001e e e I'd like to call order this regular meeting of the bower Valley School District Board of Education for Tuesday September 10th 2024 board member May attend and participate in board meetings by electronic means in accordance with BBC policy bmea and state law Laura can you please call the role Chavez here medler here nnick here Quin Lin AA here Raj Paul here Sergeant uner here I'll by myself thank you I would now like to turn the mic mhone over to Beth who is going to lead us our land acknowledgement this evening Boulder Valley School District resides and operates on land that is incestral Homeland and unjustly and illegally taken territory of the Ute plean arapo Cheyenne Apache Navajo and 48 other tribal Nations historically tied to this land who have called This Land home
002since time Memorial we acknowledge the atrocities committed here including the painful history of genocide forced assimilation and efforts to alienate the indigenous inhabitants from their Homeland supported by the policies of the United States government bbsd is aware of the many indigenous peoples past and present and their dignified Nations and cultures who care for the land with strength and resil resilience bbsd recognizes the histories of the land in Colorado and the survival of many nations that carry their oral Traditions into the present it is bbd's responsibility to educate ourselves our communities and our students so we can embrace the wisdom and knowledge of indigenous people and actively stand together to address injustices in offering this land acknowledgement we affirm and honor the history wisdom oral traditions and resilience of indigenous people and recognize the responsibility to
003care for and appreciate this land together thank you I'd like to remind everyone everyone that the mission of the Boulder Valley School District is to create challenging meaningful and engaging learning opportunities so that all children and Thrive and are prepared for successful civically engaged lives good evening everyone thank you for joining us in person and remotely this evening we're glad to have you observe and participate in our meetings at this time is there a motion to approve our agenda for this evening moved by Beth seconded by Jason Laura can you please call the role Chavez yes medler yes nnick yes Quin Lena yes Raj Paul yes anger yes motion passes we will begin this evening's meeting with our work study work session portion and this evening we have the district accountability committee's executive team here
004with with us to talk about um planning for this semester jointly between the board and the district accountability committee I will turn the mic over to Chris who can introduce his team thank you board president rpul and members of the board the Dak executive committee is excited to be here with you all tonight to talk about uh priorities for this fall and most likely probably priorities that will extend into the spring too um I'm here with Jam Richmond and um Felicia yman gang and Ali bruy and Stan Hickory members of the Dak executive team Jessica diamond isn't able to join us tonight but uh sends her uh regards we unfortunately and I apologize ol for this missed the window for getting you the document I sent you all by email over the weekend onto your
005agenda formally so I uh recognize that not all of you may have had a chance to take a look but what I wanted to do was share some of what Dak exec and our larger Dak membership are thinking in terms of uh priorities that we're anticipating for the fall both from an administrative standpoint and from a uh statutory work standpoint um and also really hope that this can be an engaging and informal dialogue with with you all to understand um any initiatives that the board is considering this fall that Dak can be a support for so that's really our our goal for the evening um board president rash Paul I'm happy to start by overviewing at a high level some of what we're anticipating from Dak or would be happy to start with a board
006conversation as well whatever whatever works best for you the board I think because hopefully most of the board members had the opportunity to read the document that you sent and it's fine that it's not the agenda this is a very informal conversation that happens twice a year Chris and I did had the opportunity to say excuse me chat um prior to this meeting to talk about the list from the board prioritization so he had that in advance his team could look kind of look through some of the things that that we know are we have prioritized for the fall and then he made some they worked through some priorities based on that so just to level set with everybody to understand where some of that work um from the deck came from and I think
007it's fine with me because a lot of your thoughts are relied to the work that we have already planned this semester if you wanted to start working through your document and board members this is informal so jump jump in whenever you feel fit see fit thank you for that and and to the rest of De exec I don't need to be the only one with a mic in front of me so if anybody wants to jump in please please feel free to um so a couple of things to start just from a housekeeping standpoint um one of the initiatives that Dak engaged in last spring which the board is aware of was a survey tool out to School principles and Sac chairs to try to gather some information to establish a baseline of some of
008the practices that are happening at saxs some of the um constituent members and and membership requirements of Sachs and some of what Sachs need from Dax specifically and and generally uh to operate as as best they can so we called that the sac health and practices survey so one of the key outcomes of our analysis and review of those survey results was some opportunity to help strengthen the communication between Dak and Sack to help share actively best practices and resources between Dak and Sack that helps that that will help sack perform at each school at an optimal level and also I think an opportunity to collaborate with the board and with the district administrative staff on how to reinforce the value that is placed on sac and how to um use some of the district
009communication channels to share some of those resources so one of the things that we hope to do this fall is to um increase the frequency and the bidirectionality of communication between sack and Dak primarily through influence on our Dak Representatives ensuring that our Dak representatives are sitting at their school Sac meetings reporting the workings of DC and Reporting back up to DC the workings of sack and otherwise just kind of Shoring up those communication channels and we also want to take a pass at looking through some of our resources and documentation resources like the sac manual template bylaws other things just to make sure that sacs at schools have access to that information and are acting on it to to help facilitate their work so really this is an initiative based in trying to hold
010open and make more active those lines of communication that we know are critical to the work of transparency and accountability so um Jack knows that this is a commitment of the boards we know that our members can be um increasingly doing more to help um keep those lines of communication strong so it's one of the things that we want to focus on in uh the aftermath of that survey so would love the opportunity to collaborate with you all on anything that you have seen or are hearing from your constituencies that Dak can help facilitate so that's one area in terms of the next housekeeping item this is membership as the board knows the fall is always a flurry of activity in establishing Dak membership and then ultimately submitting that slate of members to you all
011for uh vote and approval so we are actively doing that work now and at this stage we have a mostly full Dack roster with a couple of gaps so we have a handful of schools that have not submitted reps so I'm working with uh the board secretary and other members of Dak exec to do Outreach to principal and see if we can fill some of those gaps so I've listed a couple of those here we're in active dialogue with many of the uh impacted schools here and we hope to get even a few more daak WS on the roster um between now and when we owe you all a slate of members for you to to vote on and approve um one of the other things we'll do and and you all uh will recall
012last fall when we submitted membership we did so with percentage breakdowns of how Dak membership Ed with the different representative groups that are tracked as part of our statutory kind of representation guidelines so what we'll do between now and when we owe you all membership is do just one we have just one year-over-year comparison to see if we've gained lost or otherwise changed the kind of Representative percentages on DAC so we're hoping to make this an annual process so that we can track more longitudinally how representative Dak is of the bbsd community and make sure that we're fulfilling that part of our obligation so um a lot of active work on the membership front right now um and as you can all imagine it's a lot of emailing and chasing and asking people to fill
013out the form and checking in to see whether or not they filled out the form and I've got a very helpful Dak exec team supporting me on this so we're excited about that let me pause here before I get into some of the more substantive um items of our priorities and just see if there are any clarifying questions I can address or anything else we need to address so one part uh you talked about the communication um channels between Dak and saxs one important aspect of those are attendance at meetings and I was wondering if this year you have any thoughts around how you're going to take attendance for DC membership um and if there are processes in place to make some of that communication more seamless between Dax and sacks like there are different
014things Dak has done in the past with temp boiler plate notes or you know things like of that nature but I know attendance can be in addition to recruiting those individual members attendance is an important part and I was wondering if you were going to be tracking that this year yes sports president Raj Paul yes uh Dak membership is tracked every year and I think the the initiative we want to lean into this year is taking action based on that tracking so essentially build better structures so that Dak exist Z can monitor attendance over time and then lead that will hopefully lead to clearer and more actionable interventions if we see patterns where schools where the representative for some school is is not attending on a regular basis or is missing that 80% attendance threshold
015so um definitely one of our Dak exec members just a few moments ago was saying we should have a QR code based system and just you know improve this and it's something that we're we're paying attention to and that we want to take more I was going to say aggressive action that's not really the right met for more active attention uh and and tracking this year so one thing that makes me hopeful is that uh we just had our our first DC meeting of the year last Tuesday did a quick informal poll and it looks like we're you know around 2third brand new members this year which uh is both it introduces a learning opportunity and also potentially brings a lot of new energy and a lot of um hunger to the work and so
