001e e I'd like to call the order this me regular meeting of the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education for Tuesday November 19th 202024 board members May attend and participate in board meetings by electronic means in accordance with bbsd policy bmea and state law Laura can you please call the role Chavez here medler here nnick here Quin linua here Raj Paul here Sergeant here here anger here thank you i' now like to turn it over to Alex medler who is going to read Our Land acknowledgement this evening Boulder Valley School District resides and operates on land that is the ancestral Homeland and unjustly and illegally taken territory of the Ute pbl Arapaho Cheyenne Apache Navajo and 48 other tribal Nations historically tied to the land who have called This Land home since time immemorial
002we acknowledge the atrocities committed here including the painful history of genocide forc assimilation and efforts to alienate the indigenous inhabitants from their Homeland supported by the policies of the United States government bbsd is aware of the many indigenous peoples past and present and their dignified Nations and cultures who care for the land and with strength and resilience bbsd recognizes the histories of the land in Colorado and the survival of the many nations that carry their oral Traditions into the present it is bbd's responsibility to educate ourselves our communities and our students so that we can embrace the wisdom and knowledge of indigenous peoples and actively stand together to address injustices in offering this land acknowledgement we affirm and honor the history wisdom oral traditions and resilience of indigenous people people and recognize the responsibility to
003care for and appreciate this land together thank you I'd like to remind everybody that the mission of the Boulder Valley School District is to create challenging meaningful and engaging learning opportunities that all children Thrive and are prep prepared for successful civically engaged lives good evening everyone thank you for joining us in person here this evening and on remotely we are happy to have you observe and participate in our meetings at this time is there a motion to approve tonight's agenda by lania seconded by Jorge Laura can you please call the RO Chavez yes medler yes nnick yes quinland AA yes Raj Paul yes Sergeant yes anger yes motion passes board members you may have noticed because we stood to take a picture this evening we are now back in the cycle of having student moments
004which is one wonderful Dr Anderson would you like to introduce our first student moment for this semester thank you Bo president Raj Paul I would love to introduce our student moment we're excited to have student moment again this evening our opportunity board members to hear from student leaders and our schools tonight we have three of our high school seniors from Boulder High School Miller chag Olivia Curtis and Max verplank who've just wrapped up serving as student election judges with the Boulder County Clerk and recorder's office in addition helping account ballots they were recently featured in a PBS documentary about preserving democracy and I'm going to turn it over to the team from Boulder High School to talk to us about their experiences hello everyone um so kind of our position as a student election judge
005like the day of the election is we really worked with kind of the people and we were kind of communicating with the people in line and we were trying to make sure everyone was registered I personally worked at the um UMC at CU and um so it was it was the busiest voting Center in the state and it was with a lot of the um college students obviously and it was just a really important thing for me to see and I learned a lot about how of our election process worked I've been watching elections since I can remember with like my parents but um this was an experience for me to really see it in person and as not being old enough it was kind of my part in doing that um all three of
006us also worked in the election June so that was kind of our trial run for the whole election as it wasn't as busy for just like the Colorado election um but this general election was definitely a very like influential for our country and it was cool to kind of see all that I'll have someone else talk hello my name is Olivia Curtis I'm a senior at Boulder high school and like Max said um it was just an awesome opportunity to participate in the Democracy to be a part of our community um I worked at the clerk and record office and um it was super busy it wasn't the bit busiest voting Center in the state but it was extremely busy and I saw my neighbors my friends and it was just awesome to see everyone
007that was involved and um I'm not 18 I missed it by a few months but it was my way of participating in the democracy and um involving myself within the community like Olivia I missed out voting in the election by just a few months which was really a little bit infuriating for me um ever since I was I was 13 when Co hit which is you know a very formative age anyways um which was great because I didn't experience any of the Middle School drama um but also I just didn't really have any other contact with the outside world aside from my friends and the News um and there was a lot of news in 2020 um so that that's kind of where my interest in politics started um and then when I found out
008about the student election judge position it felt like a really awesome way for me to get involved and begin participating in democracy um and you know helping run our the systems that are in place um even though I couldn't participate actively um there was still stuff I could do and so I did my best to uh do that and uh it was a really rewarding experience um especially given that 2020 was kind of a left a lot of things hanging in doubt in my mind um regarding I don't know democracy especially because it just felt so removed from the life that I was experiencing at that point um it was really a wonderful experience to spend time act actively and actually engaging with what was actually happening in the [Applause] world would you guys mind
009waiting at the podium I think the board member to might have some questions first I want to say thank you for doing what you can democracy takes supporting democracy takes many shapes and forms voting is one but there's a lot of other ways so thank you for your efforts to really help support the election and the election Integrity this season um Kitty you mentioned you had a question so I will let you start and then if board members have questions so my first question is how did you all get selected and do you know if there were other students in the district or if you're the only three so the way that I heard about it um last year I think it was March or April one of those two anyways um the Boulder County
010Clerk and recorder's office came to Boulder High to get students pre-registered so once you turn 16 even though you're not eligible to vote yet um if you will be eligible when you turn 18 you can pre-register so that in the state of Colorado you get your ballot mailed to you um if you're 18 the day of an election which is great I think that's an awesome system and I'm glad it's in place um I had already pre-registered but they were giving out free merch and I wanted some um I I'm an honest person what can I say I'm sorry um I have awesome sunglasses now so anyways uh I was there and I saw the the flyer that was talking about how I could get involved and so I read it and it sounded super
011interesting um so I actually went and found the Colorado law that allowed that to be in place cuz I just assumed that there was no way for anyone under 18 to participate um and turned out there actually was um so I wrote a little paragraph just explaining who I was and why I wanted to participate really what I just told you all a few minutes ago um and then yeah I I was accepted and started working in the uh local primary I think it was June or July of this year um I know there are other students working I think there were 35 to 40 student judges in Boulder County um and I assume a lot of those are bbsd students um I know of at least two others but I'm sure there are more
012um I can also I found out through Olivia and um so we kind of Applied together we ended up not working ever at the same Center but we all we both worked both elections um also there was also once you kind of signed up for it you had an application that you had to fill out kind of to for them to see if you were really interested in politics and democracy and like why it was important for you to be a part of of this whole process so thank you thank you board members any other questions for our students here tonight thank you for being here thank you for all you [Applause] do that takes us to the next item on our agenda this evening which is the superintendent report Dr Anderson good evening good
013evening board president Raj Paul board members uh it's been a while since we've been together and so we've got a few things to update you all on um so I think the first slide that we have is is uh is uh um celebrating some of the celebrations in our schools in Halloween and I'm looking up and it unless somebody dressed as the superintendent it was not uh any event uh it was it was it was a fun uh it was a fun day over Halloween creatures of all shapes and exz has crawled into our campuses on Halloween many of our schools held parades uh it was just really a fun fun time in our schools board members as you know Veterans Day was uh a week ago Monday leading up to the holiday several bbsd
014schools hosted celebrations to honor veterans in our community and learn the importance of the holiday Emerald Elementary hosted 14 veterans and their families where students were presented Gifts of appreciation sang A patriotic song and presented readings every family veteran name submitted to the school was recognized whether they were present or not Centaurus High School's media technician Sergeant David hul spoke to students about his experience as a paratrooper in the US Army and taught students how Soldier Walk and Run how soldiers Walk and Run in unison and flat irons Elementry hosted major Sergeant Logan Tucker of the US Air Force Flat Iron's parent who shared his experiences with the students and want to thank all of the veterans in our community those who helped uh in our celebrations and those who serve our country about I
015think it was three weeks ago we um were able to celebrate the boulder mod ribbon cutting members of our community gathered at the new Boulder mod Factory celebrate the groundbreaking partnership between the city of Boulder Colorado government Habitat for Humanity and the Boulder Valley School District new facility will create affordable housing and provide our Boulder Tech students Hands-On opportunities in the construction trades uh it was one of the most moving events that I've been to in quite some time you know the idea that we would have a nonprofit group partnering with the city partnering with the school district to work to solve what is an incredibly important problem in our community affordable housing in a way where our kids are able to actually help build these modular homes learn the important skills drive down the
016cost for Habitat for Humanity uh in um in Partnership I just think is is is just an amazing an amazing accomplishment I'm looking forward uh it's going to be up and running in January and the good news is board members all you need is a is a hammer and some time you can head on up there and help out and help build some homes in the in the boulder U modular Factory and so I'm excited to uh put that in my stress relieving kind of activities uh um and and go up there and help out when I get a chance and we also uh two weeks ago uh celebrated centaur's engineering Wing opening uh you know we were celebrating the completion of the curus high school engineering wing expansion which was made po possible through
017the generosity of our voters through Bond dollars 2022 Bond new space will allow more students are piss to participate in Practical skills-based education in a variety of engineering disciplines including mechanical Aerospace biotech and civil as well as cyber security computer science and more additional space was needed to accommodate demand for the popular program will make it possible to take on larger more complex student projects our engineering program at sarus is one of the finest programs we have in our School District it's amazing the kids were uh thrilled to have that new space and so very very excited uh for that uh and board members I have a couple other items to discuss and I think I'm going to wait till legislative update one is involved the governor's budget and the other is involving the accountability
018task force and so I will share those during our legislative update board members do you have any questions for Dr Anderson Beth I'm seeing you say know I'm sure there will be a lot of questions during the legislative update so we'll Reserve those for that the next item on our agenda moving right along this evening is public participation the board respects the rights of the public to speak on matters concerning the operation of the schools the board does not endorse the comments of any speaker and reminds all those who speak to be mindful of your own speech speakers will each have two minutes to speak you will see a yellow card when you have 30 seconds remaining and an orange card when you have 10 seconds remaining if you run out of time or you'd
019like to share additional information with the board you may always email us we do read every single one of our emails with that our first Speaker this evening is Gareth Sabo I apologize if I mispronounced that last name hello people of the board my name is Gareth Zabo and I'm a senior at centarus high school I also do the dual enrollment credits at Boulder Tech and work with a paralal office in Boulder County as a student I agree with most of the phone policy that we have been implementing with the jrct documents but there are a few things I would like to address firstly the definition of personal technology device or ptd defines it as including headphones and laptops that don't include the one to web Chromebooks and I would like to amend it to
020not include headphones or the other personal computers as those are objects that we use mainly for educational purposes and students us in a lot of classes also I would like to address the fact that um that students off periods and lunches would also have restrictions of personal technology devices which I think it should not apply to students personal time even if they are on campus and choose to be on on campus they should be allowed to use their personal technology devices and also there's a few other factors on why students may use personal technology devices other than to simply just be on it and be a distraction and I think that should be accounted for and I'm not sure how we should account for that but there should be something allowing them to communicate with
021families to communicate with work personally I work and if I were to get called out or asked to pick up a shift I would want to know that before the end of the school day or before I decide to leave campus Because that's something I might need to relay to my parents or to my coaches I yield the rest of my time to questions from the board thank you um the board typically does not answer or ask questions during public comment got it so if you wanted to use the rest of your time you could or if you're done that is f I'm done with time thank you thank you our next speaker this evening is Wyatt Chapman and board members I forgot to mention that Gareth was given two minutes by Oliver Smith is
022that we good awesome perfect uh I am also a senior at centaura high school shockingly um and I just wanted to say really quickly the engineering Wing is awesome it is so cool um and like gar uh I just want to talk about the phone policy and again like I I completely agree that it is a big problem and a big distraction uh but I have a couple concerns just based off of the personal connection part because so many people want to be on their phones unfortunately I have worry that a lot of people will leave campus to be on their phones and I think that actually will decrease our personal interaction time because if no one's on campus you don't have anyone to talk to um in addition I think that it could create
023antagonistic relations with teachers especially if they're you know are uh if they're also having a bad day already I think it just creates a situation where you create a lot of hostilities that aren't necessarily needed and I just wanted to share one of the best experiences I've had with the teacher who you know is really strict about the phones and so this my junior year English class class she had a phone tree on the side of the wall and it just has numbers 1 through 30 you get a number at the start of the year and when you walk into class you put your phone there and if you take it out you know there's punishment um and I think that would really work because it doesn't have to be a huge hassle it's not
024on the teachers to go and get the phones the students know what's expected of them and I think that will create better relations inside the classroom while also not creating those antagonistic and hostile tensions with the teachers uh just because you know unfortunately a lot of us are very protective of them and I think that those would could lead to some uncomfortable conversations and then with the last 20 seconds just um I just have concerns based on I haven't really seen examples of how it's going to be implemented and I think that if there's differences between schools and like you know my friends and I talk to each other I think that there could be you know a lot of discussion about which way is the right way and so I don't know I think
025just more clear on how it's going to be implemented would be great so have a great rest of your night guys thank you thank you our next speaker this evening is El is Elizabeth pavasa good evening my name is Elizabeth pavasa and my son Emerson is a kindergartener at Netherland Elementary previously we lived in Lewisville and because of rising housing prices and a desire for our spirited son to have space to roam we moved to Cle Creek Canyon four years ago moving to a Mountain Community isn't for the faint-hearted but part of what strengthened our decision was the Peace of Mind that Emerson could still be a part of bbsd Emerson was in Netherlands preschool program for two years and my family and I have been so grateful for the experience and professionalism of those
026teachers and credit the program for instilling Emerson with a love of school kindergarten however has been a completely different story in the first three months the class has had a revolving series of substitutes a teacher who was hired late put on leave for mysterious reasons allowed to return and then resigned within 36 hours on top of that the vague communication and lack of any clear plan created stress uncertainty and loss of faith in many parents especially since the situation also happened to last year's kindergarten class some parents have already left and some are considering selling their home and uprooting their lives to put their children in more competent program what we remaining parents can't understand is why why was a second teacher for this class not approved until the day before school when school leadership
027and BV knew that one would be needed this lack of thoughtfulness and foresight cannot continue to plague this large class through their time at Netherland elementary students should not suffer and forfeit bbsd quality education for something as foundational to a school as having a proper teacher this should be a top priority and if this pattern continues you will lose quality students our Beloved School will suffer and it will diminish the attraction and reputation of our wonderful Mountain Community please tell us how you plan to acquire a qualified experienced kindergarten teacher for the remainder of the school year and how you will prevent the serious issue for all grades moving forward also please assure us that in the future hiring decisions will be made well in advance thank you thank you our next speaker this evening
028is Marie Tai good evening I'm Mari Thai parents of a kindergartner and second grader also at NE Elementary School I wish to bring to your attention the systematic failures in planning oversight and administration at the school that resulted in the recent resignation of the kindergarten teacher this is the second year as Elizabeth said where kindergarteners educational well-being has been failed due to a lack of foresight to my knowledge it is the third year of uncoordinated last minute planning regarding teacher assignments at the start of the school year Early Education is a critical period that can set up a child a thriving School experience over the next 13 plus years poor planning and oversight can leave the most disadvantaged students unsupported and flailing behind their peers it seems to me that a principal who is not
029held accountable for his decisions and who consistently fails to plan longer than one semester or Academic Year ahead will only perpetuate those failures we've experienced Netherlands kindergarten year is large this was known before the end of the 2324 school year yet approval to hire as second teacher was made at a late stage the process to hire was then fast-tracked with a new hire appointed only two weeks after advertising and with a poorly communicated process a new advertisement has now been placed with the planned interview in 2 weeks time I trust that this time the principal will be encouraged to seek to read advertise if no un suitable comes forward so that the children will not be failed again do you realize that Netherland Elementary does not have a school ability committee this year we need
030greater transparency around these decisions affecting our children Netherland parents need your support in achieving a due process that is transparent and followed for the new hire one that is clearly documented and an independent school accountability committee at the school most particularly more Direction direct coordination and oversight from the district to ensure that bbsd policies and processes are properly upheld I thank you thank you our next speaker this evening is virtual Gia V hi good evening everyone my name is Gia vene and I'm here representing the High Peaks Elementary PTO and talk about why it is so important not just for our school but for the entire District at high peaks our PTO is the backstone of our school as we are a parent formed bbsd Focus school with the funds raised through our nonprofit allowing
031us to fill in critical gaps like par Educators supplies and special programs such as CU science Discovery days ISL math and arts enrichment these aren't just nice to have they are the things that allow our students to thrive but the PTO does more than raise money it builds a sense of community PTO supported events and programs make high peaks a place where families want to be which helps with enrollment and keep are School vibrant but here's the thing parents are happy to support Equity across the district but they also want to know where they contributions are going so I'm asking for a little more transparency how are KH funds being distributed what specific programs or needs are they supporting if parents can see the impact their contributions are making not just at their school but
032districtwide it will go a long way in building trust and keeping everyone engaged the PTO as you know is about raising opportunities for every child I hope we can work together to ensure policies like KH help us continue support first and foremost the unique needs of each School while ensuring Equity within our bbsc community thank you so much for your time and for everything you do for our students thank you our next speaker this evening is Ellie Goldberg who is given two minutes from Edith presler they are both they are virtual are they both online yes yes can you hear me we can hear you okay great sorry I'm actually driving my daughter to soccer practice I wanted to call in to express my support for the um extension of the cell phone ban to
