policies EB c-r school closings and delays retirement sorry 11.6 retirement of board policy EC a-r video surveillance procedures 11.7 retirement of board policy FC facilities capitalization program 11.8 retirement of e FEA educational special specifications 11.9 retirement of FG board inspection and acceptance of new facilities are there any items board members would like to pull from consent grouping seeing as there are none I would need a motion to approve the list before discussion move by lenia seconded by Kitty board members any
202discussion on policy consent grouping Kitty yes a couple of things on ecaf and this is for Kathleen this is something I missed in the email I sent you but there is a typo in the paragraph that starts with use and it says separate superintendent of designate and obviously it means superintendent or designate but the questions I have is about keeping the videos for five days and I know it's a minimum of five days but do they get monitored before they're deleted I know that would be a lot of work and what happens if there is a concern reported after five days and the video has been deleted um It's Not Unusual I think for a student to wait a while before reporting something especially if it happened to them so the policy does set that
203minimum holding for five days um maintaining video on servers is incredibly expensive so we need to have a time limit that isn't going to break the bank and try to balance that that desire to absolutely have available the video footage that we need so typically we do if there's a significant ific an incident at a school the principal and the staff at the school can actually bookmark and preserve the video but it is important to get requests in because there there is a limit on how long we can keep it so m is that something we make um very apparent to students and parents it will be when the board adopts this policy I'm I'm imagining a kid comes home says last week this happened to me kids trying to act like it's no big
204deal parents outraged and the video is gone yes thank you for that point board board member Sergeant this will be one of the policies that we include in our student handbooks so that we make sure that families are aware of that um that time frame so that they can get that information to us thanks board members any other discussion on the policies within the consent grouping s is there nonl can you please call the role Chavez yes medler yes Nik yes Quin Lin NOA yes Raja yes Sergeant yes anger yes motion passes board members next up this evening is policy study items we have two policies to study this evening our first is board policy FM Real Property Management I'll turn it over to Kathleen for the introduction as poliy so when we studied our
205facilities or our f chapter at the last board meeting I shared that there was there was one policy that we were still considering recommending to the board so this policy we are now bringing back incorporates to or that you're seeing for the first time tonight incorporates two existing policies that we've had um and really what we're looking for is just a cohesive policy that can help us as we are requiring and potentially um no longer requiring certain facilities this is just a leaner version it also recogniz is something that we learned um in talking with outside Council which is sometimes the ordinary process for getting for um selling a facility a public facility like of the kind we would have is not necessarily a traditional sort of real estate transaction so the language that we've
206Incorporated um really modernizes that process aligns with the current market and gives us just this would be the third board policy in this chapter that would remain and this would really um replace another several that we will be able to reti lenia I noticed on the sale area that we have taken out all wording about leasing can you tell me a little bit more about that so I moved the line about leasing to the first paragraph the opening paragraph of the policy so that that final sentence says at its discretion the Board of Education May lease school property so that you retain that flexibility I just felt like it needed to go at the beginning when we were talking about the overall authority to purchase and sell and Lease property I thought it made more
207sense there no I was just G to say because we could be the less or or the less e and so that's why you would put it in the in the opening yes I appreciate that so I'll make that change before it comes back to make clear that we could both lease and rent as I might say okay I have a question a little bit more about practical matter in the um I'm thinking about this more because you talked about outside Council in the sale disposition section when the Board of Education reserves the right to reject any and all proposals offers offers or bids I appreciate that inclusion and there's nothing that would prevent us from because when I read that like we could just say no and without necessarily A a lot of evidence
208to support the no or you know there any would there be anything that would prevent us from just exercising that at will that we would maybe want to be have included in the language I think that the at in the beginning of the policy we talk about board decisions in this area need to be based upon immediate and future needs and then the best interest of the district um so I certainly could we could use that same language there so that makes it clear I think what's important in the policy is just the board's ability to reserve its right as uh as the governing body for this important set of public resources to make clear that the board can make the decision it needs to make even in the process of selling property yeah I
209wouldn't advocate for more words that's nothing I something I don't think I've ever done as advocating for a redundant language or more words I just want to make sure that there you know legally there wasn't a reason it wouldn't be a limiting factor that we should be worried about in advance I understand why we would may or may not want to sell or purchase property but like if you know we would that was all and if you see nothing in the law that would prevent us from having that that power I'm happy to leave the language as it is lenia I'm just struggling with what the second paragraph is saying I think it the second sentence is really confusing the way it's written but maybe it's just me maybe I'm having a hard time with