016I'm hoping that we can capitalize on that energy and translate that into you know a lot of active initiatives finding folks getting paired with things that they care about and really driving some of that um some of the attendance that lagged a little bit in the spring of last year um and likewise as I mentioned part of the expectation that is the case and something that we're setting as a clear expectation this year is that all Dak reps are attending their school Sac meetings and using both their own personalized notes and also the minutes official minutes that are taken and longed for DC meetings as kind of information conduits into their Sachs so um definitely something we want to lean into this year and I think we we heard clearly from the sack health and
017practices survey that that's something that sacks are hungry for and we we hope to be able to take some action on that thanks for that and I just want to put a plug out for board members if you know Folks at those schools that are in need of second da members um working your networks to encourage people to join and um adding your value your lens and on why you feel like those the Comm the school accountability committees in the deck are important for not only the school but for the district Jason um yeah I just have a question on the the sack the timeline so the survey has already been done and now it's compiling results and getting best practices out what's the timeline for getting those to the different schools sure thanks for
018that question so um we have already as as of our First Act meeting done the a lot of the reinforcing work on the the Baseline expectations for um for DC members in engaging with their Sachs and Dak members have been provided these resources as part of their their joining uh the the um accountability committee and I think what I'd like to do is do a kind of a near-term quick hit of just compiling the existing resources Without Really substantial modification just to send out to our newly compiled list of sack chairs uh in yeah I mean likely in the next few weeks just to make sure that folks have it because you know folks have already started their Sac cycle this year everyone who attended the August principal and Sack chair and Dak rep training
019will have received some of those materials in followup and so this is really reinforcing that and just on that what you I know this is not a a discussion of the sack but I know you know you you've presented before about kind of the various you know um the wide range in differences in in sacks across the district and what are some of can you talk about some of the kind of best practices that you found from the surveys and um I mean you and I were a part of a very high functioning sack and so you know would love to see that replicated across the district but what are some things uh that you all noticed from the surveys that you'd want to share with others you know as people are starting to to
020form their sacks and as this is happening feels like these recommendations should kind of were best practices should get out sooner rather than later yeah that's a great question and I will be happy to share a short slide deck that Dak put together with the members of the board if you're interested in just kind of having a high level overview of of our additional analysis of those survey results I think what we saw well first of all what we saw was only about 40 principles responding which suggests right from the start that there are folks that either don't have saxs or do didn't respond to the survey either way we want to you know kind of reach out and and uh initiate conversations there so from a coverage standpoint There's an opportunity to work with
021and partner with our daak Reps for those schools that didn't respond to make sure that there's an active dialogue happening and then I think more concretely what we saw was a high level well I guess I would first say generally speaking most Sachs a majority of Sachs are meeting the minimum membership requirements most Sachs are meeting the minimum meeting frequency requirements and generally speaking most sacs are creating their agendas as a collaborative effort between principles and Sack chairs so from my perspective from a baseline that's good that's a good place to start we don't see all schools meeting all of the representation requirements and certainly we don't see all schools with the same level of robust collaboration between sack chairs and and uh principles so I think in part some of the common themes we
022saw between principal responses and sax share responses was um a request for additional guidance right how do we make there there was willingness to make saxs operating and functioning at a higher level but a need for some support in doing that so in part that's how I see the responsibility of Dak reps right to be playing an advocacy role in in their school Sachs and also D can be a conduit of information for um making sure that folks are aware of you know the stipulation in the bylaws making sure folks are aware of some of the recommended practices so um in part that that emphasis on bidirectional communication is intended to help um not necessarily make all sacks totally un Universal and consistent but give everyone tools to do better based on what they're doing
023now I have a appreciate that question I have a follow-up question and maybe this is for Dr Anderson um it uh we principles can be busy have lots of priorities and issues but do we have the opportunity to engage um the rest of sort of the district uh instructional support structure from the other people who are helping the schools on Improvement to have the like success of the sack or the interaction with the sack be part of that responsibility as well or do we house all that responsibility in a principle that does or doesn't do it and so if we can make that something that's part of the broader support structure maybe that'd be a way to get the the other 16 principles on board so as it stands today and as has been um
024traditionally the case it is uh you know we've asked our our principles to make sure that they're recruiting Gathering parents right to establish sack and we've shared best practices and we've done different levels of accountability around this I would say over the past six years um um but but what you're suggesting would be that potentially more support for individuals and trying to think about strategies that work or don't work think I I would I'd be interested in working Chris with Dak exec around what are you know if you have examples of not high functioning sacks but sacks that weren't functioning or weren't existent and then began to exist and what are the strategies that were deployed that we could then scale and then support I mean I think that we're all on the same page
025we want schools every school to have a sack right and help that to make sure that we have a robust act because our work together I think's been impressive so um open to that I would love to within the context of Boulder the Boulder Valley School District maybe study some folks that weren't didn't have some didn't have a sack um and and now have a high functioning sack I think that'd be interesting to learn and if I may um board member medler one of the Fairly consistent pieces of feedback that we received in the survey was um an interest in how how and in what ways the district administrative staff cares about Sachs right so part of part of one of the sets of suggestions that came through a couple of different responses was you
026know is there some way to have kind of a midyear check-in with the district to kind of have someone come and talk to us about what we're working on and and what our sack is doing now obviously we want to kind of find scalable and Sustainable Solutions for these kinds of initiatives but that spoke to me of a recognition on the part of these sacks that this is part of a system the district knows about this the board knows about this our school Community cares about this and we want to kind of build those connections so um I think I saw Dak exac taking some notes in that last comment so I think what we can probably do is leverage communication with our Dak reps to see who's who's seen turnaround who's seen things improve
027and how they did that and then that can maybe start to um kind of give us some forward- facing strategies go ahead board president I say do you want to segue into the policies sure and always happy to Circle back on any of these items right as as we go through this informal conversation but appreciate that last dialogue um so in the the next section of what we identified as part of our anticipated priorities has to do with policy decks um responsib for supporting the board on policy revision so we know that there's a number of policies on the docket for the board this fall quite a few if I was reading the list that U board president Raj ball provided uh accurately so a couple of things that have emerged to cross reference out
028of conversations from our first DC meeting as of last last week and the board priorities would be um two things first personal technology policies and neurodiversity so um there are a number of folks who have both both existing Dak reps and new Dak reps this year who are um hungry to dig into this issue and we understand that the board has an appetite for digging into the issue of personal technology and and cell phone policy as well so one of the things that I was hoping to talk with the board about tonight was opportunities for collaboration and for leveraging Dak to help support Community input processes to understand on a broader level what folks care about bring bring as many different perspectives to the table as we can and hopefully find a way for the
029DC policy subcommittee to both help collaborate in analyzing that Community input and then also potentially helping with the revision process on policy so there's I think High interest and hunger on the on the part of Dak to engage in this and to to really figure out how best to um engage in some of the successful practices for Community input that we've seen I know there's been precedent for tasks task forces task force I'm not sure what the plural of that would be um and there's other sort of forms of community input that have found great success in recent policy revision work so um that's one that I wanted to bring to the board's attention and see if we can have a dialogue about how to how Dak can collaborate there the other that I listed
030specifically is neurodiversity which I know the board has had some engagement on in recent months um in in this policy what I think might be the best location for DAC support would be to help with thinking about checking in on implementation should a policy be adopted by the board this fall as the board remembers uh Dak heard and had the opportunity to weigh in in small group dialogue last spring I think it was our March meeting last spring um with members and representatives from the autism autism advisory Council who were working to produce this initial draft so I think some of our members at least our members as of last year have had some opportunity to weigh in on this and we know that the the timeline may be tight uh from the board prior