033high schools and also I'm not sure if it was in the policy before but I appreciate it seeing that phones won't be allowed on school vehicles or at school events because our daughters are in Middle School and it was hard to um see that on the bus trips to track meets and things like that how much kids run their phones so I'm happy about that um and I'm a so I'm a bbsd parent but I'm also a reading interventionist in St FR and like most members of the National Education Association I'm 90% of us I support um complete bans of cell phones and schools and was really excited to see see that in the news recently and because particularly my daughter is entering nth grade this year uh in the fall and I'm glad that
034she'll enter school with that policy in place and I know there's concerns about implementation and enforcement and I'm also concerned about that just knowing that the current policies around student technology use are spottily inforced if enforced at all um but I don't see that as a reason looks like we lost connection there that she had left the meeting early do we want to she's calling back in you're muted I will say that Ellie if you have additional comments you can email those to the board since you're driving and may be having some technical difficulty we will then move on to the next speaker this evening which is Peter Miner good afternoon my name is Peter Miner my son is a third grader at Mesa Elementary I'm here to speak about the KH rule known as
035the PTO tax on inclass support Mesa is a welcoming School a approximately 133% of our students have IEPs and onethird are open enrolled my district by District averages Mesa is a high- performing school as a result we receive neg negligible differentiated funding averages hide more than they show between 15 and 40% of our students are below State averages however our district allocation allocation for Paris is less than 5 minutes per child per day ma is lucky to have an experienced staff however we Face many of B bbd's challenges lower enrollment and budget cuts our PTO has stepped in to fill in the funding void with part-time Paris which students which students do these par support all those students under the yellow orange and red bars you see in the testing data our par support literacy
036math I APS neurodiversity and mtss students in our family's first year at Mesa our son was denied access to the district literacy support class we waited a year for a spot to open our son now has an i IEP thankfully while we waited he was he was supported by a PTO uh funded par Mesa must compete for students in a competitive landscape we do not have elective programs Mesa is a welcoming School with strong emot social emotional support it is our special sauce without par Services I'm certain parents would have placed children in other schools some out of the district and some in private schools when I got involved with the district government sack Dak and DPC I made a commitment to myself Do no harm build good things respectfully please carefully consider those who
037will be harmed if you move forward with changes to the KH rule thank you for your time and service to the community thank you our next speaker this evening is Erica Chapman good evening everyone um my name is Erica Chapman I am the mother of Wyatt Chapman and Emily Chapman who will is also at Centaurus um and I cannot believe that I am up here advocating for cell phone usage at just um anybody who knows me um the conversation in our household all the time is put it away put it away put it away however this policy that we're rolling out I feel is a little more punitive than it needs to be we adults helped create this situation um with not having policy in place beforehand that was firmer or stronger um I think
038the cell phone usage at um a lunchtime um or an off period is an important part of their own growth and their own uh need to be able to manage their world a little bit um and I am deeply worried for the stress and burden it puts on our administrative and faculty um staffs um because I haven't I'm not understanding what the the timeline will be or the policy will be the steps the order is there a um a one time a two time a three time you're out what what what is that going to look like it's hard to support such a policy if that's not very clear and as why it said and it's not going to be uh transparent and um across the district um and I do think that we are
039trying to build relationships between adults and children and that this um could very much increase the tension in an unnecessary way so like I said I can't believe I'm advocating um but I think it's more for uh a different approach thanks thank you our next speaker this evening is virtual rodri Schubert um hi y'all I too I am involved with The Centaurus High School students I have never seen a more fine and excellent group of people I'm also the proud parent of three Boulder Valley school children who have long since graduated one is an engineer for qualcom the other is an emergency room physician in Wyoming and in the Denver metro area and the third um markets high-end wines for tato wines I too am following as this other parent um mentioned I can't imagine
040I do not own a cell phone but I use technology 24 hours a day seven days a week and what I'm asking for is to see this policy that you're proposing halted and a committee or Commission of made up of student students Community parents teachers staff administrators created to devise a lust Draconian policy um I think the parents the parent that spoke out um the other parents speaking I understand you're wanting to be Draco but I think there's a point where we have to listen to the uh philosopher of science Carl popper that if something can't be falsified it's really not good science and since you're basing a lot of your decision making on the text the anxious Generation by Jonathan Holt that's empirically based observations the data and the literature is split and it's
041pretty much split down the middle so what I'm begging you to do is to Halt Draconian ISM and to appoint a commission of all the stakeholders and let's devise something reasonable that teaches young people how to use technology responsible they are tools thank you very much thank you all for your service to our community bye-bye thank you our next speaker this evening is Jill Walter good evening my name is Jill Walter I have a fifth grader at Mesa Elementary in the seventh grader at Southern Hills I appreciate having the chance to speak about the KH policy this is my third and final year as a secretary for the Mesa PTO Mesa pto's primary goal is to raise funds for our par professionals while we need to raise our budgeted funds we put a strong emphasis
042on participation to encourage a sense of community fundraising not easy our fundraising campaign called Mesa thrives is held in the fall we raise friends at the start of the year to make sure we can actually pay our pair professionals through the rest of the year our goal for Mesa thrives is $888,000 we set our goal at $78,000 for parents and caregivers and then we hope we get $10,000 in campaign matches from companies for Mesa thrives we make a promise to those that to those that donate that the money given to thrives will stay in the classroom every cent goes to our paas and our pairs support students in math and literacy as well as our neurod diverse diverse students and the students with IEPs these are typically some of our most vulnerable students we explain
043to families why we fund raise how Colorado does not properly fund students and we are trying to fill the gaps that inevitably exist even with the understanding of how important These funds are we barely hit our goal this year we are $2,000 short because as I mentioned fundraising is difficult one out of six kids at Mesa are on free and reduced lunch but we will get creative about this $2,000 because we have to the growth development and education of mesa's students depends on it but if you raise the % for KH funding Mesa will be on the losing end of this equation we cannot ask parents to donate any more money to cover any KH increase we won't get it as you rev KH funding I please ask that you consider all types of funding
044that go into schools brainstorm the many different possible outcomes and look at this in great detail before you decide to make any changes if you make changes thank you very much thank you board members our final speaker this evening is Amanda donov hello my name is Amanda Donovan and I'm the PTO co-president at Douglas Elementary so I'm here on behalf of our PTO board to also discuss policy KH uh as the bbsd school board continues your work on this policy we implore you to examine exactly where the 10% fee from KH goes how is it being allocated and is it being spent during the current school year on staff at the schools who are the intended recipients of the funds we definitely support the district's important work on equity and equality but we would like
045to raise the question as to whether the 10% is the right amount or if it's potentially beyond the need based on the fact that the title one schools currently receive large sums of extra funding that they are able to use at their discretion graphs that were provided in the bbsd first semester report for KH funds from fcal year 2023 through 24 showed a chart that has 5 years worth of donations and expenses for this policy and there were significant remaining balances each year in two of the years shown the donations exceeded the expenses over 150% the remaining balance that was being carried forward never fell below $123,000 and that's more than double what the contributions from the 10% were during the fiscal year 23 24 school year our PTO feels a fiduciary responsibility towards our
046school community and to the families that donate to our fundraising campaign we State during our campaign that the funds will be used during the current school year to support the students and at Douglas 97% of our fundraising budget goes entirely to pay for par professionals the bbsd is not able to provide for us and those hours that they're covering are for basic needs such as lunch coverage policy KH is dated and the times have changed significantly since the first time it was written in 1986 and also since the revision in 2005 both Title One funding that's coming into the district and everyone's fundraising needs are very different now so we ask that you deeply review the policy and we're hoping for an exact accounting of the allocations so that the schools and the parents who
047support us will have the transparency that we deserve thank you thank you that concludes our public comment for this evening on behalf of the board I want to thank everybody who took the time to attend our late start this evening um and remotely it really is important for the board and our community to for the board to understand the different perspectives that our community has and so thank you for taking that time our next item on this evening's agenda is board communication board members who would like to begin lenia thank you all of our speakers this evening um and I wanted to since I have quite a few PTO heads here and a lot of really active parents I would like to put a plug in for making sure you're speaking with your city council
048people on this city of Boulders youth app do you guys have me yes city of Boulders use tax uh we recently as a board had to approve $2.2 million of use tax to go to the city of Boulder and that was not a tax that they had to levy on um me any other of the municipalities in which we operate do not Levy that use tax on us and when we're looking at a sum of $2.2 million and we compare that to what we're talking about for our PTO this is a big sum and it certainly would come in handy as I'm sure Rob is going to talk to us about our budget constraints from next for next year here so um if anybody's interested in digging into this issue I'm glad to give you
049more background but I want to thank the parents that are here to talk about that because we do have to dig in at every corner to look at where our funding is for our Public Schools board members any other comments Alex yeah um I have a few things to say uh and also really grateful to um everyone who spoke tonight in person and virtually and also to the people who've emailed uh over the last couple months we have a few intense issues before the board so I'm grateful for the literally hundreds of people who have emailed on the cell phone policy and the entire Centaurus Community for their emails on the phone policy I've also um had about 12 hours of discussions in the last month with PTO and fund raising members of the community
050some who spoke tonight I'm really grateful uh for their input um on the KH policy I just want to be clear the item on our agenda is item 10 so we probably won't be getting to it for an hour and a half or so uh so for the people who are speaking I just want to say I'm the one who raised the 10% issue last month and um I don't plan to uh recommend or push for any change to the 10% now and I also believe that we uh concur with what I've heard over the last month and what I heard heard tonight I I recognize that we are a horribly financed state for public education as we are for many things many people don't know we've actually made it to the middle of the
05150 states in terms of our funding per kid we're now pretty much the median State when it comes to funding the total but it's still nowhere near enough and the finance that we get in every school is inadequate so I'm all in favor of increasing funding that we get from parental contributions through all the sources that come in I support our pto's raising money I support our booster clubs raising money for sports and activities I support the kids who contribute in their own ways and then spend the funds through their Student Government um and I uh am so excited to talk with um the folks from Mesa about their integration of the sac with their PTO and the equity-minded focus they have to use their PTO money really wisely at Mesa and I recognize both
052the value that comes from having a lot of families contribute to their school and having smart school leaders who can direct those resources to where they're needed the most for the kids who need them the most so I'm in I'm in total agreement of that I'm not trying to decrease the amount of money that's raised um and I also am really grateful for people who talked about the need for transparency for how we spend it I think we I think it would be really powerful to have the funding on a school by school basis um to look at the PTO funding to look at the booster club contributions to sports and activities to make sure we have a title 9 balance of our genders within our schools for our ads to look across the schools
053and see how different the student experiences and activities and stuff that's going on it's why I'm also pushing for us to have a discussion about uh for whom we wave activities fees and who we don't and how much it costs to do activity my kid loved uh being on the marching band at Fairview when I take into account the instrument rentals and the lessons and the expenses I think we spent 16,000 bucks in his four years of being on the marching band and I worry grievously about access to the greatest things in ouro toools and programs that are based on a family's ability to pay so I think it would be great to have greater Financial uh transparency into that on an annual basis I think the PTO could use it and I'd add one
054more thing I'm pretty excited about hearing about the integration between efforts around things like Sachs and PTO um and aware of like the work that lenia has been doing on Title 9 and working with the athletic directors and the boosters and those issues I just think there's a great opportunity for collaboration I do believe that when you back up from one school at a time or one classroom at a time and you look at this across the systems just to put this in perspective the 2.7 million or whatever it is the pto's raise is about one uh 4/10 of a percent of our operating budget when uh we take the 10% from the part that goes to Staffing so maybe half the money goes to other things like in the case of the recent school
055so it's arguable that maybe 5% of that 4% goes to the other schools so you do the math of that and we're dealing with 150th of % being D redirected from what the pto's raised to other schools and I I go back to our mission statement our a goal which is Boulder Valley School District will partner with students family staff community and members to address the unique learning needs of each student and to create a meaningful and engaging opportunity for each child and I feel strongly that those opportunities should not be contingent on the fundraising ability of the parents in each individual school so at some level um the 10% is pretty immaterial because the amount is pretty small um and the we have uh 16 or 18 schools depending if you count the charters
056that have more than 30% kids with free and foru price lunch that serve about 3,600 kids so if we are taking 150th of our percent to supplement their education to provide the opportunities to each of those children I worry about that as an equity thing uh for across the district so I want to figure out how we support the Fantastic efforts of people like Peter Miner and guia and people spoke tonight and what they're doing and actually expand that so that they're so that our sacks are working with our PTO in every school and our schools that don't have a sack or don't have an effective PTO or supported to have one so I think in addition to supporting and encouraging the fundraising that goes on and having transparency into it I would love to
057see coordination that helps us build it so we grow the whole pie so that every school so that every student enjoys those benefits I talked to Allison Billings at impact on Ed another great asset that we have and she was uh responsive and positive about this we've we've done historically PTO Summits where we get together the PTO leads like on an annual basis I'd suggest we do it more than a summit but create a process by which our pto's our booster clubs our student associations um are title n and special ad Advocates and other all the people involved are raising money contributing money can get together and also understand each other's contexts and understand what how they can steal ideas from each other how can copy somebody else's campaign how do they get the sack
058going in the first place and when do they get the PTO and the sack together I I think there's opportunities for us as a district to inform that and support it so that it grows so that we can do more of it I don't think any minor adjustment we would make to I don't consider it a tax I consider it an obligation to support each of our kids and that we need to grow the understanding of how that could be used transparency into how it is used and then increase the ability to grow the whole pie so that we have more so I mean that in full support I didn't talk to anybody who wasn't doing trying to do the best thing for the kids in front of them uh with a spirit of equity
059in their heart and focused on the kids who need the help the most uh just raises the hair on the back of my neck just thinking about the wonderful conversations I've had in the last month so um I plan to vote to protect the 10% as it is today and I plan to protect uh the ability of our PTO to raise those those those dollars and I really commit to advancing an agenda of equity that is districtwide that is looking at gender-based access to programming and sports that is looking at schoolto school contributions and that protects our compensatory education I believe strongly that title one is designed by the feds in order to compensate for intense concentrations of child poverty and so the equation of what we raise on the side for what we spend
060through our actual Title One funding or through our differentiating funding I reject that like we are putting more money we have run a 500 we run a half billion dollar operating budget and we direct uh a small amount towards our schools that have the highest concentrations of poverty and towards our schools that have the multilanguage Learners and high concentrations and I'll do everything to protect that and I I don't want to get into a quid pro quo where it's like oh well they get this so it's okay that we have this other funding on the other side we need to keep those things different and we need to keep our commitment as a board and as a district to our differentiated funding to our Title One funding um and the other things we do that
061advance Equity as a system I'm I'm taking too much time but I feel strongly that that our people on the ground are promoting equity in their schools and we want to protect and support them and then our role as a district is to look across it and to see the system level aggregation of all that good intention and all that good work because we need every dime we can get and we want to support them raising it and we want to advance Equity that is not about equality it's like those signs of the kids standing at the fence where they're standing on the boxes like we really do need to lift kids up who need more and that's what I'd like to support Beth I'm wondering I can't see you if you had any comment
062for this evening no thank you jge um I would like to thank um everybody who participated tonight you know I I think I probably say this quite often I'm always um so struck by how engaged parents are here how the students are engaged the community that surrounded this district and what an important role it plays in kind of our decision-making and kind of what we do as a district right that we we have these values that we espouse that we want Equity we want to support everybody that we wanted the best for our kids um and I I value that I I think it's really important it makes what it's what makes this District great I also know um this is for people who are maybe watching or who are out there who don't feel
063comfortable coming to speak who are scared to come to our district um Administration who who are worried about the policy changes that are going on out there who don't feel protected um and and who don't have a voice and because I'm hearing from families out there now um through informal channels um that are worried about their kids getting picked up on the way to school or that they're going to get picked up on the way to school or that they're or that they're going to be um targeted the way in which families are being targeted now out there um and so for those of you that are watching right uh think about that community that out you've built right in terms of who you're reaching out to um think about providing avenues for Access and
064and meeting people where they're at I know that that's a discussion that we started with the board um last week and we're going talk about this later today but I wanted to kind of mention it now when PE more people are likely to be watching because you know we go on for hours um but but you know but talk to people right think about what we can do cuz um we have a lot of power when we're together and and these students here um who are volunteering for the first time I know they left but who are volunteering for the first time who want to beol the Democratic process who who want to be part of that change I I think we all need to be in in that and I know in this community
065we can do that so um just wanted to put that out there thank you kitty I have a few things to say tonight to first I want to thank everybody who came to speak and especially our students I'm always so excited to see students who have the courage that you know or they just mentioned a lot of adults don't have to come and talk to us either about what they're doing or what their opinions are and I want to always encourage that so that's great and always interested in hearing from what parents think I want to recognize that November is indigenous heritage month and it's not not something we at least I have heard about a lot in the press the way you hear about say African-American heritage month but we want to recognize the