210red versus green I yeah the green signifies that it's been moved from a different place in policy but I'm I'm sensitive if it doesn't make sense to you that's a problem as I read it now I see why you don't like that sentence and it definitely could be a lot uh both shorter I think just more efficient and clearer it really just means and this is true of any board policy that the board has the authority to wave it the requirements of its own policies if the board sees fit to do so thank you I think it's the end of it that makes it so confusing I'm like to the right to wave is about this this and this yes it has an opening clause and then the waiver and then it yes so I
211can I can do better than that board members any other questions or thoughts on this policy I appreciate the combining different policies into one making it clearer and more relevant so thank you for your efforts on that I can point out one other thing that may be exciting to the board on page four it may have been lost there's a new paragraph that delegates to the superintendent or design the ability to do the sort of temporary easements and just logistical things that we need to do as a public entity so you won't for example be signing ditch easements so there you go that will free up some staff time since we know every dollar is counting next year seeing is there no other appear to be know other questions on this policy we will move
212on to the second policy to study this evening which is board policy kdb public access to information so as we are accelerating our policy work we have identified a few problems so this one was prioritized by staff mainly my team currently for compliance with the Colorado open records act we just have a regulation somewhere along the way this regulation and lost its umbrella policy and we were left with just a regulation and an exhibit and the regulation as you would expect since it was last looked at in 2016 just needed a lot of work um I think Beyond just the need to really talk about the Kora process this board I think has um is really navigating a new charting A New Path in terms of transparency which I tried to capture in this policy
213where you'll see we talk about school district information what are we putting out there publicly what information are we sharing as we've talked about a policy is intended to really um capture the board's philosophy and give direction so we thought it was important to add that language we've clarified and just streamlined the language around um open records act request we clarified the fees and charges language anguage a little bit and then we incorporated some language that has been in Colorado law since 2017 that provides for alternative dispute resolution around Kora request as the board knows open meetings law challenges open record act challenges can be very time consuming and very costly um we thought it made sense to access that ADR strategy which is why you see that language added Alex yeah I've I've got
214two two questions I guess on the uh on page two number one the request for public record shall be submitted via the website or in writing um why not by email too in writing seems very 1998 or something um an email would probably be what happens most of the time and be pretty reasonable so for people who can email who are digital who are electronic we need them to use our website be and not an email because it puts it into a system and a queue that multiple people then can work on and we can process it more efficiently the inwriting part was just intended to preserve access to people who may not be digital at all thank you that makes sense my second question is about the verbal requests for information um I'm not
215sure that needs to be policy either but I also uh believe that it's in our interest to respond to the media when they have questions and expecting the media to be treated uh to a core request when they have a verbal request for information that someone can give them that's appropriate to give I don't know why we would restrict that we're just tying our hands in telling our story to the media which tends to work out very badly for our story so I'm I'm not really sure why we would strike that um as long it seems like it's within the confines of what we want to share certainly it is our practice I see my friend Randy Barber was moving around the room I thought maybe you were going to talk to this one um
216we absolutely work on our relationships with our public including the media Randy has very close connections um I think the point of removing that language around verbal requests for information is it is 2025 and we get so many requests including under Kora so um we could maybe look at some other language I think the point of this policy was just what are we going to make sure our staff respond to I want to know where is that Alex Pages aren't numbered but it's uh one two three top of page four of the document on the on the red line I guess I um my my take on it having been on the other side of trying to get information from districts and talking District officials about information is that if the answer I get is
217put in a core request and do a formal uh uh request for information to information that I know staff person has and it's appropriate to share it's it's just an unne necessary burden in the transparent transaction of information with the community so I'm in favor of facilitating communication of appropriate information to the media and and others as well and making everything become an official request is frankly very officious and um leads to lots of people having to be involved in the decision where someone has a professional in your um District knows there's information knows it's appropriate thing for the public to know uh the idea of making someone put in the formal request for it is super off-putting uh when unnecessary so I realize there's a burden to that but I see no reason to