031standpoint on this so we of course want to use DAC as an enabler and a facilitator and not a blocker so if we don't have the opportunity to engage again on that policy itself we would love to think about how either later this term or depending on the time frame for adoption and implementation um have an opportunity where Dak can participate in checking in on how things are going so that could be a spring priority so those are those are two areas kind of concretely cross referenced with the board priorities the third area third sub bullet I have here um under kind of DC generated interest is in our uh leadup to the first meeting and in our first meeting we had a number of conversations that kind of all coales around the idea of
032how Dak can play a role in supporting the district's efforts to hold adults accountable for their behaviors in schools just as we're holding students accountable for their behaviors in schools and we put this in in the policy area because as an area of exploration because we we have been hearing this Dak exec has been hearing this as a commitment and a desire from members of Dak but we're not sure if this is located as a conversation in policy if it's a conversation where we can collaborate on on you know what sort of guidelines and um and best practices and training opportunities uh adults and buildings have but it's an area where we're hearing pretty substantial desire on the part of DC to dig in and kind of explore and see if we can support so
033I wanted to document it here even if it doesn't quite fit in the policy category so that we can open that up for discussion the last thing I'll say before I pause is in this additional policy area is um based on conversations with uh board president Raj Paul and kind of how we've seen the policy shake out I think there there may well be an opportunity here in Dak providing feedback on a in a timely way in two of the policies related to searches and interrogations that the has prioritized and part of what I'm hoping we can discuss tonight is how we best want to structure the the process for Dak to provide input on those maybe more concrete policies that are less exploratory um I think that there's been historical interest on DC and
034policies in that zone and so that might be an area of intersection where we can support and of course part of our conversation here is to hear from you all and see if there are emergent priorities or additional thinking that the board has where you feel that some of what you have prioritized would warrant or benefit from Dax input so I'll I'll pause there on the policy front and and hope that we can engage in some dialogue um I guess I'll start just by with Jrs JL I think it makes a lot of sense for the DC to weigh in on this one early in part because of the work that you guys that the Dak has done around the student code the other J related policies I think that lens is important I was
035looking I know the Colorado Association of school board updated their example policy in June of 2024 and so there is some more current uh pieces of information that are available there I mean the deck I could see looking at other school districts and see what their policies are um this these ones are really heavy in law so there's only so much wigor that I could imagine but if there was something that if Dak wanted to take a dive into I remember M of the board I don't know how you feel but that would be one that I'd feel comfortable given the availability of information that does exist that's pretty current for you guys to um dig in deeper even if that extended the timeline a little bit and I will say that timeline component board
036members is important Jack only meets once a month their next meeting is not until the very beginning of October and so when they are working with policies and I think that's the what I heard you talk about with neurodiversity and a little bit about personal technology is your timeline and your participation does your participation does change the timeline a bit on things because of the frequency in which you meet and that's just something we need to be aware of uh and mindful of as we work work with you on these really important policies so I'll pause there and see if any other board members have thoughts Alex yeah thank you um yeah I'm interest uh I look forward to uh the input and the dialogue about those policies including the personal technology the neurodiversity I
037think there's there's um room for Fruitful discussions and I believe it'll probably be iterative uh because I think we probably will take make our first neurodiversity policy and then um need to learn about how it's going uh I think the board has signaled pretty clearly it does plan to change the personal technology policy um but that will be the policy change and then there'll be a lot of followup on all those things for the implementation so one of the things I'm interested in is how we embrace the information that Sachs and Dax can then deal with afterwards um and that we're getting the right questions explored and the information so I think uh some of the rationale for those changes is based on academic achievement that's reflected in the performance and growth data um and
038then some of the other things are being pursued because of social emotional learning or sense of uh School climate and belonging so I'm interested in how we would learn about how the implementation is going in the schools and across the district on those other parameters as well and so I think one of the questions and I look through most of the uip and the other stuff and I really don't see as many of the metrics that would help us understand how School climate is progressing how kids are feeling about it and the social emotional stuff so I think in addition to the very valued input into the policy making process I think we're going to have significant changes that lead to us wanting to really have good conversations over the next 18 months about how's
039it going and that's where I'd love to start thinking about how do we legitimize and incorporate some more data that is beyond achievement and performance data and I'd be curious to know what your thoughts and the discussions have been so far on those fronts and if there's if we're in a good position to to move forward on those data sides thank you board member medler and and I think I can speak for Dak exac and for ol of deck when I say that I think we're we're seeing an increased hunger for that not not just the process of providing input but also the process of leveraging the accountability function of DC to kind of check in on how things are going right to to use your your words and you know we started to try
040to do something like that in the um post kind of couple of semesters after the adoption after you all adopted policy KB on family engagement we invited Ari and other folks uh from the district to D last year to kind of hear implementation updates obviously we already have some structures in place for uip related implementation updates and I think that um what I'm hearing and I of course again I feel like I'm talking so much for Dak exac you all can come off mute as well but I think we're hearing especially in our dat uip subcommittee a hunger for increased Clarity increased kind of precision and thinking about how to track implementation success over time and and to your point board member medler provide additional input not necessarily in the context of a formal policy
041revision but like on how implementation is happening and how we're hearing things from our our communities so um I won't overstate and say that we have a clear and defined process for that at this stage I think we have better and more clearly defined processes for the input mechanism than we do the tracking and implementation mechanism but it's something that the the DC membership is committed to and and in partnership with the board I think we could we could make a lot of Headway there thank you for that and welcome U thank you for your work I was able to attend the first Dak meeting and see well the energy with all the new membership and to kind of had a chance to talk with everybody it seems like the first event that you had
042with the principles and the new members was really positive and and it seems like it's it's a good pattern it's been going on in terms of getting people ready and kind of understanding the work of the decks I think I think that's great um I appreciate your interest interest in um uh addressing these policies and I think it's it's really valuable to have your input throughout this process both in De designing policies but also after the fact implementation and processes um one thing to consider is I know um given the structure of our schools right there's a lot more elementary and middle schools than high schools and so as you think about the review and getting uh parental input and feedback from the community is thinking about how you might be able to leverage getting
043more High School feedback because searches and seizures uh technology policy we really impact kind of the high schools at a much greater scale than our elementary schools at this point so I think finding ways to kind of maneuver that and do that Outreach I think would be kind of kind of critical and then kind of you know populations that that historically get get missed um as you think about um kids on IEPs or or English language Learners in those populations that um we we might miss melenia could you speak to a little bit more or the idea of adult accountability I'm not sure what you were referring to there absolutely yeah thank you board member qua so I think what we're hearing from our membership in that context is when we see drafts of uips
044over time there is a lot of emphasis on training and training resources and educational opportunities for educators and other staff in school buildings to address things like implicit bias address things like inequitable uh or disproportionate discipline right that's one of the areas that we see a lot of uh we see actively represented in a lot of the uips and I think some of our membership are also feeling like when they have had or when they have heard others having experiences where teachers or other school building staff are um not following those training guidelines or acting in a disproportionate way toward um students of color toward other marginalized groups that there is a feeling of Disconnect between those experiences in the schools and the commitments that are represented in the or the trajectories and commitments that
045are represented in the uip so I think in part that's leading to a set of questions a set of a set of Wonders right like what what are we able to do to more directly address the behaviors of adults even as we're instituting a lot practices and policies that both govern and guide the behaviors of students in in classes so I've listed this as an area of exploration because as I admitted we're we're not sure if the location for this is really in policy if it's in additional work and iterating and refining unified Improvement planning processes or some combination of a number of different sources but I think we're our DC members are feeling like they're hearing and experiencing things that are out of alignment with some of the commitments they're seeing in things like