066history culture and contributions of indigenous people in the United States this month so I'm just putting that out there um in terms of election volunteering it's not really volunteering because you get paid um I guess the students got paid I have done that and I've tried to do it since I did it the first time and for whatever reason the scheduling didn't work but I would strongly encourage anyone who has the time to get in touch with the clerk and reporters office and see about becoming an election worker you learn so much doing that and oh I see you all are some of you are still here anyway um now I lost my train of thought oh and also can really help dispel a lot of the myths that have been coming out about election
067fraud if you ever work an election you would understand how it would be almost impossible for votes to get changed and things like that and I think it would just be helpful for society in general if more people really understood that definitely encourage your kids to do it it's wonderful getting kids involved early on early on as good um you know Civic members who are interested and care about working for communities that's how we strengthen societies so I'm all in favor of all of that that's great and last night the long range advisory committee met don't worry I'm not planning to read all of this stuff it's just where I wrote down some notes um and they're not going to report to us for a couple of months still but I just want to talk
068about what was discussed at this meeting so we looked at a declining enrollment we saw that in the East Network there was slight bit of growth and the biggest decline in enrollment was in the Northwest Network which makes sense because that's the Boulder area where it's extremely expensive to live um we focused on middle schools we heard about why families choose particular middle schools you know what what are the top reasons for that um we have a new modernized middle level philosophy that we talk talked about um what else we looked at middle school schedules and how complicated they are and um we found out that the principal at Platt loves to make schedules so she might be the only one um also the fact that middle schools can deal with changes in numbers more
069easily than elementary schools can um because of the way they're staffed and the way kids kids go to you know one class each period and they can fill things in with electives and that sort of thing um the ideal size I bet you don't know this for a middle school is 150 kids per grade and we're also seeing that Middle School population is probably not going to fluctuate much in the next 5 years and that is all I have to say I thought you were going to say um since we last convened a lot has happened in our uh nation in our state for sure I have a new sticker on my computer I feel like Big Red One America needs public schools now more than ever I had the opportunity to attend the quarterly
070meeting yesterday with Dr Anderson stakeholders in the city of Boulder County and CU and the overwhelming majority of our conversation was around what this new Administration and their decisions are going to mean for schools both k12 and postsecondary what it is going to do for all of our relative budgets um and how fortunate we are to live in a place where we have a lot of the right people in the right places doing the right work to to keep our community safe and as safe as we can Boulder County is working on an initiative right now that's doubling down on emergency preparedness and how emergency preparedness can mean a lot of things and for folks in our community it means having documents in place because you never know what is going to happen when and
071so I just want to elevate that message that being prepared for whatever happens next takes planning from all of us um and that planning really does start to begin now I was also able to attend the boulder mod ribbon cutting and another like as Dr nison said very emotional experience of the community coming together to do what's right for this community providing houses providing work-based experiences providing all of the things this community cares for um the cost of housing is a challenge for us with declining enrollment providing real life skills to our students is something we value so it really was a great endeavor and then when I popped into the leadership academy meeting last week I was able to watch them tour the boulder facility and see how excited they were about the work
072we're doing and the Partnerships we have and also to they were able to tour The Culinary Kitchen where we the teaching kitchen where we all board members had dinner tonight and our new culinary program for those on TV they our students prepare these little mini desserts that the board members got to eat and over at Boulder Tech right now they're doing a tour of all of the Great great facilities and programming programming that they're offering over there and so just a shout out to the district and its commitment to the diverse learning needs and desires of our students and to our taxpayers to help kind of support some of that Bond work lastly yes Centaurus has been really communicative between the band The the Press Box conversations and the cell phones I think I counted
073um in the last 6 days I have responded to 150 emails on that cell phone policy from other folks and then KH um so we all read our emails I have the pleasure of responding to them all and sometimes there is just a lot of them so um thanks to the patients for those in the past couple hours that have emailed the board and I have not yet to respond it's been a been an active inbox these past couple days last thing um I just want to elevate again the great work this district is doing and the ways the things that we have to be proud of there was an artic chalkbeat talking about PSAT sores in the state of Colorado and bbsd was the only the only School District in which 10th grader 10th
074grade students who do not had who have a second language other than English outperformed their schools in the previous years and so kudos to our staff kudos to our district I mean amazing feet the only School District with numbers that were able to report that did that so shout out to our families to our students our staff for really Contin to put our effort and our time in places that are incredibly meaningful for all of our students with that board members we will be concluding oh Alex sorry I I forgot two items of of gratitude I have in the community um for other conversations in the last month that I think are useful um one a bunch of Southern Hills parents who come from multiple feeder patterns um sat down with me to talk about
075their Tech talks and their discussion of technology and it was super thought ful and they were sort of thinking definitely past uh like tonight's discussion of the phone policy to the to what to do next and and it was really again a great sign of the community engagement that we have in the elementary schools and the middle schools and the things they were thinking about were the other devices uh somebody tonight brought up the problems around um the quality of the Chromebooks versus what the laptops can do uh and if all the curriculums going through them then the ability to see it on uh a beat up Chromebook Is Not Great to uh whether or not Infinite Campus should provide updates in real time or we better off student stress wise um limiting those to
076particular times rather than having it be a a phone beeping thing to web access and and go- guard and and the use of that by not just teachers but the district and the parents um so it was super thoughtful and I think we have great partners for the ongoing discussions about technology in our community that I'm sure we go through um also had some unfortunate uh conversations about unfortunate things that Illustrated something and I'm grateful to both um District Council and bva Leadership and parents um from Netherland we have investigations that happen pretty regularly and I just have to say in defense of the district um we have Labor Relations we have contract law we have Labor Law we have the police involved depending on what's going on so there's all sorts of reasons why
077someone at a school or a district can't answer a question about a specific investigation um and that totally makes sense and I I see why we we couldn't do that and be uh responsible on all those levels but I think we can have and create like a generic communication so that someone knows an investigation is going on they know what to expect in terms of the process or at least they know why the district can't answer their question um and it won't be about their particular case it'll be about the process so I think we could do better at that and it would assure a lot of parents that the reason they're not answering is because they're it's like it's news is too bad the news could be relatively innocuous and we'd still be in
078a situation where we can't comment as an institution and parents and Educators and their families all deserve to know that too so I think we could do a little more there and then um finally uh I was talking to some parents who were uh dealing with the logistics of ADV getting to Boulder Tech you know from the other high schools and you know you just you look at the complexity as we deal with grad requirements and we have anou being negotiated about the CL the course time in the high schools those all have implications for like students student access to our great programming so we we are uh we are building wonderful facilities here at Boulder Tech whether it's the uh Factory or this culinary stuff we looked at today and the equity of access
079to that should not rely on students having a car and so we theou stuff negotiation we need to do around High School time is is a is a student access to our great programming Equity issue we need to be able to have kids get out of Fairview at the same time so that they can make it to a boulder tech class and it's not just up to a kid with a car to be able to get to that class on a regular basis but every good could benefit from building building tiny homes or learning the culinary skills so I just think there's uh there's a lot work to be done and I really appreciate uh hearing from the community on the things they care about and the more you talk to the boulder uh Central
080staff about it they are so on it for trying to figure out what the solutions are to those things so if sometimes if you don't feel like the answer is there keep talking keep coming to us and know that I find the district administrative staff to be super responsive and they're trying to figure out how to address super complex things so kudos to them for that board members are the next meeting on this item on this evening's agenda is information we have two information items the first of which is policy ikf graduation requirements Task Force update and proposed revisions to the associated policy I see Robin Fernandez making her way to the podium Dr andon did you want to do any introductions yes thank you board president Raj Paul uh assistant superintendent of schools Robin
081Fernandez is here to give us an update on where we landed with our grad requirements um and the proposed policy revisions I'll say that um as as Robin shares some of the information that uh this evening that uh grad requirements are um interconnected with other things budget uh instructional minutes schedules and so to the extent that we considered uh numerous things and previous presented those uh some of those publicly both to advisory groups and to this board our recommendation is lean down on what we can do right now and uh and and some potential studies of what we could potentially do in the future so with that Robin take it away good evening president Raj Paul members of the board and Dr Anderson as Dr Anderson said Kathleen Sullivan and I are here this evening
082to share information about the process for reviewing bbsd board policy ikf graduation requirements and the work that has occurred since we last talked about policy ikf at the end of last school year to that end last spring a large representative task force was established that included High School teachers high school counselors High School principles including Charter represent ation parents bve leadership representatives of both the community college and the higher Edge systems and District leaders this highly engaged task force met multiple times since the beginning of the school year with the work set forth before them last spring of proposing changes to our current policy ikf the task force discussed the need for board policy to reflect the school district's Grad Plus work plus the everchanging world that our students will enter upon graduation from bbsd
083we know that this policy can provide many many opportunities for our students and the task force stayed focused on that essential understanding throughout its time together after significant discussion and feedback from Kathleen will you advance outside so after uh significant discussion and feedback from 13 representative groups we have two primary task force recommend commendations coming before the board this evening for consideration beginning with the class of 2029 which is next year's Freshman Class the recommendation is to increase graduation requirements from 220 credits to 240 credits and this increase is represented by an increase of 10 credits from 20 to 30 in math and from 20 to 30 credits in science additionally as Dr Anderson stated the task force discussed a number of other aspects of this policy and gathered input on them including the topic
084of name courses that fulfill specific graduation requirements however as he stated in order to address and explore these policy elements there's other work that has begun that will be completed before additional policy revisions can be proposed to the board this work includes primarily completing the memorandums of understanding orus between the Board of Education and bvea on the topics of high school instructional minutes and high school schedules instructional minutes and graduation requirements are part of the complex system that determine course offerings Master scheduling student access to offered courses and teacher assignments in addition we will be discussing the use of Carnegie units as we complete these mou processes and address any identified implementation challenges we will bring other components of policy ik F back before the B before the board for consideration so the red line
085presented as part of this board agenda item board members includes the recommendation of the task force with the increase in credit requirements also as we do anytime the board is going to review a policy we updated the language to better reflect the board's policy voice that includes taking discussion of students with with IEPs from a separate section to being integrated into the overall policy eliminating some unnecessary detail and then clarifying that it's the principal who would be authorized sometimes in coordination with District leadership to uh Grant any variations from that policy in terms of next steps obviously planning for graduation and getting high school requirements is a big deal for families as I know with my two kids who just got out of high school um so we'll be working on communication to help families
086understand these changes and to really uh accomplish graduation planning that meets their students needs and then we'll be continuing our internal work to make sure that our course offerings are clear and aligned and that we can monitor how our students are doing with these graduation requirements and making sure that we've got the course selection that they need to have multiple Pathways to graduation and postsecondary success and with that we are happy to answer any questions that you may have Jason thanks Robin and Kathleen um I'm very supportive of of these changes and increasing kind of our more rigorous requirements um one of the things when we saw this policy see back in I guess at the end of the last school year uh there was a chart that showed how our graduation requirements compared to
087peer in neighboring districts uh so just a question kind of where does that does that put us kind of equal or kind of on Level Playing Field with those districts or how where are we in terms of that chart this this brings us up nearly with the same requirements of most of our surrounding districts Kitty yeah I'm confused about one thing no two things so for the PE there's the paragraph that talks about waving the requirement if they are in sports or if they're completing entire season of marching band or comperable outside activities but then right underneath it it says credit will not be granted for school outside activities when they're used for waving of physical education credits and I don't I I must be missing something so please tell me what that is so
088that is existing language we did not make any revisions to the language around waivers or to PE so um I can't give a lot of insight into that policy language but that is not anything that was changed for this revision today okay so am I missing something because in terms of these two paragraphs contradicting one another am I reading it wrong uh candidly board member Sergeant since we weren't redlining it I haven't read it but let me read it in a minute so as it reads it you can use those um you still have to earn 240 units to fulfill graduation and so while you can wave the PE requirement that that that does not wave the credit requirement got it that's what didn't seem clear to me thank you the other question I had
089was about um oh the Fine Arts requirement only mentioned music and art which I presume means visual art so I'm wondering why drama would not be considered in that as well it is also inclusive of Theater Arts pardon me it is also inclusive of Theater Arts okay great that could be a potential language cleanup because I as a kid who I have a senior um and I and I've already had one student graduate who took theater and that counted for Arts so I know that's what we do um can I piggy back on her PE and then I'll go to you Alex and I'll save my other stuff for after so I have some questions about PE um that I was hoping you can clarify we require 15 credits of PE and five credits of
090Health we only require 10 credits of World Language and five credits of anything that falls into the Arts I'm I have a question about that philosophical why when PE could also be covered under the the 75 or so elective credits that students could take and I also wanted to put forward that um some students choose to participate in non-cut sports to not have to take PE so they don't have to have unweighted grades on their transcript so it incentivizes folks to participate in sports which isn't the end of the world um but it's an interesting consequence and then also just a lot of kids take PE requirements in the summer so they can take regular core content classes during the school year but to take a class in the summer often requires an extra fee
091like you have to pay to take a summer class and you don't have to take pay to take that same class during the school year and so there are a couple unintended consequences of that that what I feel like is an interestingly High credit requirement for PE and I know that wasn't discussed this time but I I really want to raise this issue because I feel like there are a lot of questions surrounding the why on PE board president rajul I really appreciate you bringing that forward and I do think that that deserves some further study as we think about bringing um once we have some of these M us and budget questions answered and structural minute questions answered I think that in the next iteration of reviewing these graduation requirements we can look at
092those and look at the um what's happening like how how many kids are how many kids are we talking about that that um that are using waivers like what's the what are the percentages of that how many kids are taking the online classes how many kids are actually taking the 15 classes what do those kids look like right so I think that those are really the right questions to be asking um around around this issue um I will say that given um the speed in which we were trying to begin to address some of the the really urgent concerns with of the most urgent being number one that the requirements we had that were were significantly lower than uh surrounding districts rectifying that as a first step um we also know that we have additional
093work to do um even with our internal systems on on why why we multiply all of our credits by 10 and nobody else does so 22 credits is 220 credits and uh as uh if there were a button I could push at the district that would change that immediately I would have pushed it a long time ago um we're really unpacking at this point the complexities around um Infinite Campus um and some of the systems and do you have to run parallel systems to change it I don't think that those things are not things that we can overcome but things we have to consider uh but but the consideration around um the requirements around physical education with with the understanding and my understanding is when we touched this in 2017 it was really in response
094to New State graduation requirements and from what I if I remember correctly this is right when I was interviewing and coming on board it was just let's change it to comply with that and then it hasn't been touched really in 20 years prior to that so uh I do think it's it's an opportunity to to to really do some considering and I think when we get to that point the question will be you know how do we create space for the board to have conversation around that and how do we dig into the implications of what that might look like um if we were to go forward with some changes you know ultimately it's a board policy as we think about graduation requirements we want to make sure that we would structure those conversations in
095the right way I'm going to put in one more related and then I'll pass it over to Alex Rob you um got ahead of a couple of my other questions so we'll I'll loop back if we need to as well um the other around the PE and the the potential waiver for folks that participate in band or other BV or other school based athletic activities I know there's always this back and forth intention around whether or not that should be allowed at all um and I would like to Advocate that if we keep these arduous PE requirements that we actually increase um from two to two and a half credits so folks that participate in banned for four years they meet the total of 10 credits or if you participate in cross country or whatever
096a year four years or of participation in a sport or an activity a lot of people are single sport single activity people um and it does require a lot of outside of school time a lot of missed classroom time a lot of kids not taking a class and having an off period because of that like I don't if we're keeping if we end up keeping that 15 I would actually Advocate that we add a little bit more compensatory time for those activities that can wave the PE credits so I'm putting that plug in there for consideration with that PE topic and then I will turn it over to Alex and then I saw Lena's hand up and then Jason's hand up and and I will I will segue in support of what you just said
097um ni I'm complete agreement about the athleticism that it takes for these other activities and the fact that we should give the students um more credit for it and encourage them to find whatever gets them the exercise and activity that makes them happy and makes them active should be enough to satisfy it to that effect I'd actually like to bring your attention to the phrase about when it's waved is that it's a sophisticated and competitive skill level I uh we have lots of sports that are sophisticated and competitive and very few kids who get to enjoy them in our regular P classes I believe we're trying to expose all the kids other to a requirement to participate in sports who may not want to do it for competitive reasons and may not uh be interested