218make us more officious when we can uh communicate with the community or media other parties having been one of those other parties this is uh this seems unnecessarily off putting to me one thing I wonder about a little bit is because of um particularly the tracking of violations of this and if it's a verbal request how do we like know you don't getting into it how does that time stamp and how does that 14-day trigger and how does how do all those other things work with a verbal request where it's not documented in the same way where a form is amp um a letter will have a date on it I do so I hear the if somebody asks a question that's easy to answer that's something versus I want a lot of information and
219I'm asking you today and I haven't heard back and then the complaint goes we have no documentation so that's the part I wonder about and with media or some of those is there another policy where that aspect could live that's not not um that's not within this policy and I see Dr Anderson's hand and I see Randy Barbara heading to the mic so Dr Anderson I'll let you go first so um I guess the question would be do you even need this in board policy I think that media relations is a big part of my job it's a big chart of part of ry's job we have established great relations and very transparent relations with all of our media Outlets I think Randy is excellent and very responsive in those regards um so the intent
220is to say nobody can get any any information from US unless they go through a coral request uh Randy responds to immediate inquiries every week we share all of those with you all as a board so you know who's asking what and how we're responding and uh and I think that we managed that incredibly well uh didn't even know this was in a board policy um just felt like this was part of the duties of the superintendent and the duties of the communication office which reports directly to me uh so the intent isn't to um be able to say hey we're not telling you anything you've got to go through this big process because we're trying to stall you out to make it harder on you I just think that um it is the Evan
221flow of managing and navigating the media which you know Randy talks to student reporters he talks to news channels he talks to National media outlets and he as our District's filter is is a is able with the things that we've done to be able to process and share those things as appropriate and engage the media so um I don't know Randy if you want to add anything to that uh but from my perspective uh always better to um be honest tell the truth and be accessible uh if there's unless there's some pressing reason that we're we're unable to do so um and uh and I don't know that we ever get to a place where people that we have relationship ships with we're pushing them to core requests I think that those may come from
222external sources or folks that maybe we don't know and don't have a relationship with but I'd let Randy speak to that I agree completely and I would say that I think we're completely in alignment with your viewpoint on it um oftentimes what we use often uh you know sorry uh ultimately use uh use uh core requests for is um if they're if again if that request is uh substantial if they're looking for a lot of data and what it does for us is much like all the other requests that we get really put it into writing ask specifically what they're looking for but to your point 99% of the things that we get from the media are handled outside of core they never hit the net they never hit the policy they're we're trying to
223really make sure they've got that information right up front thank you so lenia then Kitty and then Alex again I wasn't sure um as Alex was talking about it I have to admit I really did not see that Redline part right there um this could be somebody other than media though asking for information and are we pushing people other than media to core requests when I mean I I guess I wasn't sure if that's what Alex was referring to so I just want to make sure that while I hear the me piece are if a parents calling in they're wanting to know like I um how many kids get into Peak to Peak off the weight list like something random like that do we just give them that information or like sometimes I'll see something
224like that on Cor requests so sometimes those are um uh Legacy types of requests folks are used to asking those things every year uh I think with our data dashboards and some of the things that we've done to be more transparent you know we're trying to avoid some of those things I would say that if I get I get questions all the time I can't think of one time where I said I'm not going to answer that you're gonna have to cor a request what I do is I drive them to the appropriate staff member and ask them to assist them and uh and so you know this this is just a cleanup of policy I think our practices would continue to stay the way they are we work to be responsive we work to
225engage people um but to ry's point if if somebody is has an issue right and they want a real big deep data request it's going to take substantial District time right then it it will go through a um a Coreal request uh because of the amount of time that it might go through uh and uh but if we're trying to help a parent with a problem right an issue and that's what we do right so um I think there are times that core requests are are important sometimes folks are just curious uh you know um I think that we are as transparent of a school district as you'd find in terms of the data that we've made available and and kudos to this board for pushing us to become even more transparent and so um
226I don't know that this policy revision uh does anything to to um to work against that uh and uh I I I'm very confident in the way that we engage the media and that we engage with parents and we share what we're able to share and then the information we're unable to share we say we aren't and folks are free to file core requests as as we're a public entity and we follow that process so Rob you pretty much answered my question it sounds like taking this out isn't going to change a thing and what's the point of having it in if it isn't going to change anything well you know sometimes things get in there because different boards different superintendents different times Within districts um I'm not sure why that was in there in