046the draft uip and that opens up a door for how do we make this better how do we improve this yeah on that one I'm going to be honest I'm struggling to see the policy connections specifically and it really gets into a lot of different things negotiated contracts labor laws it gets into I mean it's that what you're proposing as tentacles in a lot of different places that doesn't feel really clear and feels a little bit muddy I really like the idea of starting in the uip and the Strategic plan and where you can get a little bit more concrete and creative and then thinking through I mean I would need really need to take some time looking at our policies but like there's not one jumping to the Forefront um so that's not the
047mechanism right away what are the other mechanisms to look at around accountability and I hear the desire to really um think through accountability on those specific areas from the membership of of the deck butul I'm struggling a little bit on the clear policy connection as it sounds like you are as well one thing I didn't want to follow up on um the idea of giving input to policy and into sort of um following up like on how the policy is going in practice I heard board member medler talk about an IDE like really buying into that following up on policy and practice in part because the time scale I'm wondering um from the from the board and from the deck our I believe our neurodiversity policy is coming to us at the end of this
048month is that or sometime soon this fall and same thing with um if we work backwards from the board's desire for a end of semester update to cell phone policy it really does limit without a change in Timeline dax's ability to participate in our personal device policy and given your statement here about liking to advocate for broad Community input Community input prior I just wanted to touch base with the board members to actually answer that question that you have directly about whether there is opportunity for the DAC to provide meaningful input prior to changeing policy from knowing that you have October you would have to really have it figured out by October for us to take action which gives you no time so board members and um Deck members if you want to weigh in
049on that reality um yeah thanks Nicole for raising that I was actually going to ask kind of how you envision the kind of broad input to look you know given the timeline and you know the interest of the board in moving quickly although you know not at the expense of being thoughtful and careful about implementation so um what might that look like what are some of the things you all heard last week it sounds like that came up and there's interest in talking about that what you know what what are the what are the areas to explore I appreciate the opportunity to to address those questions I think from an input standpoint excuse me I should have cleared my throat before turn turning my microphone on from an input standpoint Dak has had the opportunity
050to engage in a couple of the task force-based uh policy revision processes that have been led by um by Robin Fernandez and and others at the district I think we've seen some positive signals that that's an effective way to leverage both the communication channels from the different representative groups and channel up and clarify the various different points of input that any one of the members from one of those representative groups would have heard in their community so I'm a strong advocate for for that process as a way of gathering information and structuring the process of analyzing that input now I'm not necessarily proposing to allocate Robin Fernandez and team for another task force this fall I I wouldn't presume to do that but I would like to understand more clearly the scope of what's being
051proposed from a revision standpoint now and then at least have the opportunity to work the revised policy or the proposed revised policy through the hands of our policy subcommittee just for maybe even a quick round of of updates that would be kind of a minimum viable from my perspective um but I do think that there is likely an opportunity for um even broader opportun broader you know Community input um mechanisms and practices here that we would have to of course balance against the timeline and against either a phased roll out or a staged roll out of different policy revisions so um I can't speak to the specific kind of responses that our policy subcommittee would potentially have to their proposed revision we haven't run it through their their eyes yet um but I think that
052this is one where we're seeing interest and um strong advocacy for for weighing in and we'd like to explore every opportunity we can on that can I I wasn't a member of the deck and I'm relatively new here uh so what just clarifying on why October is the only opportunity for Dak to weigh in for it's mostly a backwards crosswalk from the time that we would need to make the policy changes on our end and working that timeline backwards really does mean the board would need to have red lines in October probably I'm looking at Kathleen approval no later than the end of October the beginning of November to actually what I heard at the last board meeting was a six to one vote of having this Changed by for next semester and so that
053really is the timeline that I'm thinking through if that is the real the real the desire of the board that is the timeline that Dak would have to work with and they only meet once a month the very first week of the month and so that's where it comes from it's like that that desire that was conveyed at the last meeting and working backwards for how the policy process works on the board end thank I appre appreciate that thank you um so just on that I mean I think even if we don't have a Redline version soon it seems like you know there's there's a there's kind of a clear indication of kind of where we're headed with this policy and so maybe you know is there is there a way absent a a formal
054draft policy to still get feedback and to still engage uh you know not informally but I'm just wondering that it does it have to be based on a Redline version of a policy I mean we have a sense of what that's going to look like so I'm just asking if there's ways to do that starting now you know with that with that meeting schedule in mind um you know as we're waiting for a draft of a policy I don't know if that's even possible but just trying to propose some other and and and you know I said this earlier but I think speaking at least for myself on this you know our ideal timeline is you know sooner rather than later but I think we want to get this right and we want to do
055this thoughtfully and so you know we want to engage but um not just to like have an arbitrary deadline and date but I think you know so we want to move quickly but also thoughtfully so lenia Beth and then Alex I saw hand up next and if if somebody from De exec wants to walk through how like that policy work has happened because that was part of your question like how else could you um how how might the dck engage outside of just a red line or if you wanted to answer that before I pass it over to lenia but Beth and then Alex that's fine too I can do that very quickly so that you all don't lose track of your your question or comment so um I appreciate uh board member anger the
056opportunity to kind of think creatively here and I will admit in my this is my sixth year on deck and most of that time the the subcommittee that I've participated participated in the most is policy so I've seen a handful of different models here everywhere from highlevel directional kind of research based recommendations for consideration similar to um what we provided to you all with respect to open enrollment last year um to full scale 10-page reports like what the data and uip subcommittee provided um on the uip and in between there there are sometimes moments where Dak is being charged with drafting new policy language for consideration which ultimately will then go through the process of District Council and legal review and all of the the various official proceedings that would come from that um and
057also responding with Interlinear recommendations or line edits to red lines so um all of those different models are in scope obviously there's a Time Dimension to those right the um drafting new policy is a longer process than responding to you know revisions that are being proposed um but even at the level of providing conceptual recommendations you know representing the community input that DC representatives are hearing from their communities and their Sachs um even absent actual policy language proposals um that's something that the the Dak committee is hungry to do as well so we're we we work on this process at the pleasure of the board and kind of respond to where the need is when we're doing something that's not kind of organically generated from DC so we're willing to to creatively think about how
058to both meet any urgent timelines and also as you say kind of do the thoughtfully and and do it right that was a little bit of a longer explanation I'm sorry that's okay I I could keep my thought there um what comes up for me here is that given the direction of the board what my impression of um what we were looking for is how to um foresee or or help uh know what the barriers are going to be for our community kind of the bumps in the road I didn't perceive it as we needed you guys to come forward with policy recommendation so I may be wrong and maybe that's it a a question for my other board members but I think it was more about um here is the direction and there could
059be some bumps in the road and how can we help our community to get through those or what are the things we need to think about um emergency situations or any of the things that might be coming up for people as they think about implementation of a more strict personal device policy so I may be slightly confused but that's the way that I remember what we were looking for and I don't think we ever said what we wanted Dak to do explicitly and they can do a variety of things so that would be one of the varieties that they could absolutely take on Beth I really appreciate uh this conversation and all your your Insight today I just basically wanted to agree with Jason and say that we really really value your input we want
060to do this right we want to get the input from the deck I mean you represent our entire school district and so this is something I don't want to miss an opportunity to gather input from you and I do want to reh highlight Jorge's point about Gathering voices um that maybe are not always in the mix I think that's really important I'm hoping you guys are going to be able to help us with that um additionally underscoring what you said as well our high school students who I think are going to be probably have bigger opinions on this topic and so I'm hoping that the DC will be able to give us some some really helpful input and I agree I don't know that we need policy and I love the idea that you said
061we can be creative and flexible in our opportunities to think through this together because this is going to be really important work um any kind of change like this is gonna g to get a lot of community feedback and you guys are an excellent excellent uh resource for us so just want to thank you and advance for all the work you're going to be doing to support us thank you yeah I'd uh reiterate what Jason lenia and Beth just just said too I I mean I think the uh it's an important change that we've been discussing for prek through 8 it is not a change it is the current policy that we've talked about would remain the same so what we're really talking about is uh an incremental change of the high school policy and