098in achieving a sophisticated level of it so uh I I'm a little torn and I think maybe some of the impulse of people who would like to get out of the PE class is how much they don't want to be in a competitive Sports environment to be active and that's why they want to do something over the summer that's independent and individual um so I'm in favor of increasing the amount of waivers we give being more flexible about it I would strike the sophisticated and competitive language and talk about fun and enjoyable and active uh would be my um adjectives to that effect I'd also suggest that if we want to continue to give more kids fun activities we need again look at the data at the no cut Sports and make sure every coach
099knows that theob job is to get as many kids in there as possible not to make sure that only the competitive and sophisticated ones are there um and then on top of that I'd even go further and say hey let's let's get more uh intramural activities happening uh so that more people can be engaged in potentially uncompetitive and unsophisticated sports and be active and have a great time and take care of their credit as well um we can talk more about that uh later when we get to like the activities thing discussion this the second thing I'd like to make sure uh I recognize that we're sort of maybe doing this in two tiers but one of the issues I'm highly concerned about is making sure that we're being clear and equitably providing the opportunities
100to do credit recovery uh to do credit for work to do independent study things I know that we have vehicles available that students will access like through a rapo ridge that mean when a kid comes from a traditional Comprehensive High School and they don't have some credits they get support and figuring how to get those credits and I think we want to be um I'm in favor of helping more students access that kind of credit to graduate and in making sure that our access to that kind of credit is not a function of how rigorous your high school is versus another one in order to look tough but in fact is got designed about helping our students get across the finish line and as we raise the level of rigor uh which we should which
101I totally support we need to also make sure we're raising the level of support for people for whom that bar is is difficult and to make sure that that's available to every student no matter what school they're in so that's perhaps followup but perhaps like an implementation issue and I don't know where it's reflected in the red line helenia uh I just dug up some notes from our athletic review committee meeting my very first one I attended so this is back in February and I believe that the athletic Review Committee um was looking at that 15 credit requirement five of it being wellness and that there would be 10 credits available for waiver but for this year's seventh graders starting this year for this year's seventh graders they were recommending that there would be no
102waivers at all so and I think this was I'm having the worst microphone tonight forget that microphone I think this was based on um The Challenge perceived with Club Level Sports and that people were getting waivers who were participating in club Level Sports and that that ended up being not Equitable for students who were than having to take these credits um so so there was a big push to go against waivers from that committee and that's what I have in my notes and it was my first meeting there but I do believe that that was their recommendation now that's neither here nor there if it's up for discussion but I do think when we're talking about things that impact people if you can pay to play Big Time lacrosse and get a waiver for that
103and not have and then you could take all of your credits being AP classes right it it starts not being Equitable so I think the waivers are going to be something you have to dig into pretty deep I I appreciate that feedback and uh I just just want to be really clear um that that as we move forward with graduation requirements which are set under board policy ikf that the board will play a central role in knowing and understand in understanding and balancing I think the um competing priorities and maybe competing interests of different groups that work to advise the board and superintendent and so to the extent the athletic Review Committee would have an opinion I bet if we went to our Fine Arts Community they'd have an opinion I bet if we went
104to our world language departments they'd have an opinion as well and um I also think that this is just something that hasn't had substan of work in like about 20 years and so first cut I think we we get to some of the things that are really important which is let's get that Math and Science rigor up for all graduates let's get make sure that every kid who graduates from bbsd has that level of rigor in their High School experience so they're not blocked out of something that they might want to be interested in doing once they leave us but can't because they don't have those skills and so um and to Alex to your point let's support them let's let's let's give kids a rigorous curriculum and support them to be successful not say
105oh you only need two credits of math and two credits of Science and we're going to fill your schedule with other things that might not get you ready for what you want to be and where you want to go so I do think we get there but I just want to be really clear like you know the and and this is how this will be around something like graduation requirements lots of folks are going to have differing opinions uh and it is up to this governance team right to sort through those opinions and set a policy that that aligns with our vision aligns with the mission for our school district aligns with our values our Collective Community Values and so will there will be opportunity to do this I appreciate everybody who wants to weigh
106in and has thoughts and opinions but I'll just be very clear this is a board policy this sits within the purview of the board to set what it takes to graduate um you are the authority is vested in you to to set this um it is why when we're graduations you are we are the ones that um that we certify the the the the diplomas uh there's a whole process through this and so just want to be really clear to folks who may have thoughts or opinions on this the time will come potentially for feedback But ultimately this decision will sit with this team it was Jason and then Kitty so my question we had to do with with uh Rob your your comments about you know I guess the next step in this process
107it's sounds like we you know approve these changes first to math and science but maybe there's another conversation down the road where we talk about you know guiding principles or kind of philosophical views on and graduation requirements and I don't know if that is we mentioned that in prioritization or where we include that but that's where I mean obviously a number of issues I wanted to raise the you know I think we we kind of De prioritize foreign language when we only ask 10 credits of it and it it's not in not consistent with our push for biliteracy and and uh you know focus on bilingualism and so that's a push I have feel strongly about in addition to the the other things people mentioned so I don't know you know I'll mention that during
108our next prioritization conversation or when we have a chance but it sounds like that's our next step here is having a conversation about you know what what do we what do we believe as a board are are you know in obviously you know taking into account state law and all the other requirements um and what is possible um but I would be in favor of a kind of bigger picture conversation as the next step absolutely I think that uh uh to the extent that this isn't um mentioned by somebody at Agenda setting at the end of this meeting it should be right to continue the conversation um and uh I do think that that the order of operations is right right we I believe that we can make the changes today um and adjust to
109those changes I do think that there's important work going on with bvea as we're putting our heads together to try to figure out and structure minutes I will say that when you significantly change graduation requirements and whether it's waivers or credits you change the Personnel needs in our schools right and so as some someone who was a high school principal for a very long time if we didn't need as many um kids taking PE then you need less PE teachers if you wanted more kids taking foreign language you'd have to H hire more foreign language teachers and so there will be personnel and systemic shifts dep regardless of where we set these requirements um and the minutes and the schedule is an important factor in that uh that we're working through and we've had a
110lot of really good productive meetings um in with our through consensus with both District staff and bvea around this idea of instructional minutes and there's lasting implications so I would say that once we get to that place right as long as we're satisfied if we get to you know where we need to be that's the first thing to know and understand and then you know as somebody who's done this before I was in a district where we did this where we did waivers what you'd want to do is if folks if you look like you're going to need less of a certain position you want to give folks an opportunity to get certified in something else or try to find some other things like there's there's logistical things around the system that you'd need to
111be prepared for uh but to your so I think the run I think the way that we're going is is the right way I think that we bring this up an agenda setting we bring it as something that we continue to work on I think that you know to the extent that we can change from the 220 to 22 we can get rid of those zeros somehow and I see I'm looking at Frank you know he's given me a nod of yes we can certainly do that Rob actually he's just staring right at me so that's not what he was doing but wishful thinking uh it but at any event there's work that we'll be able to do uh and uh and just know that the decisions you make at the policy level will make
112will impact Personnel decisions will impact scheduling decisions potentially and so knowing in understanding the interconnectedness of this I think that we're biting off just about as much as we can chew right now with the changes we're proposing Kitty and then Alex and then elenia oh sorry Kitty and then Alex so I want to kind of expand a little bit on what Jason said said I was going to suggest that when we decide about PE we need to know what is the purpose of the PE credit is it to learn specific content that's taught in a physical education class is it to promote activity and wellness is it something else because if we you know like Jason was saying why are we doing what are we doing what we're doing that would help inform how we
113decide to do it and also I realized I just I had misread the the waivers so out of 15 credits only two of those can be waved for either a sport or marching band so you could end up with a number of credits that was not a multiple of five left over which seems odd and that was to what Nicole had said earlier but I hadn't noticed the discrepancy uh my question is mostly a point of order um we this is an information item tonight right when are we scheduled to uh vote to take action typically it'll come to St for study and then action um scheduled for December 10th yeah and is that direct action that we're scheduling it for for so this is information but also serving as a bit of a this
114is also study so study as as well and so um it won't be fully fully perfect it'll be with the changes we're talking to you about it'll be it'll come for direct action on um on December 10th and then agenda setting at the end of this meeting it'll be mentioned and we'll continue to have the conversation so as somebody that put this on agenda setting two years ago you can understand my dismay that we're re prioritizing it and it's not entirely done um I just wanted to throw that out there this is here because I did prioritize it two years ago um I since it feels like we are doing a truncated what we can accomplish now study SL information session I have a couple just questions related to this content that that maybe we
115can bring forward that are not going to necessarily be significant um one I wonder if we can just strike the whole section on units of required for graduation we are working out in our like the definition of Carnegie units whether we can get get rid of the zero that'd be amazing but the definition is not actually app it's not what we're doing we have schools that have oh sorry board members it's between the bottom of page one and the top of page two it defines what a unit a credit unit is at are schools that have eight period days versus seven period days a credit is worth vastly different amount of hours and so if we are working through that in anou that is great our calendar policy based on casby examples in other school
116districts they also clearly articulate in those policies what instructional minutes look like I don't know that we need to use Antiquated definitions in this policy and we can keep those where they're necessary so striking that language doesn't have to change what a credit means um I do like the idea of getting to a 24 credits that would be one year long class is one credit you take six classes a year you get to 24 it feels the math feels a lot simpler but that language to me doesn't add anything it actually creates more confusion in this policy and then I have a question um I noticed that a lot of the information on page three we struck what grades classes had to be taken in we did not do that for our social studies classes
117we left intact in the red line of this policy government um geography n 10 world history grade 10 US History grade 11 and I just wonder if that was an error in the policy if that it's going to be removed um no thank you for that question so those red lines were red lines that I put in where I thought it was redundant just as part of policy style cleanup so if you look at language arts where it already says 10 credits 10th grade language arts I just struck in grade 10 because it seemed unnecessary but those are not intended to be substantive changes okay and so like the language arts at the top it says in grades 9 through 12 maybe we strike that one I'm just trying to understand that there's some inconsistent
118yeah I did miss that one in language arts and that would make it consistent okay um and then maybe it's not pertinent because we're not going to get there and Lynn I see you standing there so I just really want to ask you a question um in the Practical experiences section there's a lot of interesting comments on what can might be covered in middle school and what might count as a practical um experience and I'm I'm just wondering as far as making this policy clear to folks like is there a way that we can better articulate how those different credits might be accommodated accomplished and when versus saying may maybe accomplished in Middle School I think that's complicated um I I'll have to I'll have to look at this and get back with you uh
119to the extent that um if we start to change this now what I don't know is do you start to impact teachers who've been hired in Middle School CL middle schools to teach these classes well I'm not saying we have to change it I'm just wondering if we can make it clearer okay in the in the language of the policy I I hear that we don't want to make big changes but I just wonder if we can if there's a way to rephrase it even if we left the existing practice in place I hear what you're saying I'm just I'm not sure what current PR practice exists and I'd want to make sure that we knew what that was I me because the intent isn't to change the current practice it's to clean up the
120language but the the current language directs the current practice so to the extent that these things are related or unrelated I would need to have uh better information on and uh to the extent that we're bringing this back on the 10th I'm not sure between now and then um we would have that information but I could check does that make sense or I mean if if there's something I need to understand that I'm not understanding let me know that's fine board members any other Alex um uh I'm highly sympathetic to Nicole's suggestion of it takes two years to get this on the agenda don't want to take two more years to fix something while we have it before us in case we could actually make meaningful and good changes now especially following up on Rob's
121uh the superintendent Anderson's point that we are the governing body making these decision decisions and I believe in from a governing perspective our focus should remain at a governance level on what's in the best interest of our students and preparing them for the future and our mission and then we should figure out our schedules and our collective bargaining agreements and our stuff in in the pursuit of achieving our goals for our students so I think I think we should hold as the first strategy the what we're trying to achieve and then we can follow through with figuring out how to do it and not um restrict ourselves from thinking what's best for kids based on how hard it might be to do um so just just for that one other question I have and this
122has comes from ignorance I I don't know how it works but I am interested in how the district might eventually create programming to support homeschooling students and I'm wondering what other districts do around independent study that might interact with their homeschooling programs or other things where they have part-time engaged students in their schools uh that aren't full-time students and if anything in our requirements here affect that and I don't know if that's true or what the answer is our homeschool policies are addressed in a different chapter but does our independent study credit process affect that in any way or do the two interact in a way that would make it difficult for us to expand homeschooling programs not that I'm aware of lenia hi I might have to use your microphone um given Nicole's comment
123about putting this on the agenda two years ago and only getting to this point in it I guess I myself am open to is there a way to hold off a little longer before making changes so that we can make some more of the changes that this board will be interested in making I I certainly do feel that that's an important point that we don't have a place for this then for at least another semester board members that comment I mean this I was really excited about this topic I've been excited about it for a while um and I think getting this right really will impact our students um meet meet really the aims of our strategic plan that being said I do want to acknowledge that increasing our math and our science requirement will
124help our kids get accepted into colleges if they choose that is a path for them and we don't want our students to un to find out because they didn't have parents that were Savvy enough to read all the admissions cataloges at all the different types of universities and they graduate and they leave our programs and realize huh bvsd left me in a pickle because I did not know I needed that many years of math and science to get in and so while I am less than thrilled with the entirety of this I I don't also want to hold up that aspect because I do think that is really important for our students in their long-term success with us and so while I I like this conversation to be continued maybe there are baby steps between
125now and the end of December and maybe we can re like have this be iterative I wouldn't want to prevent that from really benefiting our students and so I appreciate I appreciate that um and and the next first best step is to make sure the class of 2029 leaves us one step closer to to post to postsecondary success and and it does take that long for these Chang is to kind of come into play and and so if that's where we're starting that is where we are starting um and we can continue to iterate Jason I I really don't want to be on the last word on this but I think you know Alex and lenia made really compelling points about you know getting this right and everything kind of flows from here uh Nicole
126I I I although I agree 100% with you know kind of taking the winds here and moving on but your comment about the class of 2029 that really hit home for me because this is we're talking about if this fall if this goes into place this is for the just for the class of 2029 anything else anything else we want to do whether it's PE waivers or foreign language um increasing foreign language requirements we're talking about six years down the road and so I don't know you know again we can maybe talk about this I know we've just completed a prioritization process but I would like to not wait two years to have that conversation again if that's what it took uh and then you know try to you know I know I know there's
127so many things that have to be in place to to get to the class of 2029 but that is a really concerning number to me because it is so far down the road and anything beyond these and these are significant wins and I didn't have only been involved in this for a year but these are notable and important wins but um you know it is concerning that anything we do Beyond this will impact kids six seven years away from graduating I I appreciate the urgency that that board members are acting with in regards to this but I just want to share with you you know the hesitation to move faster than we were recommending is the complexity right that that this is intertwined with a negotiated agreement right this is intertwined with Personnel this is
128intertwined with budget this is intertwined with instructional minutes that are mandated by the state where the enforcement of what those minutes look like has changed over time uh you know you you're looking at potential reductions in force you're looking at potentials of of shifting uh per uh funding models for teachers at middle school and high school right like you when you touch this you touch a lot of things that you all wouldn't know or understand um because they're on the operational side of the district uh changing graduation requirements is a is a significant significant uh uh Improvement in this case and it's it's a big deal um and so there are vast implications yeah even if something you know uh even if something isn't the way you would design it today right our system is
129built to do this so I think that for me as as as your as your employee and as superintendent uh the last thing I'd want to do would be to gung-ho encourage you to change policies that then would break our system in ways that would come back uh in in and the unintended consequences and your question to me would be like Rob why didn't you tell me that would happen right and I think that's fair so um yes two years Nicole and and and I appreciate your advocacy around this I do think we're getting the most important piece to this today which is that Math and Science because to your point um this idea that you know the light bulb for kids goes off at various different times for some kids it comes it goes
130on right now hey I think I'm going to go to college right and if I've done everything my counselor has told me to meet the graduation requirements and I realized to go to college I'm going to have to take a year of remedial or I'm going to have to wait a year or do something else to prevent myself from going to colleges I think is is is completely wrong so um I would say that you know to the extent that that this has becomes an ongoing Conversation Over multiple years I think that you'll have the impact and change but you'll also know and understand what happens when you do it and uh I think the those things need to go hand inand so you know and understand um that we're not hesitant to change uh
131but we want to make sure that you're prepared and informed to know and understand um what will happen good and bad for any changes you make because some things you might consider good and it's not all good right some things you might consider as challenges uh that could cause take money to fix that we don't have which I'll talk about here in a moment so uh I just want to kind of give that context to you all and to the public to know and understand that you know graduation requirements um have have long impacts that I want to make sure that everybody knows and understands before we make moves around some of these things B was a request for Comfort break are there any other any final comments or questions on this information item okay