227the first place uh we did revi it was revised in 2016 so we haven't touched this since I've been here um I just know that it's important to be responsive to a community answer questions when you know the answers uh that's how you build a trust with people right that you just answer the questions and uh talk about you know if there's issues with the answer and uh that's that's how I've always operated since I've been superintendent here uh so hopefully this answers questions clears up any concerns that you all might have uh but if there's something there yeah what I wouldn't want I I think here's here's the thing that I'd worry about you know you you create an expectation that people just can ask somebody from information and if they don't get it
228then we violated a board policy but then you don't have anywhere like how do I manage who's asked what where I do think that that's why some of the times those we've chain of command to help and then if folks haven't gotten what they need they go up the chain of command that's one area of record course right if they're not getting the information they need um and then if they want other different information we can track our core requests this is something that we talk about weekly at our cabinet meeting we know and understand that the process has been filed and allows me to manage it um I think those are the benefits of having those systems but I would say whether it's a verbal whether it's an email or whether it is a
229Coreal request there are checks and balances that folks feel like they're not getting the information they need where they could they can um Advance their concerns if they're not what they need and then they could always file a public complaint right which is another process that we have as well policy k um I guess I just uh I support the paragraph As written so it seems like it's an articulation of what you just said so that's why I'm wondering why we're striking it um is it only is it only because that because it's in policy it's somehow exposing us to a a challenge that we wouldn't have otherwise um so in favor of all the things in the communication that could happen I'm in favor of someone answering a question from a member of the
230public when they know the answer and they know the pro answer isn't problematic or of following the chain of command I mean that's what this paragraph is all about so I'm not sure why it was struck um and I uh I would hate for it to imply that these are things we would not do by striking it and I guess I I'm in favor of striking it in part because the first if we look at the very first first two paragraphs of this document it talks about the practices to promptly honor their individual request for information so we talk about that already and then you know I also like the part where we encourage members of the public and the media to to look at our publicly available sources of information so to do that
231little bit of due diligence on your own so I think we aren't I think we're already saying you know we will provide the information like based on the type of and the extent of the information needed in a way that is prompt and if it's an easy like you ask Dr an a question it's really easy to answer he answers that if it takes some digging there's a whole there's another process I feel like I mean to me that paragraph doesn't add a great deal of value because we've spoken to a little bit of the intent of the practice in the opening paragraphs kitty yeah and I hadn't seen this because I don't like reading red lines and if there's a clean version I read it but to me this entire thing seems redundant it
232would be like passing a law that says we expect everybody to obey the law redundant you already expect that you don't need to say it again and when we're focusing on tightening things up rather than adding more words it's unnecessary if I could see and it's possible this came in because perhaps there was a problem I don't know but if there is a problem then I understand why boards would adopt policies I mean we had that whole policy about getting along with each each other that that we got rid of and that came out of some conflict but it didn't really seem necessary to have as a policy Alex uh I guess by by way of History I've when I worked for the Colorado children's campaign we worked on an issue related to trying to
233have accurate measures of high school um graduation rates and we try trying to get the state switched to four-year graduation rates and uh bbsd at the time was in favor of their cohort approach uh which sort of uh measured the percent of 12th graders that graduated that year and I was on the other side as a as other members of the public interacting with bbsd and um I found the district sometimes to be uh less than transparent in those exchanges so I I don't think it's a bad thing to reinforce good practice about openness and responsiveness when that is our position so um I'm not sure it is redundant I think this refers to practice that I would like to see BBs continue I'm excited that it does happen this way and I want to
234support let's say you're a principal and a parent asks you a question about something you know it's great to reinforce that there it's okay it's supporting the principal to answer that question so I think of this in some way as empowering language to give to Professionals for the organization to be able to exercise their professional judgment and answer questions when they get them um in real time and that's both responsive to members of the public and the media respectful of our Professionals in sharing that information and leads to the timely answer of questions so I'm I I don't see the benefit of striking it myself Kitty then lenia so I have a question Alex if this if you had only read the clean version would you feel that something was left out that people would