062I think uh in terms of it's would be good to get the red line of how it will be written but based on the previous discussion at our last meeting it looks to me like it's pretty predictable that it would be a a ban on access to having the devices out in high school from when you get into the building until you leave the building that can be written in different sentences but I think you can predict the red line now and so I I do think that gives you October and November to have some of this discussion I look forward to the communication mechanisms that the district's putting together to hear from you know parents in in general about it and I totally agree that there's a lot of details in the how to
063do this could be that there's um the district development of regulations or procedures that go along with it which is where some of the rubber will hit the road in terms of inequitable um implementation of uh discipline policies or uh making sure that the communications strategies in an emergency setting are are good so that everybody is is actually their primary interest during uh an emergency is student safety and that the communication is facilitated between the people that need to be communicated in order to protect all our students as much as possible so I mean I think uh the actual policy change that we are likely to make based on last month's discussion um seemed pretty clear directionally of where we're going but I do think the concerns are very real the issues to be worked
064on are real and the opportunity to weigh in on that is very valued so um I'm not suggesting that we want to not have the input we want to have the input on how to constructively uh move forward in the direction that we want to go I I wouldn't think based on the previous discussions though that we are uh posing the question like should we do this or not I think the question is how are we going to do this change to our high school policy in order to pursue our values and uh keep our children safe and and work out those details and there'll be an ongoing opportunity for for those discussions for quite a while not to put words into my uh fellow board members mouths but that's my sense of last month's
065uh 61 discussion Jorge um in that vein you know I really think the discussion here really hes on our wanting to have as much engagement possible around this policy um given that it's a it's a big change for our high school students and that this is you know as you laid out that backwards calendar I'm a little slow sometimes to hit me in the face that that's not a whole lot of time and and I don't this is probably more for us than for the Dak right what is there a process for us to review that timeline so that as you said right we want to make sure this change is implemented with enough forethought and enough consideration about the impact on students and faculty about the challenges or barriers and imp ment ation um
066and consideration of of how we navigate that you know language and if we have to have language for it you know I want to make sure we have enough input to really think about it from multiple perspectives and and and have a chance to have that those voices heard and it's SE mid-september now um and so I don't know what that process looks like or if that if that's something that we can open up or or and I'm probably just like sort of a huge wrench in the middle of the room right now but I I want to at least voice that concern um or consideration it sounds like the board itself maybe has something to figure out something to figure out maybe not but I would for the sake of time I think it's
067the best use of all of our time together to move on to the next section of um this document and our shared work forther rest of the semester which is the moving into the uip and then um budget process in Charter and maybe a little bit more expediently yeah I'm so sorry we are going to move on but we are also realizing that we had one more area of exploration we wanted to just give a little bit bit of space for um in some of our conversations with Dak members we've heard um families coming at this from a couple different um lenses but all kind of oriented around this um question of what are policies and aligned practices at from K through 12 for students who want to advance or who want to take advantage
068of advanced learning opportunities and work-based learning opportunities with a specific eye toward um Equity so again this is I think falls into a similar bucket as our exploration around policies and guidelines for adult Behavior we don't know that this is actually an official policy change that we're talking about here or if this is a question of what are the practices that we are seeing happening across schools how consistent are they how are those practices communicated to families and do we feel like beefing up our existing practices beefing up communication doing more Outreach um to families to support them with understanding the opportunities are available is sufficient for us to increase um Equitable access to a lot of the amazing programming that we have um in bbsd so again just wanted to put that out there
069we don't need to spend a lot of time on that but um I think that's something that Dak would be we can kind of take back um to our membership and then come back to you all but if you if there are any quick thoughts from folks wouldd love to hear those before we move on to data and uip I think that dub Tails nicely with the graduation requirement work that we're doing at the last board meeting I brought up um middle middle level requirements and opportunities um and the related policies there and how we're thinking through like the opportunities our kids have working almost backwards from the changing gra upcoming changes to graduation requirements and so I could see that being a natural policy input and off the top of my head I don't
070remember what those policies were but they're on our agenda somewhere so I think that that makes a high degree of sense and I think it also relates a little bit um to the work that we're doing around open enrollment and bbsc is a place to be and really getting consistent in some of those messaging as well so I think it that idea has has roots in a lot of different areas from my perspective and worthwhile exploring to really make sure that all of our students no matter where we are have opportunities to be successful and explore paths that are that are relevant to them so aligns with our mission as well board members other thoughts on that one Alex yeah I'm really excited uh about that direction and very supportive of it in looking through
071um the draft uip stuff um tonight too uh I see the focus is on the work-based learning opportunities and for me that's um one of the great part of our Grad Plus framework but it's like the smallest in terms of the number of participants so getting from 3 to 4% isn't affecting as many students as you can with the other elements of the Grad Plus so I would just encourage us to be comprehensive in um thinking about the equity implications of all our opportunities for you know Advanced um coursework or concurrent enrollment um bilingual seal you know of literacy as well as the work-based opportuni certainly the work-based learning opportunities have the greatest growth potential because the numbers are the smallest um but we have uh the same concerns about Equity of access and outcomes
072for all of all of those programs so I would love to bird dog all of them for yeah uh thank you uh board member medler I think that's also something that could really duve tells well with the Strategic plan and the uip work um as we think about the directions that we want to go in and the values that we have but also as we think about the review I mean these are you know two-year and fiveyear plans as we think about the intervie checkpoints along the way what are the processes what are the mechanisms what are we doing you know how are we measuring change as we think about our metrics all those sorts of things I appreciate those comments and thank you to Ali for catching the fact that I didn't read that
073second Clause after the parenthetical in uh one of our bullet points um so I appreciate the opportunity to chat there and thank you for the discussion on the policy portion here I think I've got a couple cple of action items which I will follow up with board president Raj Paul and Kathleen as well on how we can kind of take some rapid action here we're really excited about the opportunity to dig into some of these areas of exploration that we've listed here and kind of understand how we can intersect at the level of Dak you know and influence on accountability at the in the uip and think about those adult behaviors in buildings and how the uip can best capture that and how we can help keep those conversations going during this I P Cycle
074so that's that's something that we're going to be addressing directly in some small group discussion in our next session and look forward to collaborating with the board on that so okay I know that my time is vanishingly small at this point so um the next three areas I'll move through at a little bit of a quicker Pace they do extend beyond this semester uh or or some may extend beyond this semester which is why I gestured toward this being priorities for the year in addition to the semester so on the data uip process um as you know we've had some great really positive collaboration between our data uip subcommittee the board uh Dr dings Dr de Cruz lots of District staff members um we are looking forward to making and calling for even more robust
075sort of tracking and representation of how the implementation benchmarks and action steps are being taken should this uip be adopted and submitted so part of what we're hoping for is to continue work on looking at data based on established benchmarks you know up and down percentages that can allow Dak members and members of our community to draw some actionable insights about where change is happening and where it's not and really build on the work both the highle conceptual work that's reflected in the report that we provided to you all last spring to inform the uip and then really make that concrete as the uip becomes implemented so um that's a lot of the work that we'd like to do uh during this fall and during the Spring as well um on budget I know this
076board is familiar with the process of Dak providing recommend spending priority recommendations in the budget process in January so we are continuing with that timeline this year but we have more substantially revised the survey tool by which We Gather input from Sachs so that will go out still in the same time frame of end of this month early in October will be due by the end of October and will be analyzed by our budget and Finance subcommittee in November but we're essentially trying to get in this iteration of the survey just sort of simplify streamline and get to a clearer sense of possible trade-offs right so as this board has seen from some of the recommendations we've provided it's easy when talking about spending priorities to stay in the additive mode and not in the