132seeing as there are none we are going to take a brief adjournment e e e welcome back board members those of you still watching at home um to our board meeting for this evening our next information item is legislative update and I will turn this over to Dr Anderson thank you board president Raj Paul two things to update uh the public and the board on in regards to what's happening legislatively board members as you recall I was one of multiple superintendent who was placed on the the 1241 task force accountability Statewide accountability task force uh those uh recommendations were released um since we've last met I'm really proud of the work want to thank uh the chairs of the process Wendy BS and all who's superintendent in uh Harrison 2 and Rebecca McLendon who's mclen
133who's in on the State Board uh it was over 150 hours of meetings over the course of um of a year made really good recommendations around accountability Frameworks State assessments public reporting um and engagement and continuous Improvement practices uh trying to uh just kind of Bubble Up really where the big um the big recommendations were which was doing some refining to the school and District ratings um really thinking about subgroups and not um having certain subgroups count multiple times as they're being um as as some of these uh ratings are being considered uh using some better metrics for growth achievement and post-secondary Readiness uh doing some modernization of Statewide assessments so uh looking at maybe potentially multiple language and adaptive assessments as we think about how assessments evolving in the future improving data sharing and
134accessibility and um strengthening some of the Improvement processes uh identify schools earlier uh make some things less optional and more required similarly to some of the process we use here in bbsd to to not wait till the state says you've got to turn around to start turning around uh so uh uh lots of information was presented to the state board I believe that there's going to be some bill there's there's already a bill title that's been pulled uh to begin to maybe put some of this stuff um into the legislative session this coming up session so um so super excited about that um and then and most importantly and certainly more concerning uh is the governor's budget was released on November 1st and board members you you've heard me refer to this Governor's budget as
135the first real big move as we think about budget um and budget development process for us here in bbsd and um I will share with you and with anybody who's still listening we have major concerns uh with a number of the proposals in the governor's budget um and many of these concerns we expressed during 1448 um as we were advocating against changing the school Finance act last year many of these concerns have come to fruition Governor is proposing changing um the implementation of 1448 from 6 to 7 years which is concerning uh because they don't have the money to to implement 1448 as we predicted they would not have the money to implement it um and and the big move is that the governor's uh budget proposal eliminates averaging which is going to reduce K12
136funding by $140 million across the state uh but a but if you do that then you don't have to reintroduce the budget stabilization Factor but you see what's happening right it at least with a budget stabilization Factor you own it and you have to pay it back if you change the way that you count students because you say some other formula is the right way right or wrong to do that overnight it'll cost bbsd $4 to5 million less than we have right now uh so very very significant challenge it has um it has me incredibly worried about our financial future um as a district to be able to meet our compensation commitments that we have to be able to meet uh the needs of students uh you know we hear from folks um all the
137time about things that we need to be doing more of to support our kids and we'll have less than what we have today which means tough choices which means um starting to really look you know what it is that we're going to do I will say uh in addition to averaging I do think that there's more that we have to keep our eyes on as we think about this budget so board members most most of you are familiar with the Colorado school Finance project run by Tracy Rainey it's an organization that really talks about school Finance uh we we're bill and I um are frequent member frequent uh visitors to their meetings and um you know the the other piece that you're going to want to watch is not just averaging but how you count
138students Governor is um and in this meeting the governor's budget director Mark fandino uh talked about the governor's support for average daily membership as opposed to the way that we do which is a is a student window count today and uh average daily membership would also then reduce the number of students that that you would fund so if you think about it this way you can fund more per student and if you're funding less students you're not investing as much money and uh there's an argument to be made uh around the ways that we've been what the ways maybe we've been doing things aren't the ways that other states have been doing that but uh when you change things overnight the the impact is real and the impact will be felt all along the Front
139Range uh you know big districts like Jeff Co 20 $30 million for us $4 to5 million Littleton three3 to four million depending on your size and declining enrollment uh think about it this way 100 students around a million dollars is is the math that we use um so in any event I would say that um i' I'm very concerned in regards to where we're headed in this budget season um I will um I do know that um in the meeting with with the JBC that there was a lot of push back on the governor's budget right uh but I don't know that it goes back to the way it was maybe maybe maybe it's less bad but you're still talking about losses in in real dollars um looking at a formula that's going to be
140implemented that doesn't give us money and doesn't consider cost of living as it has in the past um I do think that there's there's an interesting question in regards to whether or not the language of the bill allows 1448 to move move forward if there's not the money to implement it and so I think that that is a question that will have to be answered uh but this will be the talk of the legislative session if anybody was thinking we were going to get a legislative session off and bvsa we will not be getting it off we'll be working twice as hard um engaging our delegation as this thing begins to crystallize uh certainly and uh but just want to be really clear um to anybody listening or anybody wondering what's going on for the
141fin in the financial world of bbsd we are looking at um increased costs increased needs less funding board members any questions about those two items in the legislative update Alex um uh I want to go up to back to the first one and give uh superintendent Anderson great kudos for his contributions and leadership in the task force and all that work I think he was able to bring the lessons uh from his leadership in Boulder Valley and what we've been able to achieve around student achievement and turn around and uh have a significant influence on the direction of the state in a positive way for other districts so I'm really proud of what uh I'm coming in late just in the last year but Rob's been superintendent and's been doing great work uh on turnaround
142on focusing on schools that more work using the data and helping uh our school leaders and our system leaders uh apply the accountability system in a way that leads to things getting better for the kids uh who need more help and the state as a whole benefits from that experience and Leadership from our superintendent so I'm I'm grateful uh for uh his contributions and I know that that is hard work given all the demands we put on his time um but it's really it pays off in Spades and then it puts us in a better position to be dealing with like the second issue which is super important I will bring uh point out that our uh new Senator Judy mé is now in the joint budget committee so in our legislative relationships we have
143folks for whom we are constituents and not just a folk from another place trying to talk to the legislature Dr Anderson I'm wondering um particular the accountability task force recommendations that are going to the state board and you mentioned that there are some bills that are being proposed uh is there specific places in which we could Advocate and move forward certain recommendations even if not all of them and what might that look like uh I believe um uh representative bird is going to is pulled the language and she's going to run a bill and I know that St FR is uh is going to be heavily involved in in what that might look like based on the recommendations and and um I'll be sure to make sure that I'm involved to support that um as
144that's being developed and we were we were we were important contributors to the bill that led to the task force also led by St frame but I think that we brought some some good um ideas to that and so you know my hope would be to be able to work with with their team Brenan Schaefer and Jason Hoffner they've got a good team they they get they get a lot of legislative things done and so we'll we'll try to work with them as they think about what this looks like but I mean all of the all of the early indication is that this has widespread support from state board and others and so uh I'm I'm I'm very encouraged by that um board members I have a rising freshman and I happened to be touring
145Boulder high and governor pois was there with his Rising student and so my hope is that if he spends more time in our schools he can understand how important K12 education is in this budget um one glimmer of hope because I Echo Dr Anderson's sentiments at this early budget draft is not ideal for the work that we are trying to accomplish here in BBs steam Beth I saw you your little icon pop up I want to see if you have any questions or comments um thanks Nicole appreciate it it's been a little bit of a technical difficulty night for me over here but I want to let you know that I'm all you all know that I'm here I'm participating I'm listening um I couldn't see Rob when he was speaking but I could hear
146the concern in his voice and um my only comment on that is just how much I appreciate his transparency and um this is the exact conversation we need to be having because the public needs to to understand some of the challenges we're facing you know four to5 million do deficit that's that's staggering um so I really appreciate you elevating that I know and believe that Dr Anderson and the board and our community will Advocate to the very best of our abilities for our students but it's going to take all of us um I appreciate some of the points that were discussed earlier around participating in democracy and participating in your community so I guess I would urge all of us to take that to heart and um and do anything and everything we can because
147like uh Rob said so many times people come before this board with great ideas the right thing to do and even when it's the right thing to do you can't always do it if you don't have the money so um I think this is a is really concerning so I'm just glad we're having this conversation and uh thanks for for uh sticking with me as I jump in and out of this meeting board members any other items in the legislative update seeing as there are none we will move on to the next item of this evening's agenda action items consent grouping 7.1 Personnel item 7.2 approval of minutes October 22nd 2024 7.3 approval of minutes November 12th 2024 board priorization 7.4 2024 redistricting of the director District boundaries 7.5 Amendment to the agreement with ameran
148physical therapy or sorry Therapy LLC for temporary staffing 7.6 Amendment to the agreement with blaz Works LLC for temporary staffing 7.7 Amendment to the agreement with pedia staff for temporary staffing 7.8 Amendment to the cmgc contract Bond funded improvement work at Boulder High School 7.9 Amendment to the GM cmgc contract for Bond funded improvement work at Louisville Elementary School 7.10 Amendment to the cmgc contract for Bond funded improvement work at Lewisville Middle School 7.11 Amendment to the cmgc contract for Bond funded improvement work at Monarch High School 7.12 Amendment to the cmgc contract for Bond funded improvement work at Monarch pk8 School 7.13 approval of contract with Wayside published German World Language 7.14 approval of architectural services contract for Centennial Middle School 7.14 approval for the architectural services contract for Fairview High School 7.16 approval
149of the architectural services contract for Nevan plat Middle School 7.17 change order New Vista High School cmgc contract 7.18 fence easement related to Foothill Elementary 7.19 Public Access easement related to Monarch campus 7.20 purchase order for cone Inc 7.21 Grant assistant superintendent schools easi CDE 7.22 Grant Food Services equipment assistance CDE 7.23 Grant health services school nurse Workforce CDE are there any items for mbers like to pull from the consent grouping hearing none we need a motion to approve items on consent grouping so move move by Kitty seconded by lenia board members are there any discussion on items within this long list of consent grouping items doesn't appear so I would advocate for some improved titling on some of those Laura can you please call the role on consent grouping Chavez yes medler yes nnick
150yes quinin AA yes Raj Paul yes Sergeant yes anger yes motion passes moving now to the action items on this evening's agenda our first action item is academic calendars 25 26 and 2627 board members do we have a motion Kitty I move we accept academic calendars 25 26 and 26 27 second by lania any discussion on this item board members hearing none Laura can you please call the role Chavez yes medler yes Nik yes quinin AA yes Raj Paul yes Sergeant yes anger yes motion passes we are now moving on to the policy action items on this evening's agenda we only have one policy to take action on jrct student use of cell phones and other personal technology of devices do we have a motion Kitty well I move we approve policy jrct second second
151of Bania for members is there any discuss discussion on jrct Kitty yes I have a question um when we talk about um Banning the schools when school is I mean Banning the schools Banning the technology when school is in session so does that mean as soon as the bell rings kids could get out their their um phones and record other kids doing stuff or is I i' maybe need to look at it again or is the recording piece um banned all the time because my concern about it is is exactly what happened last year at Monarch K8 with recording kids doing stuff and it and it ended up being made public and this could humiliate children I mean who knows what could happen so I'm just curious the policy still restricts misconduct so and it
152would Define misconduct as using your phone during school hours on campus so when school is over when the last bell rings this policy would not not school hour when school hours are over the policy itself is over so kids could record at a basketball game right kids could record um after school if they're doing a dance out in front of the school but the specific conduct that you're talking about remains prohibited in the final paragraph on the first page in green font students shall never use personal technology devices to engage in promote or facilitate any other conduct that violates the student code of conduct including jumping down the use of digital media captured on ptds to bully harass humiliate so I believe it addresses that conduct I'm just going to nitpick a little bit so
153if they don't intend it to be bullying harassing or intimidating because they don't realize perhaps that it would be what happens our definition of bullying does not require intent intent is required as Criminal part of criminal conduct but for us in public schools whether you intend to harass or not if you're engaging in harassing behavior and it meets our policy definition then the intent is not relevant thank you Alex yeah I I want to bring one uh one Clause to the Public's attention and also to the people working in the schools and the kids um and this is one of the ones where uh over I appreciate Nicole board chair Nicole responding to uh so much input that we've gotten um but one of the issues that's been raised uh is around um appropriate uses
154of techn technology for instructional purposes uh where it's intentional and we are talking about exceptions uh to be made during supervised instructional time and for an academic purpose and so some of the anecdotes that people talked about the for the useful applications of Technology are intended to be um something that can be allowed and that the Professionals in the school would be able to make the determinations about when and how to do that uh so whatever that application is there's there's room um to to make it and and uh another one I would just comment on is I really appreciate that um uh this is something that will I believe evolve over time and that I have great trust in our school leaders and the District administration and the and the staff and the schools
155to figure out smart ways to do this and uh this policy is fairly high level in that it's not dictating a lot of how to do this within each school and so I expect there to be some iterative learning um and the kind of issues that our centaura students raised uh in their super articulate super well-reasoned um emails are the kind of things that I anticipate that our schools will be wrestling with um and uh there'll be changes and Lessons Learned and I and I don't believe we know what the answer is to some of this implementation issues so I look forward to uh what we learn about it um as we make progress into you know a later be converging on particular policies that work uh best Dr Anderson thank you board president Raj
156Paul I will say um for the public to know and understand how we've set up our time over the next semester we do have an update on cell phone policy implementation um where we'll be able to talk to the public and I think that's set in March um based on the passing of this policy it'll be my intention to work directly with uh with our High School principles who have been working with their teacher leadership teams over the course of the past couple of weeks and in into next week to think about um how do we iterate uh the implementation of this policy uh starting in January um and uh and to to uh board member medler Point uh you know we want to make sure that we do this in a way that uh
157that clearly sets expectations changes culture and doesn't overreact or cause um as as as Wyatt shared with us earlier these confrontations between teacher and student um in ways that damage those relationships that we know are critical for student and teacher success quite frankly um and so you know we'll working closely with our folks to to work towards the um Fidelity of impementation of this policy but most importantly as this board has shared really this culture shift that I think that board and Community is open to which is this over Reliance on cell phones versus versus interaction with peers as a um as a troubling Trend that is affecting the mental health of students uh that we serve Beth sorry Beth anything I can can't see you popping back in and out um no honestly I
158I think you guys have said it pretty nicely for me I've been thinking a lot about how policy is not the same as implementation right and so Alex said it nicely this is going to be an iterative process and I think we're going to learn from our students and from our staff on how this is going to be implemented and it's not going to change overnight but just highlighting what Dr Anderson just said I agree it's about a culture shift so I'm excited about this work that's all board members because this will be my only opportunity to provide my descent on this policy I just wanted to take it and say that I've had concerns um from the beginning that I have addressed mainly feeling like rather than starting this conversation with a question about
159how does access to personal technology devices and platforms impact educational environment we started with a solution and I feel like that that limited engagement with the data we collected it limited engagement from some of the folks that we heard feedback from it limited our ability to think of all to spend the time to think through all the different ways students use technology and their devices because we are really focused on cell phones um and I I hear us talking now about how this will be not a quick mandate overnight that happens but I still feel like the language around the phones indicates that and because I just I'm still struggling with not having a full discussion on digital media literacy the way in which some of our school programming require s um technology to be
160used throughout the day different platforms how internet policies are are allowing or denying access different sites I just I am a process oriented person and I love to look at policies that are related together and take the time to really understand the nuance and the timeline we've set I do not feel has fully allowed that and so I will be voting no tonight and this is my only opportunity as board president to share my concerns in all of the emails I have responded to I have responded in a way that reflects the will of this board majority and I will continue to do so um I just felt like I needed my chance to say I'm not loving this policy and I respect the majority of this board any other discussion thanks Nicole I really
161appreciate that I think um you know while I'm supportive of the policy I appreciate the issues you've raised throughout um and I think we can do both I think we can implement this policy and also take a larger look at some of the things you mentioned that Alex mentioned that a number of our uh folks in public common and others have mentioned about you know the extent of um I have a list the how how we monitor websites you know Chromebook capabilities uh digital literacy and I think we can do all those things um in addition to you know this and so I I don't think it's either or and but I but I do appreciate you bringing all those points up um and I'm uh thank you for writing on behalf of the board
162on something you weren't on weren't supportive of so thank you for that kitty I appreciate that you shared your perspective as well I mean as I had said earlier I would have voted for this policy back in what is it 2017 or 18 whenever it was we revised it last um but just for folks out there listening who are not as old as I am I can assure you that back in the olden days before there were any such things as personal computers let alone cell phones parents could easily get a message to their children just by calling the school office employers could also do the same when I was back in the olden days kids had jobs after school and I never once heard of an issue with with an employer not being able
163to get in touch with the child um we didn't have the kind of school emergencies that we have now but there were no problems happening that people are fearful would happen if kids didn't have their phones so I hope that's helpful for folks you know especially younger parents who really have no idea like what was what life was like before all of this technology what life was like before microwave ovens um you know we managed and things were just fine um Kitty you reminded me of something I was I was thinking kind of to Dr Anderson's point about you know driving this is you know we're really driving a cultural shift here and we're obvious implementing new policy but you know trying to you know change the practices and behavior and culture in schools and