235feel like they perhaps couldn't just ask a question I mean you haven't just read it so it's hard to answer that but I'm saying you know that's what I would look at is does it feel complete without it and if it does then why add all this extra verbiage L then Alex maybe I could query Kathleen do Kathleen do you perceive the verbal request for information that was struck as as redundant when you look back at the first part of it do like I'm I kind of I'm trying to get a more legal perspective there I'm sorry to put you on the spot like that I found this language confusing I found this language concerning because of the general use of staff member I think that there are different levels of sophistication and understanding of
236requests and context and responses and I felt concerned about the language for that reason um I I did think that the policy language we had reflected the importance of what board me member medler is talking about because 100% it has never been communicated to anybody on this staff that stonewalling is the way to go to respond to any inquiry um and and perhaps that is new that's why I love being here with my current colleagues um but I am a little concerned that that language as as written and presented um set some members of our staff up for conversations or requests that wouldn't necessarily be appropriate to them and I am concerned that it um it establishes another level of Duty with the link which as it's currently written and by currently written I mean
237before the red line I guess um in answer to uh board member sergeants piece I actually I do think there is something missing and and it is it it's there it's admittedly there so this is not this is an issue of degree but I just uh believe that facilitating dialogue and discussion with people from the district is something parents want as a school board member when I have frustrated parents coming to me uh to give me a tell me a story or emailing with a concern often what they're dealing with is a lack of information that they got in that situation and a lack of responsiveness uh and that's why for example I have been advocating that we need an FAQ to deal with how investigations are handled and an FAQ to deal with how
238discipline is handled so that someone can answer in a timely basis a parent question about something that's really important about their kid and so if if the policy is to go find it on our website and put in a formal request then that's that's one more so I guess what I'm leaning towards would be some positive statement that nothing in this is intended to prevent staff from the district for being responsive on a timely basis to things that are appropriate so if we had some generic fallback that we should be responsive to the media public and parents requests for information and their questions I feel a lot better about losing this not faers I appreciate what Alex is saying whether it's in or whether it's out we're going to be responsive we're going to be
239operating in the same ways I I think that and you know I'd Wonder Alex when you were having issues if this was even in there and the folks weren't doing it anyways right like so to the extent that I think that this is a public statement on being responsive this sure I I understand that uh you know to the extent that it it creates confusion I mean I don't I haven't had one person in my seven years being here site cut policy kdb right nor have I taken action against any employee because of a violation of kdb right I view those as administrative functions as your sole employee who leads this District who leads with the vision of this team that I am a part of that this is how we're going to be in
240this is who we're going to be want to keep it in fine want to take it out F like like that's who we're going to be as long as I'm your superintendent so board members any other questions or comments on this policy I see L did we give Kathleen direction that she is confident on that would be my question yes if I may the the feedback I'm going for would be I would would the final version that we get still strike the verbal paragraph but have some generic statement about the responsiveness as appropriate which I would totally support which is what I'm pushing for that's the direction I heard that's the head nodding I observed to not ask that question myself um well seeing there are no further questions or comments on that policy kdb
241see ex policy is exciting once you know the alphabet soup I mean guys pretty soon you'll be quoting board policy language and other things um our last item for this evening is future agenda requests board members um it's a time where we can add things to our running list for our next board priorization since my mic is already on and it came up earlier this evening previously board members I had requested us looking at our gr grading policies ikc Ika and the long string of Ika versions that go along with Ika um it fell off our priorization list we ran out of time one semester and I thought it was fine but I still have concerns about those policies um and how we continue to use them um in our work so I'd like to
242add those and then similarly a policy that fell off in prioritization um that I had previously requested was the middle School requirements um and I will get you that number IGA it's another ey policy and those we are not looking at as a chapter for quite some time but since I had previously requested those and they fell off our list I would just like to add them back on board members anything else seeing as there are non board members are meeting for this evening is adjourned have oh sorry that's right exec session session but I'm going to adjourn this part of the meeting while we convene um in exact session so we just need the motion and vot yes okay is there a motion to I don't have a written I don't have a written
243motion lenia raiseed your hand really quickly I laena quinland to make a motion pursuant to CRS 24-6 402 b4b to convene into executive session to receive specific legal advice on the charter school renewal and Contracting process and pursuant to CRS 24-6 D2 excuse me 4024 EI to determine positions relative to matters that are subject to negotiations developing strategy for negotiations and instructing negotiators regarding negotiation of Charter School contracts is there a second seconded by Alex Laura can you please call the role uh Chavez yes medler yes Nik yes L yes Raj Paul yes Sergeant yes hunger yes motion passes for members we will convene in the glacier room and our regular business for this evening is aded e