077subtractive mode so we're trying to sort of think about how we can gather more input about where folks are willing to add and subtract in this so we're excited about hopefully using this tool as a way to get a little more um immediate and actionable insights for you all in our recommendations that we'll deliver in January the last thing I put on here is really uh a pending item we understand that there may be a charter school application coming through um Dax one of dax's statutory obligations is providing review and input on Charter School applications so as that process unfolds we'll be sure to uh engage in that statutory responsibility let me pause there and and we can happily discuss any of these items Beth do you have any sense of what that's like if
078we get a uh Charter School application and Dak provides input what kind of input what does that look like for us what kind of information do you gather well it'll be it'll be interesting uh board member isn't it because in my experience of six years on Deck I've never had to do this so I'll be learning uh a little bit as we go but what what our real goal is you know based on the statutory obligation is to leverage the fact that there are folks who serve on Deck who are Charter School experts right we have Charter School Representatives we have folks who understand um that that process that experience for students and families and so we essentially want to use this as an opportunity to channel some of that expertise um you know validate
079some of the propositions that are made in the application and then just make sure that we can glean as much as we can from our Charter School experts and deliver that to you I suspect that um should this move forward it'll be uh you know delivered in a in a memo format similar to what we had before yeah lenia thank you so much for um trying to make a really strong attempt to glean from our Dak Community information about the trade-offs people are willing to make when it comes to budget so I I just really want to give a shout out to you guys for seeing that and um trying to help guide that thank you I hope that it yields useful and actionable insights we'll we we'll we never know what we're going to
080see until we get the survey responses back but we're continuing to try to refine that mechanism one thing I would be curious about the board really is valuing data to a high degree and looking at data in different ways and thinking through our strategic plan metrics we had a meeting at the start of this school year looking at some of the ways we might be visualizing data I would actually be really curious as we're moving through that process to get feedback from the deck and how that is more or less helpful than other views we've had and I don't know Rob if there's a a mechanism to engage some of the members whether it's in a subcommittee or as a whole committee but I think the data we receive is going is always publicly facing
081whatever the board has the public has access to and that second set of eyes to make sure that it really does make sense to our public for me is a big value ad and so I would be curious um and I something that you know Dr Anderson and his team might be able to work through and um and speak to but your perspective on how meaningful that data is would be a value to me for sure Dron um appreciate all the conversation and and just want to publicly thank Dak exec for being great Partners thought Partners is we all work together to try to uh make this the best school district in the country uh for each and every kid um you know it'll be interesting as we think about so when you align your
082uip with your strategic plan um and uh you align those things then the question will be where do you get what you want from what area right the unified Improvement plan is an area where we're going to be tracking some things um but then board members as we shared with you um about a month ago we're really customizing a set of really robust um strategic plan metrics with a level of granularity um and so to the extent that we um do it in one place versus The Other Place depending on the information that we want I think will be the question right and um in reviewing dax's recommendations and and talking with them around some of the equity-driven metrics that they're looking for would some of those be best served in a uip best served
083in a dashboard and I think that those are the decisions we're going to have to figure out pretty quickly because these are timelines and uh this will be on study for the board tonight so uh to the extent that there isn't everything that we would want there that we still have Avenues and opportunities to be able to figure those things out and continue to far to uh to thought partner around what that looks like so uh to your point Nicole we're coming back um in October with it with the four to five hour work session with the board to to get our second iteration of of data and based on some of the feedbacks that we received um and so I I'm just trying to think what goes where what sits where and while statutorily
084the uip is in dak's domain I do agree Nicole that in partnering with Dak and the data sub committee around dashboarding um and and some of the things we're doing makes tons of sense because it's if we align it it should be the same stuff more or less um I would say that the difference between what we would do for a strategic plan versus a uip is a fiveyear look versus a two-year look and um and some of the uip has been more traditionally to measure is the stuff getting done the T are the tactics being executed uh in the plan um where some of that tactical implementation dashboard board stuff really hasn't sat in dashboards but we can talk about that so I think we're all on the same page and on the right
085path it's just sorting out where things end up I think is is what the decision point that we'll have to make and and if I may I can say we've got a hungry data Savvy data and uip subcommittee just like ready to sink into anything that that you all want to SN into so um that's just to say Dak is definitely a willing particip in this work even where the lines blur between strategic plan and uip and how those things fit together Alex yeah uh I really appreciate the huge amount of things you just we were talking about pretty briefly I just want to highlight a few things on the charter review process I really look forward to the Dax input should we get uh an application um I also think there's room to consider
086uh as we revise the charter school policy we will I hope be I'll be advocating for us having an annual report process in which we report to the charters annually on their progress which for the Sachs of the charters is a pretty meaningful thing to deal with and it would be good to get um uh DAC input on that annual report process um which I hope will be in our policy um and let me reiterate those the idea behind those annual reports is not a gotcha or um an existential challenge it's an ongoing communication between the district and its Charter School toools about how things are going which is designed to make the renewal process more streamlined and transparent and predictable which allows the school to have a dialogue internally about what they want to
087do to understand where the district's perspective is and that seems very appropriate for a SAC at the charter school and for the DC to to weigh in on um and uh on the budget trade-offs I want to reiterate Leno's point of that's really helpful information uh to have um comprehensive understanding of how our budgets work and what we're dealing with with because that will be much more informative to us on the board as we make our budgeting decisions so that's hats off to you for that um one thing I I would think about is that we're also going to be workshopping in depth our declining enrollment and I think one of the things the overlaps between the Strategic plan uips daak and the kind of decisions we're making about academic programming involves how do we
088serve all of our students better and that includes the students uh that are leaving our schools and I think uh I think the neurodiversity community is frequently leaving uh when things aren working out for their kid we have gifted and talented folks looking for acceleration we have folks dealing with situations individual schools of their kids sense of belonging and well-being and I think that ends up being part of the discussion we should have about how well are we differentiating to serve all the kids so that they can learn and I would just put that on your radar something of like well who who are we actually losing and why and what from the data that you're looking at on performance and how the schools are doing can inform us on those budget trade-offs or everything
089else about how we basically are better able to serve all the kids and so I I don't I'm sorry to dump more on you but I I do believe the lens of of our declining enrollment is another thing to keep in mind and then when you have the sacks and the schools that are dealing most um precipitously with the declining in enrollment that that's a programmatic discussion where our uip our strategic plan all all should be coming together because we'll be making comprehensive decisions not isolated just well this is a strategic plan decision and this is an enrollment decision like it'll be one decision about what to do in terms of programming and budget and priorities and then finally I'm I'm super eager for our long work sessions to dive into data and sensitive to
090the staff when they have to staff a like that um so with trepidation I'd say I'd encourage you to come uh and see how that discussion goes it might be an efficient way to see what we're thinking about board members any last questions or comments for the district accountability committee's executive team Dr Anderson just just a comment and I would say that I think that you know this session has has brought a couple of things to light for me one I think there's similar interest there's not a lot of space between the interests of Staff Dak and board and I think as we think about moving forward as we take the recommendations and the requests from Dak and and what the board is wanting Dak to get engaged in whose role is what what role
091does board play what role does Dak play and what what role does staff play as we start to think about the partnership coming together and so um those are the things I'm thinking about coming away from this based on on where everybody's heads at on what they want to do how do we clearly delineate and Define roles and then how those roles work together um with and find the synergies to be super productive and so I appreciate the great news is we're really we're really close to being synced up on a lot of things um and just thinking about roles responsibilities and um and who is going to do what as we all partner together to try to support the district thank you all for your hard work uh I look forward to a very
092exciting and productive Dak season Dak season I like that well thank you board president Raj Paul and thank you members of the board and Dr Anderson um we we appreciate we appreciate the opportunity to come together like this because there is you all are are working on so many things District staff are working on so many things all of our dck reps are working on so many things and the opportunity to have some concentrated and focused time on alignment we really value um obviously a lot to do and we we greatly value our advisory capacity and all of these things so we will happily partner on where we can help and push where we can push and figure out how we can work best together so thank you for the opportunity to invite us back