164I was thinking on the way here like what's the analogy that would be like this and and kind of comment here about what things used to be like it's like maybe this is like smoking a smoking section in an airplane like we can we look back at this like how did that even happen how do we allow that I hope that not to be dramatic but I hope that that is you know this kind of decision is something we'll look back at like how did we allow you know you know unlimited use of phones in schools and it's not unlimited but um and I I think it's one of those cultural shifts you know perhaps like smoking in the smoking section of an airplane um when we'll look back and just kind of wonder you
165know why was it like that and so again not to be dramatic but just as you remember back to the olden days I think about that a lot so thanks I can just say I remember before smoking sections in airplanes J you know um I I feel like this is a potentially move in the right direction i' I've kind of been torn from the very beginning about the direction we're moving in and and a lot of my concerns were that this to a large degree this this policy isn't that much of an extreme move from where we were before in terms of the use of cellones in the classroom which I think is a priority we have to focus on um my concern has really surround been surrounded of not just the policy and general
166but our implementation and our ability to do that with Fidelity across in a consistent manner that's Equitable across our schools and across the district and and and that's where my eye has been you know can we enforce this in a way that seems fair will it be done consistently for every body in in a district and what are the ne negative implications of an educational time and our teacher's ability to enforce it if that's where it's going to happen um and and the policy can't address that and that's kind of where I've been concerned about this I I think overall I think it's it's a good move for school culture but as a part of that moving as fast as we have has been a concern because we haven't been able to engage as much
167as as Nicole noted um and to think around the corners that we're going to have to do with a policy like this um so I just kind of wanted to share that so as we think about the iterations right and thinking about the data and that we are going to have a followup I think that's going to be a big component of it right what does this look like on the ground how does this affecting students in terms of who's being affected by the enforcement of these policies um and and and what steps are we taking to make sure this is happening in a consistent manner across the district Alex I also want to give my gratitude to president Raj Paul for uh your um stewardship of our fast discussion of this topic and for
168your willingness to inform us with the issues that you've brought forward because I I believe the concerns that you and others have raised and that hor he just brought forward are real aspects of what we need to do as we continue the discussion moving forward so I don't I don't think any of those questions aren't part of the follow-up work I do think for the sake of implementation and based on what I've heard from people who are like implementing our current policies with Fidelity now at Southern Hills for example or uh discussions I've had with other district and system leaders and other states um that it's good to have the unambiguous ban from Bell to Bell that actually makes the implementation easy because once you know that you have something relatively straightforward uh in terms
169of what the policy is then it actually is easier on staff to implement than something where every staff person is interpreting it one classroom at a time and so I I think that's part of where I I believe that the schools will be able to be clear and unambiguous like we are going to figure out how to do this but the the leaders of the schools and the community of adults in those buildings need to start from a position of um Clarity that we are going to do this with Fidelity and then figure out how rather than oh well this is a policy that comes down from on High um we'll figure out how to do it and we may what if if we're not really doing it 100% then that's okay because we got
170time to figure it out so it's more starting with Fidelity across all the adults in each school and them problem solving about how to do so based on the experience in other states and ongoing like National polling of teachers for example like the the followup is positive and that the the end of the distraction era is closer to the kind of cultural change that Jason's talking about where people like wow this is so much better than it was before so I want us to not be ambiguous about the intention of fidelity while we are intentional about uh variation and how we do it with Fidelity Kitty so are we planning to pursue grant funding to purchase you know whatever it is we purchase whether they're lockers or you know locked bags or something like that
171for the phones potentially I think that that that the after the board uh votes on this policy this evening um then we'll move forward um on a couple of fronts engaging again our High School principles there who are engaging their leadership teams trying to think about how how do you iterate in a way that's the um how how do you iterate the the enforcement of a policy that uh believes in the good of our kids right um and that doesn't start with we know the kids are not going to follow this policy and so we're going to come heavy-handed right out of the gate to make sure that they are scared of the policy now this is this is a this is unfortunately and public I mean this is how some folks Implement right you
172know with these Zero Tolerance types of policies this is how you get super disproportionate super quick um and so you know to Jorge's point I want to be very mindful of that I want to see you know to the extent that we can say hey this is the policy we don't want to see your phones out and to the extent that we come up with ways where we either secure them if they're out or we take them and folks have to come get them uh we have to measure how that is working uh but you know potentially grant funding at some point um whether if we need to like if we get to the place you know we're in February and we're trying to do something and and we are um unable to get to
173the Fidelity of the policy is passed I think that that would be something we would need to consider and whether it's the lockers or Yonder pouches or you know whatever that might be but I don't know that that is what we're going to do upfront um I want to listen I want to talk I want to hear from our school the folks that are in the schools on the ground um to see where it is we can start and then begin to look and monitor to see what does that look like in our schools and then to the extent you can always tighten up you could always come back later with something along those lines but if you start with that what you miss is the opportunity to see if kids can do it on
174their own just knowing that um you you know the best case scenario is kids say ah I don't have to worry about my phone because nobody else has to either right I mean that's the best case scenario where we've taken this pressure of being on your phone to be in the no or to be whatever during school hours and um but we but time will tell you know to the extent that we're going to work towards um implementing this policy U mindfully uh without the unintended consequences and fears that I think you've heard through emails and through the conversations um you know there's some needles that we'll have to thread in that regard to make sure folks feel okay with this so that's a long answer to your question Kitty but at some point yes
175but uh we're not leading out of the gate with we need to go buy you know thousand thousands and thousands of pouches at the cost of a half million dollars we're not we're not starting there I appreciate that Dr Anderson and it touches on what our student speakers and um mentioned tonight is that they can be responsible and we should lead with that allowing them to make good choices um and allowing them to to follow the rules um and and step up to the plate in that regard and I will also add because it's related to our previous discussion this is going to be a whole heck of a lot easier if we have consistent 7 period days and don't have off periods the schools that have been the most successful tend to not have
176off periods and open campuses we can set open campuses aside but as we get to consistency to help with our programming at Boulder Tech enforcement's policy our graduation requirements sort of our learning experiences it's just another this policy is another for me argument of why we being consistent on a seven period high school day is going to make things easier for everyone are we ready for the role board members Lord can you please call the RO Chavez yes medler yes nnick yes Quin Lin AA yes Raj Paul no Sergeant yes anger yes motion passes board members moving on to policy study items we have two policies this evening the first policy is KH public gifts to schools and the school district and the implementing regulation khr pvst Council Kathleen Sullivan will be presenting this topic
177thank you board president Raj Paul so this uh policy had been identified the by the board as a priority for the fall semester of this school year so we are bringing it Forward tonight um in response to that prioritization this policy had not been reviewed since 2005 um so I made a number of proposed red lines the proposed red lines are really um uh they really are about the language used in this policy not the point to which the board heard public comment tonight in terms of some of the sharing requirements but I did take language that was existing in the policy already expressing appreciation for gifts to the school district and put it at the front of this policy the other revisions are really again just for clarity to eliminate redundancy and then to
178bring in um the very short amount of text that was contained in the separate regulation and just consolidate us to one policy um and I think with that introduction I welcome the board's discussion thanks Kathleen board members kitty I have a question and let's see what page it's on um it's about the $10,000 know limit in terms of of what the board has to vote on or not and here it is it's on page to close to the top of page four and it says superintendent has the authority to accept gift gifts consistent with basic principles which are of a value of less than $10,000 And1 Cent gifts over $10,000 And1 will be presented to and acted on by the board what about gifts of precisely $10,000 one C I mean not that I think
179that's likely but yes thank you for that question as I look at that language here's my actual thought those limits on accepting gifts are consistent with the board's current limits on purchasing Authority which are something that this board uh will likely revisit because we need to look at the D policies here just as a matter of efficiency and practice um our CFO could correct me if I'm wrong but I believe we have currently the lowest signature authorities in the larger metro area and perhaps the state so my suggestion board member sergeant would be there rather than dealing with that one penny amount that could wedge us with a policy issue would just be to replace it with language that says gifts can be accepted consistent with the authorities established in our financial policies that makes
180sense to me Alex um yeah on uh page two item number five in the red line uh it's about the gifts on a matching basis requiring money and service from the school district will be discouraged I guess um I am familiar with matching grants that come from philanthropy that the district might want to pursue so if that as opposed to someone coming to us and say I've got a gift for you and maybe it's the gift part because the gifts include like the grants but we might pursue a matching Grant CU we want it um and not be want to discourage the foundation who would give it to us or somebody so I I realize most of the time it totally makes sense policy-wise to discourage people who would say hey I'll give you 100,000
181if you spend a million on it and we're just you know getting whipped around but if let's say someone had money on the table for something we wanted to do and they said in order to apply for this you need to show what your contribution is and we wanted it would that be disc unallowed or how would that work so the intent of this policy is really just to address public gifts to schools we do have separate Grant policies in the D chapter I hear your point though and I think when I looked at this and there's some casby sample language around it I think the intent of that language is to make clear to our public that you can't install a program in our schools that the district will then take over and financially
182Fun by starting it as a gift but I can look at that language especially along with our grants policy and just make sure they're aligned Beth I can't see you again so I'm gonna just call on you I appreciate that no comments at this time thank you I have a lot of questions s and comments on this board policy um as always you know I I look at casby examples I look at our 10 leg school districts kind of see what everybody's doing and how we compare um I reflected a bit on some of the feedback we've received and and really just best practice with our policy I so um first in the opening par first I want to say given what we heard during the legislative update about continued shortfalls in our budget I
183want to make it immensely clear to our community that we appreciate any type of gift at any level that we are receiving and the way and you're supporting financially our schools to to fill some of those funding gaps that we are we're feeling at the state level and so this policy I think every every way we can phrase the tone of gratit ude and positivity around all the ways in which our community really does help support our students is just a really important thing to kind of look through in that very first paragraph the last sentence says the primary basis of these principles is the Constitutional responsibility of the board to provide equal educational opportunity for all students I don't really understand how that relates to public gifts to schools I think there is a
184lot of work the school district is doing with the Strategic plan with our differentiated funding with our professional development that really works toward providing equal educational opportunities and that sentence just strikes me as an unusual goal for a policy on gifts to school and and I just have some questions about how that ended up there and yeah that's existing language and the current policy so wherever you see the green font and this is uh you know that lawyers hate the Google Universe anyway this is one of the things I don't love about red lines in Google is they can get really hard to follow but the green language means it was existing elsewhere and I moved it so I moved it just because it was articulated as sort of the purpose I agree with you
185I think the Constitutional piece is sort of antiquated a little tenuous probably and I don't think it necessarily advances the policy so we wouldn't lose anything by eliminating that language thanks um sorry okay are you talking about the last sentence in the first paragraph okay no I had the same yeah I was um the other thing um I was thinking about in this is a lot of the language in this particular particular policy feels specific to K8 schools and it doesn't really speak as much to our secondary schools just the way fundraising mechanisms work in those different types of school environments uh and so none of us were on the board back when this was originally this policy was drafted but it feels hostile in a way that's very specific to something that may have
186been going on at the time and I have a few questions related to that um one of the bullets a couple of the bullets say that gifts to regular staff are encouraged but non-licensed staff are subject to that temp per. I'm not entirely sure why we differentiate there um sorry on the policy there's a bullets the basic principles it's at the bottom of page too under yeah the guid to employee Personnel in in part there I mean our par Educators tend to feel sometimes undervalued in different ways and I I just is this another way in which we're we're setting one example for or one set of principles for our regular license lied Personnel versus non-licensed temporary Personnel I just I have a question about why are we delineating and and what benefit that may
187or may not have and I see Bill making I have a lot of Bill questions and so you're making you're posturing if you want to come up but that is one of my multiple questions on this section I am one of the few people who was here when this was last updated in 2005 um so to go backwards just a little bit when it was adopted in ' 86 I'm assuming it was a and still is sort of a standard casby U policy uh for gifts to schools um when that was updated in 2005 that was the sharing component that went in place with that that was about the time that um we'll throw some air quotes around destratification efforts that were put in place so this was uh sort of wrapped up in that
188uh year year plus long processing uh to come up with this language so that's a little history um about the difference between licensed and non-licensed um the the rationale behind that is uh somebody shouldn't be providing a gift to hire a teacher uh that might be teaching their student uh their child um and so uh it's more of a support role uh of what those uh fundraised dollars for staff uh would be for um so that there isn't any uned uh implications of uh hey I provided that gift that hired you so let's talk about what's going on um so that's sort of some of the history on on that piece of it and it's been that way forever so that speaks to the appropriate use but the 10% isn't associated with gifts to Ploy
189full or regular part-time Personnel so only the the 10% is only applied to uh donations or gifts to higher Staff um and you can't use a gift to hire licensed staff only non-licensed or classified which is why it's largely used for par educators and a little bit of Tutor Time and then with that the gifts to employ temporary Personnel non-licensed regular can you speak a little bit and this again gets the Nuance of high schools versus K8 but in a high school that 10% raised stays within the school that is raised and reallocated but the elementary middle and K8 schools that 10% is then dispersed across the district and we don't tend to get detailed reports from the high schools or maybe we do and I'm just not aware so Nuance there uh there is
190very very very very little uh donations to higher Staff at the high schools um it's just a a teeny amount it's um largely at the elementary schools um obviously there's uh that at the high school level it's for specific activities and sports typically um but uh not very looking at one particular High School um it was about $7,000 out of $1 fiveish thousand in the first semester of last year uh that was so that would have been a $800 dispersement uh amongst other organizations within the school uh it wasn't tracked it isn't reported but it's a a very small amount and there's definitely uh specific donations to other uh uh groups within the school that are more uh dispersed uh so to speak and then bullets three and four or three and four and five
191feel to me semi- redund and somewhat contradictory so we can use gifts to employ non-licensed Personnel for fine and Performing Arts the secondary level but we can cannot use them for coaches and we can use them for occasional I I'm wondering why we have constraints around certain types of position um classes or uh programming and not others while I remember some of the discussions from 20 years ago um I don't remember all the specifics of how this uh was pulled together um again uh the coach side of it could be construed in the same manner as teachers uh of providing you know the resources to hire a coach and who uh has the perceived power uh around that um position um and then for the the fine and Performing Arts uh those are all extra
192Duty contracts so um you know choir activities or um uh could be marching band things like that um are sort of wrapped up in this uh so not coaches but um uh but coaches are extra Duty aren't they aren't coaches extra Duty as well yes they are um but uh for whatever reason the language got put in that way so point for consideration I see Kathleen taking notes Dr Anderson so uh having two kids that have gone through theater band chorus all the Arts that you could potentially want to participate in uh I do think that now often times Bill these might just go through booster club kinds of donations versus donations directly to the school but but I can tell I know that the marching bands hire clinicians right so some somebody who's an
193expert in percussion right so so we don't provide funding for clinicians for marching band or technical dance instructors for the musical or sound and light technicians to run the board or during the the the rehearsals and then the finally the production there so so those are more like assisting the the theater director band director Coral director uh and so so different than coaches who might be like d like they're not like directing the play per se uh I would say though that we could certainly as we Analyze This policy look through the Nuance of what this does and what it doesn't and how does schools do that and is KH even the Avenue in which folks use anymore my my my guess is that um maybe for theater and depending on where like you do
194theater like if you do theater at Monarch versus Fairview they have very different budgets and very different ways to fundraise so um but Bill you we should be able to know and understand who's using this for what and how and whether it should sit in policy or somewhere else and that that gets to my overarching like one of the thing overarching concerns and wonderings I have you know board members we just looked at igd something or another that talked about fundraising in a few different spots we'll talk about sponsorships in a little bit I this board different topics has worked hard to have same topics in the same policy and not have like fundraising spread through six different policies and be really clear and concise and making sure we're using using the same um decisionmaking
195thinking um overall like goal of the of fundraising all those things should be in the same policy so we're pretty consistent and so if we want I think pulling those other things in so our community has more transparency about where all the different types of money that are going into schools how are they being spent how are they being looked at similarly or differently and why so pulling it all into one this one policy I think will help and to Dr Anderson's Point like it would be nice to know how folks are using this and if it's even useful at all anymore I mean this policy is rather old and who is it benefiting and who is it not um and and being maybe a little bit more clear particularly with our how our secondary
196schools are approaching gifts again gifts are really important we do not want to discourage them but when we talk about them we should talk about them consistently and in the same location and so um exploring and poking on that a little bit further would be helpful Alex um I want to support that and and Echo back to earlier comments I made earlier based on feedback and conversations I had with people in the community about KH I as same as president Raj Paul I completely want to grow the amount of money that we provide to things that help our kids um and at the same time I I really want to have information information about how that's working um between schools between student groups I mean I can imagine that the athletic coaches come up because