093again the board is going to take a short break while we reconfigure the Das e e e I'd like to welcome everybody back to this evening's board meeting the next item on our agenda tonight is the superintendent report Dr Anderson good evening good evening thank you board president Raj Paul members of the board great to see everyone here this evening have a few updates tonight in regards to my remarks um the first is is a really exciting announcement uh board members and Community today the Colorado Department of Education released performance ratings for districts across the state and we've got some great news Boulder Valley School District was the only Denver Metro School District to earn the accredited with distinction level we are one that is a huge to our students Educators leaders across the district
094we've been celebrating privately for the past week since we've had this data embargoed and did some celebrating today we're one of only 17 districts Statewide to earn earn the honor we're the largest school district to earn this honor and um and in in many ways the most diverse serving the most students um in poverty I I I just I think that there is um a lot to celebrate here uh there's going to be more data that's going to be coming out over the course of the next few weeks that around discipline and attendance and some of that's embargoed some of that isn't we're making tremendous Pro progress in the areas that we've set out to make progress and that's is I think really really special uh and important for our community to know and um
095as we as we jump into the next phase of our allog together for all students strategic plan uh please know and understand we're building on those successes and so uh just very very excited very proud of our district very proud of our community very proud of our kids for doing their very best kids are growing and achieving in ways that I think um are just commendable and um and we're just doing just doing a really really great job so very excited to announce that uh this past week the Colorado Department of Education commissioner uh Dr Susanna Cordova and the current Colorado teacher of the year Jessica May came out to asuela bilingu Pioneer along with board president Raj ball board member Chavez and myself we went to the music teacher Wanda Vasquez Garcia's classroom to
096let her know she's one of seven finalists for this year's Colorado teacher of the year award um other finalists they were she and the other finalist were chosen from about a thousand nominations and as a finalist Wanda received a check for $1,500 Pioneer received a check for $500 and the Colorado teacher of the year will be named in early October and uh Wanda's got to be the favorite to win that uh she's fantastic I had such a great uh time with her students uh and with the other Educators at the school who could just not they they all said just the most amazing things about her commitment to her students and her school uh just one of our very best Educators and so we're proud of her and we'll be rooting her on in October
097and then finally board members it is about that time we want to encourage everyone to save the date for our second annual bbsd is the place to be showcased great opportunity for students and families to learn more about our 56 schools and meet the principal staff and it's a great place for anybody who's interested in the Boulder Valley School District to come learn about a lot of our schools in our district and that's Wednesday October 9th from 5: to 8:00 P.M at the CU Event Center and uh as always uh community members can learn more about the Showcase district and sign up for updates on our website www.bbs.ca.net leadership academy uh for community members who aren not familiar with this program it's a program that runs from October to April great opportunity for parents community
098members to deepen their understanding the bowler Valley School District and our work from academics to operations uh each year we serve 30 to 50 parents who are interested uh in participating and this will be our third Community Leadership Academy and so it's a great opportunity uh great partnership with pen parent engagement Network who are Partners in putting together some of the leadership development uh curriculum and uh we we do field trips we we um have gone to the culinary Center and we've gone to Boulder Tech and just a lot of fun and it's a great way if you're a parent in our community and are wondering how do you get involved and how do you become a leader sign up for the community Leadership Academy we're accepting applications now and that is we do not
099unfortunately have a student moment this evening um and that is all for my remarks to this evening thank you Dr Anderson board members any questions for Dr Anderson seeing as there are none we will move on to the next item on our agenda this evening which is public participation the board respects the rights of the public to speak on matters concerning the operation of our schools the board does not endorse the comments of any individual speaker and reminds all who speak that you are responsible for your own speech speaker speakers will each have 2 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 like to share additional comments with the board
100you can always email the board we read all of our emails our first Speaker this evening is virtual and it is roblo Martinez you're muted hello paa um I'm very thankful that um the board and the Dak and the sack that I didn't know all of these terms they are taking care of the phone policy I was just here for that but I also want to share ER on the elementary school of of my kids I and Howard we have been H working with a program that is Media balance and well-being and I think with like I think a very good start is to implement a li like limits like you are doing like the policy but at the same time I think it will be very helpful to have a very a good program
101of mindful habits and and good technology use and we have been doing this for three years now and I think it for our community it has been a very good um resource so we will be very happy I don't know if it's if I have to talk with a Dak or the saak but to it will be very nice for us to share it with the Boulder Community so thank you and I know that the high schools high schoolers will be very thankful maybe the first um month or year they will not understand but they will be very happy to to get back their their teenager teenage um days with with face-to-face H relationships thank you thank you our next speaker this evening is Kim LaRon there's a little button with a person talking if
102you could is that perfect okay awesome thank you um hello everybody uh my name is is Kim LaRon and my son will be starting kindergarten in bbsd next fall I am here to bring awareness to Grove Elementary which is a new school that Bal Swan Children's Center is submitting a charter for on October 1st my family lives in Broomfield within bbsd and when we first moved to the area I asked all the parents that I met the same question what schools do you like and why and I was consistently given the same answer if you're in bbsd any school will be great I loved hearing that because it speaks to what our district has been able to achieve and the success it has serving students with all kinds of needs interests and abilities in bbsd
103as you all know we have schools with strengths in academics music Athletics special education Etc if approved Grove Elementary would add a different kind of strength to the Eastern side of our district a strength that FOC focuses on social emotional learning on inclusive on inclusivity and on Hands-On curiosity Le education as a continuation of the award-winning educational model at Bal Swan Grove Elementary would offer every student like my very big feeling son a nurturing more personalized environment where they can gain confidence develop self-awareness and interpersonal skills and grow into their best selves whatever that might look like I'm asking you to please authorize Grove Elementary as I know its unique strengths are something that many parents on the Eastern side of of our district are specifically looking for thank you all for attention for your
104attention and um thank you for everything you do for our students this is my first time at a board meeting and getting to hear your thoughtfulness is um really great so thank you all thank you our next speaker this evening is Matt struo who has been given two minutes from now's Tellier you uh nailed the pron iation of that so I appreciate it it's a it's a handful I understand no I want to thank uh the board for for allowing me to speak here and for uh everyone you know participating in this I think it's a great uh you know experience for for members of the community and parents around here to uh to be involved I am the uh parent of a kindergarten student over at Foothill Elementary and I'm a resident in the
105boulder Heights neighborhood so for those of you who are unfamiliar Boulder Heights is in the canyons uh or in the Foothills here behind Boulder so we're about 10 minutes away and uh recently we've been having quite a few challenges with the uh with the transportation department and you know obviously there's been uh some some cuts and some hard choices that have had to been made over the last few weeks with that um but you know I understand that that there are challenges there I'm a board member myself up at our uh Boulder Mountain Fire Protection District so I understand you know the prioritization that you guys have to do um you know with that you know some of these things I've had to happen over the last few few weeks with the consolidation of routes
106has created a exceptional burden on some of the parents I think around the district um but you know specifically up in the uh in the canyon routes as we've had to deal with route consolidations and uh and no longer having you know buses come closer to our homes where it would make it more feasible for our children to walk it's created a uh exceptional burden on parents especially parents who have two working parents or multiple children that they've got to get around it's also created a significant safety issue uh for the children and is uh is in violation of bbsd policies as they are stated right now so you know with that and with some communication challenges that we've been having from Transportation I think that it's uh you know important for us to have
107this conversation for us to maybe evaluate what some other next steps would be some potential solutions that we can evaluate both as a community and as a board for the uh for the Boulder Valley School District um you know we've had challenges where kids are getting dropped off too early or too late to school we've had challenges where we've had kindergarten students being left at schools without any adult supervision and wandering around outside so these are safety issues certainly safety issues for children walking to school bus stops without sidewalks and in extremely Steep and dangerous Canyon roads that I think we need to address as a community I have been in touch with Mr Price who's been very forthcoming and transparent in his Communications with me and for that I'm very appreciative and I think