197of Title 9 challenges uh for Equity where there's um Federal requirements that you can sue us about based on how inequitable the spending might be between coaches for one program versus another which is not the case uh in um Arts interesting to to my knowledge um and likewise I'm really interested in in understanding uh you know how do we compare the PTO contributions across schools how do we compare the booster clubs for activities across schools sports and activities because it also ties in to me for who is participating in these things um and are we do we have um uh opportunity gaps that are happening for some students especially for the activities and enrichment things that go on based on the fact that we rely on Parental fundraising to underwrite them what kind of pressure
198are we putting on that leads to the demographics of who participates in these Sports and are we creating burdens and obstacles on low-income families in particular and our kids looking at that when they decide what sport or activity to go and C really love to do that but I don't want to put that pressure on my parents to contribute the 12,000 bucks that I know that's going to be coming down the pike so I would love a lot more insight into where the money comes from and where it goes from all that um fundraised activities and then allow us to match that to the opportunities we're providing to all students uh which by the way backs me up to the first sentence to Nicole's Point um I I support the second sentence in the first
199paragraph talking about our primary basis is providing equal educational opportunities for all students if it's the Constitutional responsibility I'm up with striking those two words but I'm interested in the rest of that sentence um for exactly the reason that I want more insight into how the money goes bill can I ask you a couple practical questions on how KH monies are reallocated looking at our historical reports there are some years in which schools that are able to report generous donations 50,000 60,000 100,000 are also receiving K sharing um and I'm just I guess my question there is the language says Title One schools and schools with more than 30% 30% or more free and reduced lunge can benefit from these K the KH reallocation it is there a better way to be more Equitable and
200is it considered year-over year what an individual School raises I mean I'll pick on Centennial that sometimes it raises 100K and there are some years it gets a KH allocation so the policy as has been implemented for 20 years um is agnostic to uh how much you collect and spend on U activities only whether you hit that 30% threshold so a school in theory could contribute to the CA and then get money back because it's in complete it's entirely agnostic it is just a percent and that percentage for in reduced lunch will fluctuate as demographics change enrollment patterns change um board members I guess I have a question if that's the I don't no just another looking at the more you look at this policy and some of the implications just the more questions come
201up and so um a question that I had on that uh from anecdotal conversations over the years there are some schools that have um populations that um parents might not be employed because they're students at Cu uh potentially grad students um and are low income because they're not employed they're going to school but may have resources to provide uh donations or the rest of the community uh parent Community is enthusiastic about fundraising uh and the the donations don't always come just from parents uh when you so we have the list of every single donation that comes in uh on a cash basis um who it comes from uh sometimes they're a little more generic but uh uh there are uh foundations there are um matching donations there are individuals there are um Anonymous donors uh
202um so there's a broad host of of where those resources are coming from jge um I think any movement towards simplifying this policy and make it more straightforward and El distinctions is a move in the right direction because I was very confused for parts of this in terms of what's allowed what's not allowed under what conditions so thank you thank aen um but I think this my comments are more less about this particular policy but that larger conversation around the need across schools and how we can more equably distribute funds or or provide connections or a space for collaboration or conversations about you know what the needs are what the various needs are across our different types of schools and what capabilities and abilities or resources we have for raising funds or for receiving or
203for having access to gifts right we know there's tremendous variation here um and you know um some of those schools that have maybe 30% free reduced l also might have extremely um well-off families that can balance it out and you know I'm not sure how we balance that and this policy definitely doesn't do that um so I think it's part of a larger conversation that I'm not sure what space is for us to have that and and where we might be able to have better connections across our schools because there is tremendous inequality across our schools um you know and even with differentiate funding and resources and there's tremendous need variation across our schools um and and I'm not sure and I definitely don't have an answer but but starting that conversation it create a
204space for it um in a different avenue I think is important First St Dr Anderson a a different lens that the board could use to think about this versus percentage of poverty could be um the lens in which we look at schools for high support within weighted differentiated funding so to the extent that schools are as designated as high support schools uh um there's there's a smaller amount um and the dollars that that KH generates could potentially be driven to high support schools um as opposed to a a 30% threshold which um in this community is title one but in a lot of communities is not not Title One and those are those are decisions that are made locally uh or you could set the poverty rate at a different threshold um I mean I
205think that that those would be good discussions for the board to have I think there's a few ways you could think about you know to the extent that the 10% is something that I'm not hearing that the board um you know the board wants to honor um and and not adjust where that 10% goes I think could potentially be something that you consider in this policy Alex then I have another question um yeah I uh I could see different strategies to focus where the money raised by the 10% goes to um have greater effect I am I I I'm not sure and I'd love better insight and this on me for looking through the budget to figure it out like how much are we generating how much are we talking about when I do the
206back of the envelope envelope calculations it looks like a pretty small amount of money spread over all the title one schools so it could be more effective um if it were more concentrated and then I will reiterate uh um those of you new to the board who didn't put themselves out speaking about this a month ago uh I benefited from and uh I got a knowing smile from Nicole uh but I had about 12 hours of input um from the communities and the PTO on their fundraising and the pressures they're under and I totally support the notion that we don't want this policy to be so confusing that it makes it harder for them to raise money and harder to engage parents appropriately and to Jorge's point really believe in supporting them in doing that
207but and doing it in a more systemic way um so the 10% is not for me a big deal it's a very important symbol I think of the district's commitment to equity um and how we do it I think I I don't sure I understand um so I want to not lose the commitment to equity that's symbolically here and I'd like to uh figure out a way for our broader systemic approach and communication to help produce that equity while also um increasing the total amount we get J I appreciate I think all my questions are really driving out this policy is confusing and it's not clear um yes Dr Anderson I I would say um as as I think about why you have what you have I know that the board wanted to talk about
208KH uh I do not think that Kathleen took any Li lities to make any other adjustments other than language cleanup um if you'd like if if the feedback is make it more clear make it more connective to other policies in regards to fundraising uh we could give Kathleen an opportunity to try to do that and bring that back to the board for study not for action but for study again to see if she's on the right track um and anybody who had any concerning notes could share those with Kathleen and then she could take that and adjust um the draft for your consideration under the guys that needs to be more clear there needs to be you know some some explanation on why some of the things are that the way that they are uh
209and um uh we we could do that or we could continue to have the discussion um this evening Kitty so my comment is just more to add perspective to when we review certain policies because I know how upset you were about having to wait two years I brought this up more than two years ago you know and Alex says well I brought it up he did bring it up but I had brought it up a long time ago so sometimes things are just not as urgent as other things and I've been frustrated for a long time so and I think Kitty that's it it's I don't feel like this policy is urgent I think it deserves proper cleanup and consideration I think time timing it along with our budget and timing it along with our
210other policies that tangentially relate to fundraising is really the right idea um so I I don't find it urgent I think it's just it's important and so taking the time to do this right to get engagement if we feel like we need Community engagement on it I think that's the right call um can I have one more question before we move on to the next policy and then Jorge um I sometimes gifts from charter schools are included in an arcade the KH reports receive usually they're pretty nominal I mean I feel like I'm hearing that some at school is $250 to $500,000 this year in um fundraised dollars charter schools have their own policies they participate differently but my question is why sometimes do we have Charter dollars noted in the KH report from some
211schools but not inconsistently um so uh to my recollection Horizons uh although they haven't for about two years which uh there was some you know leadership turnover there uh they participated in the KH policy and actually provided that 10% to be uh redistributed um we'd have to check the policy waivers from all the charter schools uh but um my assumption is that they have weighed waved this policy and that so that they even Horizons may have waved it but still participated out of you know goodness of the being in the community um so they're not required to report it um and it's just a uh donation into their organization um so one thing just to sort of Sidetrack a little bit um because the the concept of Title One schools being at that 30% is
212threat old um it's important to note uh the the use of funds and also the weighted differentiated funding uh those have very specific uses that are tied to it uh and specific constraints so federal dollars for example you cannot buy food with federal dollars so tital one funding is not able to be uh used to purchase food so if you want to have a parent meeting in your title one school you can't use your title $1 doll to buy food for that meeting so this sort of other Avenue of getting dollars that are much more flexible and uh can be put towards those things at a school that might not might be prohibited uh or they haven't been able to fund raise for or whatever uh just provide some more flexibility uh that that people
213might not be aware that that uh title $1 aren't just additional dollars to do whatever you want with they're very speciic specific and uh uh requirements go along with them thank you that that actually kind of connects with the kind of additional point I wanted to make and just the question in terms of you know thinking about this you know um one final point is just that you know really getting a sense of kind of what we're doing and kind of how funds are being generated what it looks like across schools and then who's accessing how are how those funds are being accessed by schools in different sorts of ways and because there's was variation in terms of who's accessing year to year when they're not being accessed and so I wasn't clear on what
214the barriers were if there's restrictions on use could they be used for food is it only for personnel and if we can understand those mechanisms to make it easier more direct for to make it accessible to schools that have the need to access these funds so that they don't go and use and I think that is is understanding kind of where we're at I think is part of the question in terms of this policy also Alex um yeah I really appreciate this discussion um and the complexity of the topic and the and the link to and I think linking to the other policies and the other ways we raise money is a really thoughtful way to to address it so I I I would like us to you know do that in the medium term
215not the far off term because I know that makes the task harder and we have a lot on our agenda um I will add that and I think um president Raj pole was filling me in on the amount of looking at other places with similar policies I think our 10% thing is pretty rare and my Kudos actually goes out to the leaders of this district and the community uh for putting it in there during the earlier stratification discussions so in our pursuit of simplification I would just like to keep that symbol um and find some simpler way to understand it or use it or make sure that we have some other mechanism to uh reflect our values of um oriented towards equity and make sure that everybody around the district sort of has an understanding
216that we're in this together um so I appreciate it even though it seems to muck things up and makes it more complicated and there's more to track and figure out but uh I want to make sure we maintain that sort of visibility of our commitment to the broader community's Equity issues Dr Anderson just to the extent that that some schools are rolling these dollars over right I think that there was some concern there was some Community concern uh there's nothing in the policy that prohibits dollars to roll over and uh you know if I put my principal hat on there may be some lab or some type of space that I'd want to um redesign in my school where I'd want to be able to use those dollars over a couple of years and then
217spend it all at one time as opposed to you know I just don't want people to think that our School principles and our leaders can't figure out what to spend the money on I don't know that that's the case I think sometimes as you're trying to think about about capital projects in your building or if you're thinking about a technology purchase or a refresh of a library or I there's there's a lot of hard costs one-time costs where it makes sense to roll dollars over for a couple of years because they may be an expense every third year so um you know I just want to make sure that we're really clear that schools aren't spending the the the do maybe aren't spending down every single dollar that in KH a because it's not a
218requirement and B it maybe they're saving up to do something special for their Community yeah and sort of like the changes that we made to our srra funds we don't want schools to feel like they have to spend on the money quickly and spend on things that are not impacting the well-being of their students and so we really do want them to make thoughtful decisions on how to spend their dollars that will have the most bang for their buck and so thank you for highlighting that Dron Jorge yeah thank you because I think I sure phrase that more as a question than a statement because that's I was wondering if if there's a logic that it doesn't represent what we think it represents in those numbers when they're left over and so that's very helpful
219thank you board members any oh sorry Bill just to add a little bit more um uh seeing this over the years um uh we've seen the timing of fundraising activities happening at different times right so in of the Year versus start of the Year versus middle of the year uh and when those campaigns kind of roll out at a school um the other thing is to just for clarification um when me and my team talk about KH and think about KH it is exclusive to the concept of hiring staff because we're talking about the 10% that 10% is only for hiring staff it's not for buying more Chromebooks or putting in more furniture whatever the the need might be and so uh that is just gifts and donations that are coming in for various reasons
220so um in the reports uh that we put together uh there's one that's all the donations and then there's just one that's just for the staff piece of it uh and for a whole host of reasons like we know on all our uh Staffing comments that we've had uh how hard it is to hire some people sometimes So the plan might get put in place to to uh hire some extra staff par Educators or tutors and then you can't find them but you've already hired the collected the money so there's just a lot of nuances to how the spend actually happens at a school when these are semester driven reports that are happening middle of the year end of the year first semester second semester so just some clarification thanks for that bill and again
221thanks to our community for all you do to support our schools um whether it be volunteering or donating or the whole host at getting your kids to school in time I mean we we know it takes a village and we appreciate you the next policy to study this evening board members is policy khb sponsorships and implementing regulation khbr Kathleen would you like to kick us off so again this was a policy that was identified by the board Bo for priority for review um I have made very basic really minimal red lines because the board hasn't had a lot of discussion and there was no legal impetus behind making additional redlines so really this policy is presented for the board's discussion and then we'll look forward to making additional redlines and bringing it back for study
222board members this is another policy in which I feel like the tone can be improved um I think sponsorships is a really untapped way for us as a school district to forward the mission and vision of the educational experience and extracurricular experience of our students and the way I read this policy feel feels almost like eh we don't really care for you when I look at other school districts their tone is entirely different and they are specifying the things that can be done around sponsorships and exclusive purchasing rights and all the things like you can have banners you can have fixed signage you can have the and we're kind of talking about all the barriers we're throwing up here um which overarchingly feels wrong we go to our taxpayers on a regular Cadence asking for
223funds for Capital Construction we are relying on our our our families um and our Community Partners to help provide extra resources the state of Colorado continues to underfund education and I think going to schools across the state whether it's Chevron I know different values are funding um engineering wings and Technical Education Centers and you know athletic types of companies are are funding sport scoreboards and Athletic Facility I mean we are falling behind in a way and if we want to keep fees down if we want to use fewer dollars from our general fund to support some of the work we're doing we're not you know if we want to maximize the bond dollars we are going after and will continue to go after because we did get like a 20-year plan on Capital on maintenance
224for Capital Construction I just think we need to be more proactive in this area um and so for me there are a lot of just improvements um to this policy and I I know there's lots of different ways that sponsorships and these types of things can be accomplished but I think we need to take the time to be more proactive and think about what we can achieve with the help of our community and the businesses we have that not only for I think like Boulder Tech our engineering programs our I mean food industry we have so many employers and so many people that we could tap into to help really improve our facilities and I think this is a great policy to start with lenia is there a casby sample for this no has anyone
225seen a sample that they liked from a different district and certainly with the board's discussion we're happy to do that research and come up with samples that are consistent with the board's expressed values so I think if board president Raj Paul's um statements reflect the will of the board that it will be easy for us to find some examples that can work Kitty then Jason Alex def first Kitty Jason Alex and I'll call on Beth okay so I agree that especially given the funding situation our state is in that any way we you know we need to explore all kinds of ways to raise money um I can anticipate and it's um the not it's not a bullet but item number eight which says engage with companies or individuals whose actions are inconsistent with the
226school district's mission and goals or Community Values that that could stir up a lot of controversy and I see that there is the Review Committee because we've all heard folks say why would XYZ University or school do business with XYZ company because they're heinous and awful people um my qu I have a question about the Review Committee is this an ad hoc committee is it a standing committee I guess those are the only two kinds I don't think that that Comm committee is currently operational so would it be convened then if there were um a sponsorship that was being either offered or sought after I suppose if we were seeking one You' do that review piece in advance I would suggest that if the if the board is is open to this type of a
227strategy right an active sponsorship of naming rights that that uh we we think about a policy that allows for that um and I would share that there are companies that help facilitate these types of agreements and Partnerships and so it would be almost you know to move forward it would almost be a business agreement right where the potentially you want to name I mean you you could name anything you could sponsor anything uh I've seen this work where where high schools that sold the naming rights of their stadiums stadiums when I was a high school principal the the school I was at stole the naming rights of our stadium for four years for $100,000 right and a certain percentage went to the school and a certain percentage went to at the time the district called
228the athletic preservation fund we could use we could we could dedicate that if it's athletic facilities to Title 9 expenditures and to the extent of we we talk about equalizing some of those things or or or an opportunity Equalization you could do something I just don't know to the extent that this policy probably at some point served as guard rails for schools who are out there seeking to do this on their own I just don't know that that's the atmosphere that we're in right now but if we wanted to get aggressive around sponsorships I do think that there are are groups that um and we could do an RF um an RFP or an RFQ if we wanted to do something along those lines to look at this as a potential opportunity um otherwise what
229would happen is uh some schools would get it and other schools wouldn't because some schools have connections with like it wouldn't be Equitable I would think potentially um and so that would be and and if that's the direction that the board would want to go I would say that we write the policy in a way that en encourages that and um maybe even pair it with a regulation on how we're going to do it or we would we would we would go out and try to find somebody to help us with that can I ask a question and then I it was Jason and then Alex just to follow up with that Dr Anderson usually those they take a cut of any um and I just want to know I guess or have information on
230what the the value of the Simplicity of hiring a company that's going to take a cut to seek out those sponsorships versus doing that in house and in house feels nuance and challenging and we shouldn't have an elementary student necessarily on a on a committee like that um but as a board if the board explores that like thinking it through what the pros and cons be for our system you know absolutely I I would say that if this is a new strategy we would need FTE to be able to run that we'd have to hire somebody to do this uh it's different right to to know and how to engage with businesses I mean there's a whole strategy around seeking sponsorships and whether there's National Partnerships or local Partnerships I mean this is different than
231the football team selling a banner right on the fence right or selling a banner on the scoreboard we're not talking about that we're talking about you know significant Investments and others and typically uh at least the um you could write the RFP or RFQ in a way where uh you know folks don't get paid unless they get your money right whereas the other way you could pay somebody and not have anything come back to it so it would be a business decision I would say for the policy though to the extent that um that the policy be written to allow and explore those types of things I think it would just be a very different strategy than putting together a committee to decide whether we should do these things or not I think that that
232actually is pretty clunky and probably would prevent anybody from ever giving us anything so Jason this is more of a logistical question you know just on the issue of kind of writing a policy that's you know more welcoming and less hostile and I wonder you've mentioned Dr Anderson the word partnership a few times and does is this better housed in a policy on Partnerships you know where you include the guard rails and all the limitations but it's you know framed as we want to partner with our community whether it's you know XYZ or in Partnership or in uh sponsorship of certain things and so I wonder if that's just a better way to talk about this than as a separate policy on sponsorships and I don't know if that's to Kathleen or to I mean
233I think this is a business move right I think that this is you know to the extent that it's a part it's a business agreement right um and so uh not all of our I mean I think that that the spon you know the sponsorship piece um and there would be some overlay around some of our the board's policy around naming of facilities and we would have to think about what's in bounds what's out of bounds who are we okay with who are we not okay with right and you could you could have somebody navigate that for you as opposed to navigating that you know you could set some high level parameters as a board I think I think it does it does lend itself to be separate just because it's it would be really
234clear on how we do these things because if you start naming stuff right and and if at any point in time if any one of our schools would have named their Stadium like everybody else would have tried to name their like that's just kind of how it goes so uh I don't know um partnership yes but I think that this is more of a business kind of a proposition and to the extent this is happening in the state of Colorado I don't know um my experience with this was in was in a large District in Florida uh but I was looking online and it looks like the folks that helped us are still in business so I'm guessing there's businesses out there to do this type of stuff anything else Jason and then Beth um
235uh again I'm all supportive of getting more money and figuring out a way to get bigger donors um to the table too I am curious like it seems like as written now this would cover the $250 donation to put a banner on the baseball stadium too so this isn't the policy isn't just talking about Big Ticket items um where the strategies that superintendent Anderson's talking about you know are relevant so we do want to figure out both levels right and then um I agree certainly with the elementary member of the Review Committee uh be exciting role and it' be fun to be on the committee with him or her uh but in the meantime I must say I support all nine of the bullets in the in the guide rails um and uh I've worked
236in the charter school space enough to know that there is ferocious anti-corporate interest in the public school stakeholders out there who will persecute you for if you are corporatizing our Public Schools so um I would not go Whole Hog on the we are up for sale and think that that's going to go over well with the community I would expect um intense and vociferous feedback um if we don't have the guardrails in place uh and so I'd encourage us as we can if we think to make a more friendly policy to make sure that we're signaling to the people who are not excited about corporatizing public education that that's not our intent Dr Anderson that's that's what you'd put in the RFP right you'd be really clear like you know and if and if we're
237good with these gu these guidelines then you would put that in there and then to the extent that this is being implemented around some of the fundraising efforts of booster clubs I don't think it is right I mean but you see a lot of banners in different places right so um so in any event I think that that's something maybe we could bring to the athletic Review Committee or talk to ads about uh so um based on that conversation C do you feel like you have the information that you need to potentially redraft this policy or do we need some more clarification on any topics I'll give it a WHL Beth I did call on you I just want to make sure before we wrap this up that if there's anything else you wanted to
238add you had the opportunity I appreciate that Nicole thanks um no nothing major I I guess I will just ditto a lot of what I just heard um it really resonates that he yep as Kitty said in this current time we really do need the money we need to encourage people to uh to support us of course and that I like how Rob was talking about how this is a business move I also appreciated Alex's Point around keeping up the guard rails and not making it too much of a uh business proposition that we're where we're not able to uh we we're privatizing public education so that's it just agree with what a lot was said thank you for that that concludes this that topic for this evening oh board members we will move on
239to study items we have one study item this evening resolutions regarding protection and practices to support immigrant families and lgbtq students and staff in light of our current environment Kathleen I'll hand it back over to you thank you board president Raj Paul so um at the board's meeting last week there was some discussion by this board about um articulating some reassurance to our schools and to our families following the election that may have raised concerns for um many members of our community so this board item I pulled together the resolutions that the board has adop that our boards have adopted since 2016 there have been four in 2016 um directly after the election the then current board adopted a resolution that was specific to addressing what the board titled postelection fears it's a pretty simple
240resolution that was linked there for the board's consideration and then in 2019 there were um ongoing concerns really around immigration and this country's approaches to immigration and at that time the board adopted a resolution 19-27 regarding our immigrant families the purpose of the resolution at that point was to really communicate to families that we don't collect or maintain information about immigration status that we're very clear on what we expect our principles in schools to do should they be presented with Federal immigration officials so the resolution was really intended to provide information to families and then some guidance to our schools if they were faced um with immediate concerns at their doorstep then uh in 2021 again in response to some ongoing news headlines um the board again adopted another resolution in support of immigrant families
241um at that point the resolution was really targeting some efforts at Federal legislation and speaking against those efforts and then the final resolution was adopted in 2022 at that point the state of Colorado was looking at our social studies standards there was a lot of debate going on around Colorado's law that requires inclusive uh teaching of history that includes the contributions of all sorts of groups including historically marginalized groups so the board adopted a resolution expressing support for our lgbtq community and making clear that the board ex uh expected the State Board to adopt inclusive standards so so those are really four resolutions that your prior boards have put out language that really gets a direction for schools and reassurance for community members so we provided those for this board as part of this aboard
242agenda item for the board's discussion and consideration as to whether the board would like to give direction for a resolution to be prepared at this time and with that background I look forward to the board's discussion board members who would like to begin hor thank you for sharing these Kathleen I think it's really important to look at the work that the previous boards have done to address these issues um and it's so um top of mind right now just because we're revisiting these exact same issues again and I know there's a lot of nervousness in the community to the degree that we can to reiterate our commitment to standing by people who are vulnerable right now and creating State spaces in our schools and that it's expanding right it's the exact same groups that were
243targeted over the last far too many years right that are that are popping up again um and I think the degree that we can reiterate those same commitments provide the same information CU I know people are asking the same questions now um is this a safe place what Avenues do we have have for support and and what ability does do our schools have to provide access to enforcement to uh restrictive policies or to groups that are being targeted whether they be um immigrants um lgbtq plus um students um or or those who are feeling targeted by um current changing policies um so anything that we can do to kind of provide information and reassure people right now is important and and really think about how we can open up community in our schools to make
244sure that students and families know their rights and feel protected I think from these various um resolutions kind of pulling together those key pieces some of these are very specific but how we are actively working to um provide safe and inclusive environments for these populations one thing I felt like was missing from all of these resolutions that might be worth exploring is the degree to which these the populations that are being potentially persecuted add so much value to our community and be really clear about how much we value them and the the the value they provide so it's not just like what are we doing to protect them but acknowledging the way that they really make us as a community what it is um and really elevating that so it's that's just one message I
245felt like in a lot of these resolutions was lost Kitty then Jason I would also like to see us add religious minorities to this group um you know we've had islamophobia for a long time but in recent years there's been a significant rise in anti-Semitism and even if people are not you know directly being called a name or being discriminated against uh folks are feeling it you know my daughters identify as Jewish because their father is Jewish and they have noticed it and so if they have I'm I know other folks have too so I think it's an important piece to add and also talking about the inherent worth of every individual that you know there aren't any people whose worth is greater or lesser than any other people um yeah I agree with with
246all all my colleagues and the points they've made the only thing I would want to include would just be you know we may see changes in policies at the federal level but I think the there are very clear federal laws on what protections that kids across the board are uh the responsibilities of the federal government responsibilities in federal law and so I would want to have a lot of this be based in you know federal law that's fact that the federal law guarantees protections for this this group of students or that group of students and so um I have a sense of that but Kathleen will rely on you to include that but I think that's an important thing that you know policies may change Personnel may change but at the end of day there
247are foundational federal laws that provide protections for a whole range of students that you know maybe it's as a reminder but also to let folks know that we will use and uh you know adhere to those laws you know that uh withstand like I said changes in administrations um and so I think that's an important thing to include as well lenia then Alex uh I think one of the things I would like to include also would be the difference between law enforcement and immigration enforcement I think that's a um I think it's an important component to help the community understand and I don't know where the next Administration is going with that and I don't know where the military plays into that but I do know um that differentiating between law enforcement and immigration enforcement
248can hopefully help people to feel a bit more secure um and then Kitty I do see religion included here and so I don't know um I see bbsd does not tolerate any kind of discrimination based on disability race Creed color sex which includes marital status sexual orientation gender identity expression national origin religion ancestry or need for special education services and I was you know I was kind of looking at that thinking are we missing anything there well I was just thinking of maybe calling out religions I mean instead of including it in a list I hear you um I really appreciate this discussion and I think it's very timely uh I agree with talking about calling out all the groups that um in particular that are that do feel targeted by the political discourse that
249goes on I also want to be clear that somewhere in it uh I guess two points one is and this includes student on student bullying and harassment and behavior using our existing anti-harassment and bullying policies because this is a this is something that's that's deep into our culture and so there will be kids acting out it as well as people outside the school acting on it and we have policies in place to to manage and address that that I want to reinforce as well I'd also um a a Nuance to um Jason's point on the principled federal rights and laws that we have is another one where we are also protecting our students under Colorado law under B SD policy so in particular if we have a super lame interpretation of Title 9 we already
250have you know legal uh opinions coming down on the trans stuff and um if we solely rely on the federal law to defend it then we're subject to well Title 9 doesn't defend that anymore whereas we say we have a district policy that does X and that's not just because it complies with federal law it's because it's our values so I would add state law and the district policies um as well uh cuz we um sometimes when we defend a right uh we'll be safe going back to the federal law for it and then in others we could be dealing with a department of Ed an office for civil rights that is telling us we need to not do that we're like I'm sorry it's our district policy is not to discriminate against trans kids
251um we don't need Title 9 to do that if you're going to mess up Title 9 Kitty I was just saying to Alex's Point perhaps just putting in something there saying regardless of any changes that may come about in laws or policies at the federal level that we remain committed to our policies of the non-discrimination and all of that any other comments for Kathleen to consider as she works her resolution wi Wizardry J and then Alex I'm not sure this is necessarily for a resolution but just a broader thought about so many of the discussions we've had about mental health and supports among our students right and how that may manifest in our schools and making sure that that this is being accessible right as part of our services that we're providing and creating that
252space that that there might be things that ratchet up in the coming days um and that I know it's already happening with kids who are afraid to go to school um or families that are concerned about this so um not for resolution per se but thinking about how we can kind of better link families and students up to these resources Dr Anderson absolutely I I think that that as a as an administrative team we're thinking about um you know how do we support our students that are going to be in the crosshairs of some of this potential um challenge that that that uh that potentially can can come and make sure that we stay true to our community values and beliefs and the beliefs this board in the school district to protect and support all
253of our kids and families who deserve that and uh and send that message loud and clear in a way that um that reduces fear and and and hopefully increases comfort in what is I think for you know some of the populations in our community incredibly challenging time Alex and then Kitty and then elenia little kitty I was just going to add that um I know we have tasked Kathleen with quite a bit uh but I appreciate the timeliness of this as something to bring back to the board relatively quickly um so get it out there lenia I wondered if uh speaking to a little bit more to Jorge's point about helping families to be more comfortable feel feeling like immigration enforcement isn't going to impact them I'm wondering about if we as a school district
254can encourage our mayors of our cities our police Chiefs to speak up and say that they are law enforcement not immigration enforcement I've I heard Mike Johnston speaking about it and he was really eloquent and really wonderful and then I've also on the other side heard that the mayor of Aurora won't say anything so I don't know if we have any bandwidth or or way to connect to that but I I sure do think those things matter for your leaders to be speaking out and I I'll reiterate at the quarterly meeting um with the city of Boulder the county and CU those entities that we meet with they've made commitments along those lines and so um I think I know for the city of Boulder is it's other localities we can touch base on Kitty
255so this is somewhat tangential to this but related and I just want to tell a little story that in I can't remember the year but it was the year that Obama was up for re-election he was running against Mitt Romney and I was volunteering as a pole Watcher and I was at El Dorado just checking to see you know who's voted who has it I saw these two little girls looked to be about first grade one of them was sobbing and the other one said Mitt Romney is not a liar Obama's the liar and it just hit me what these kids overheard most likely their parents talking about and how it would be great if we could communicate to the community to be careful what you say in front of your kids because I don't
256think any parent would want their child to feel as upset as this little girl felt about an election and it's really easy especially when we're in situations where there are there's such Division and such vitriol that we really don't want to be passing that along to our kids thank you board member for the discussion on that and for our continued commitment to support everyone within our community that wraps up our study items for this evening which takes us to the final topic of future agenda requests board members this is the time when we bring members that we'd like to include in our next prioritization meeting are there anything board members would like to bring forward lania graduation requirements I have one thing um and I know I I've brought this up to Dr Anderson before
257is just like a hey this is interesting but we did receive actually an email from the community about trans the idea of kindergarten Readiness and so I just want to elevate that conversation about transitional kindergarten and how work some states are doing as a way to bridge between preschool and kindergarten for our our students that are old enough technically to be ready for kindergarten May no longer qualif ify for preschool but really just need a little bit more um support and time and a not kindergarten type of classroom and so that was just something I wanted to reev as we're thinking about challenges with prek and the needs of our kiddos yes Rob so we did look into the feasibility of that and we can provide the board an update on kind of what we
258found as as a next step and then we can kind of think about what we need to move forward there are some barriers that prevent us from doing some of the things that others are doing thanks Alex um yeah I uh I guess I have a a proposed amendment to one of the things that is on the list now um I think the capturing of the gifted and talented audit with direct about inequality doesn't really capture uh the board's discussion of the topic and i' I'd just like to expand that to a a broader discussion of like how we are meeting the students that might benefit from acceleration as well as the gifted and talented thing so I think the framing of it is sort of a gifted and talented audit update um didn't capture
259where we were going in the discussion and would leave us not necessarily getting to some of the other issues that were important to the board so um I think that's there but I I would like to expand it I'm curious if Beth has any comments on that one I appreciate you bringing that up I I would agree I I feel like we had a pretty robust conversation around gifted and talented and what does it mean to have that label versus other things that might kind of fold under that such as acceleration which is obviously different or dis different different differentation of instruction for students and um yeah I I think it will be great to get some information in the form of an update but I am certainly hoping for more regarding recommendations of next
260steps not just an update um and I think that was kind of the spirit of what we talked about last time at our uh prioritization meeting so I appreciate you elevating that again my anticipations is that might be a calendaring uh bring into our calendar bring our calendar into play but Dr Anderson I see you your hand raised well I I would say that so board members know and understand regardless of the topic on the prioritization that that our team will watch the prioritization meeting to grasp the context of the conversation around the topics and so that even though that the title might say gifted talented update I do think that those other um topics will be captured and those meetings are record and our team relies on those to make sure they know and
261understand what where um where the board would hope to get information so any other items board members Alex this would be another one uh that may be covered in some of the other things but I think based on the discussion of KH and on the discussion of um the sponsorships and stuff I think one something that came up multiple times was uh having a deeper understanding of the fund the raised funds that are available with a big picture perspective on the the funds that were able to generate and how they're generated and how they're spent and where and by whom for what so um I would love at some point to have that maybe it's one of those deep Dives uh in the long term but have a chance to really get into the meat
262of the finances of that Jason um just from our conversation around cell phone policy it seems like there is some interest in kind of a broader conversation the next steps Beyond cell phones and you know a number of things things were raised about you know what kind of protections are in place around school issued laptops um you know the use of personal laptops and middle and high school I think a whole number of issues came up during this conversation that are probably you know the next step in that conversation so I don't know what we title that or what that look like but maybe um you know technology update 2.0 or just you know the the remaining items uh that were that work that were raised during this process board members staff thank you for
263another wonderful Tuesday evening at the Das um I think with that our business for this evening is adjourned have good [Music] night e for