108that again as a community we need to evaluate what we can do moving forward to address some of these challenges I understand that a couple years ago back in 2021 we are experiencing some similar challenges and we created a Advisory board that consisted of parents and teachers and I think some board members as well I would propose that we start bringing that back effective immediately to start discussing this and and finding some maybe more unique situ or unique um ways to solve these problems uh you know I was taking a look at the budget approximately 2% of the general fund right now now uh for bbsd is being contributed to Transportation I don't know what the right number is I don't know if that's high or if that's low uh but clearly we are having
109a problem recruiting and retaining bus drivers and I think that the importance of getting our children to school in a safe Manner and in a consistent manner has got to take priority here for us as a community you know we can have the nicest schools we can have the nicest playgrounds we can have the nicest electric buses we can have the nicest Farm totable lunch program if we can't get our children to school safely and consistently then what does all that matter for and I'm so glad to hear you know the superintendent say you know our our district is considered one of the best in the state and I think that's something that we should all be very proud of but at the same time we've got to understand that getting our children to school
110safely not having kindergartens walk around a school without adult supervision after being dropped off by a bus is critically important so I implore the board to take a look at this consider putting together another Advisory Board and uh coming up with some solutions that we can do in a sustainable and a long-term uh fashion I appreciate it thank you thank you our next speaker this evening is virtual Elizabeth open sorry take that back is in person Mark Cathcart thank you good evening board uh superintendent Anderson and bvsd S thank you for allowing me time to speak this evening my name is Mark kathcart I live in Lewisville Colorado I'll do my best to speak clearly despite my accent um I hope um oh I should say I'd just like to clarify as someone that spent
11122 years at the senior levels in IBM the plural for task force is definitely task forces um I hope you had to opportunity to read my written submission um I had been intending to write or contact you earlier in the year after learning of the decision to move the morning Monarch High School student bus pickup from North End Neighborhood across to the other side of sh42 at 95th Street in the steel Ranch neighborhood I was spurred on by the recent collision between two cars and children and incidentally as I drove here tonight there was a film crew up there filming there's no assertion that bvsd buses were involved but they were bvsd students um there are some 400 homes in the North End Neighborhood they are all or the majority are either single family homes
112or row homes um and we don't have a bus for the senior students um it's just mindboggling that Transportation seems fine dropping them off there in the evening but not picking them up in the morning making them cross a five Lane Highway where the speed limit is 50 mil hour and whilst it is a controlled intersection we will know that we're in the middle of a uh a distracted driving epidemic um so the students are expected to go up to 10 uh up to 1.5 miles if we really want to get people off the road and away from campus drive at Monarch High School we need to do something to satisfy the demand or create a demand for the school buses in North End thank you for your time thank you our next speaker this
113evening is indeed virtual and that is Elizabeth Haynes I think you're on mute um did that work that did okay my name is Elizabeth Haynes and I am a Foothills parent I was at the last meeting to talk about our bus route and I'm back today because things are worse and to wonder where we're headed on this trajectory I watched remainder of the last meeting and appreciate the very speaker's explanation of the transportation landscape I was fortunate enough to get a face to face with Tony Scala where he shared some nuances around the busing but I still see room for improvement specifically for student safety what's happening with busing can't all be blamed on a driver shortage never knowing when our bus will arrive because the schedule changes so frequently and often without any communication
114or getting Communications when no changes have been made or having a bus leave 90 minutes before school a bus that cannot travel an extra few miles because of time constraints only to drop off five and six year olds at a school before there's any adults present to supervise them these are organizational failures they're not a drive a problem we're still awaiting the restoration of our Mountain stops which Mr Scala assured me are a priority to be restored this semester but this should not be a recurring fight for parents who have decades left in the system steps need to be made to Future proof the routs and the stops and if this can't be parents also deserve to know this reality so so we can pivot if necessary for what's best for our families our service
115is so poor it feels intentional almost as if the parents maybe they'll throw in the towel figure it out on their own and suddenly it's really easy to discontinue those pesky Mountain routes entirely or in the worst case scenario these mistakes are retaliation for parents pushing back I'd love to see changes that prove me wrong it's time for an open house and to revive the transportation advisory committee I only got FaceTime with Mr Scala after my son who's six was assaulted on his bus Tony didn't even want to talk to me and tried to intimidate me by suggesting I contact Kathleen Sullivan with my concerns instead it didn't feel right I'm looking for a collaboration and not escalation thank you for considering this ask parents need transparency on this issue and rely on our leaders
116to meet us at the table ultimately we all want our kids to have the best school life possible which includes a safe and predictable bus experience it's time to put the cards on the table thank you our next speaker this evening is Kelly mat hey I'm on thank you hey my name is Kelly mat um I have a son who's a junior at Boulder high school and I'm here to just kind of bring some attention to the fact that the boulder High School baseball program um is the only program in the district and I think even maybe the state that does not have their own um baseball field on campus nor do they even have access to an outdoor batting cage um in fact they have seasonal use of scout Carpenter Park um which is
117owned by the city and um like for my son for his or for his teammates or his friends if they want to go and practice outside of the normal baseball season they have to go and visit Iris Park which would be um a facility that's set up for the Youth baseball leagues and they have batting cages there that they can use um so I'm just trying to point out there's it seems like a huge GE inequality between Monarch what Monarch has fair viiew and Centaurus or even the other four or five a schools that we've gone to visit where their schools and their programs have a sense of pride in the facilities that they have um to host the games um so I just thought I'd start with that um I think the only other
118thing I can really say is we've been we some of us other parents have been making some efforts to try to work with the athletic department at Boulder high school with the coach and the city and trying to get the two to come together um to make some improvements at Scott Carpenter Park it's been difficult um I think this is the third week in a row that a meeting was supposed to happen this evening and it got canceled again I'm not sure if that was the result of the school district or the city I don't think it really matters it's just I guess what my request is um I know City and District staff is has a lot of priorities just trying to find some way to put a little additional pressure or try to
119find some people that can rep prioritize some responsibilities so that the boulder High School baseball team with this young coach they've got some good things going on but there's just an inner sense of of lack of Pride I think in what they have to work with thank you thanks thank you our next speaker this evening is Paul sterio feel like I pronounced that not as good as the last time it's Paul here looks like he is not so then we will move on to our final speaker this evening which is Andrew brand good evening board members uh superintendent Anderson I'm Andrew Brandt uh this year I'm serving as New Vista High Schools uh representative to the Dak uh and I'm speaking to you tonight uh because I wanted to bring your attention to a report
120that was released in July uh by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau uh so this report it has a really boring title the title is costs of electronic payments in K through 12 schools but it's actually a very serious topic um it's an in-depth look into the electronic Payment Processing industry uh that handles transactions for Children's School uh lunch accounts um here in Colorado we're fortunate that voters approved uh giving kids free breakfast and lunch uh for you know all public school children in the state um and here in bbsd kids who want uh something beyond what is the free lunch are able to uh pay a little extra using their um their school lunch accounts um and the school launch uh account provider for that for bbsd is a company called cybersoft Tech which operates
121under the name School cafe um the report highlights several troubling Trends uh around this slice of the financial services industry um cybersoft Tech is one of three Financial Services firms that service more than 2third of school districts in the country um the fees that these companies charge sometimes to parents and sometimes to the district um can run in the range of three to five times the processing fee for a typical credit card transaction which is 1.5% um there are also other setup fees and sometimes other charges like uh to transfer a balance from one sibling to another um the high cost of these transactions have an outsize impact on families that are um the lowest income and these junk fees gobble up almost 60% of the school money that these parents put into their um
122kids accounts so I would like you to look into whether it's possible to renegotiate the contract with this company to see if you can reduce the fees and also provide some transparency to parents about what the fees are here in bbsd because I tried to look and I could not find them anywhere thank you thank you that concludes today's portion of the public participation on behalf of the board I want to thank everybody who took the time to show up this evening to share your thoughts and concerns it is helpful to us to hear from our public on a variety of topics that are percolating in the community we will now move on to our next agenda item board members which is board communication who would like to go first Jorge all right um thank
123you uh I just want to reiterate um what an honor it was to be present to see Wanda Vasquez Garcia um find out that she was one of the finalist for Teacher of the Year um my kids have been fortunate enough to go to squala Bing with Pioneer and they've benefited from working with her she's an amazing teacher she keeps the kids engaged um she displays this uh amazing cultural connection to the kids um she participates in after school activities she leads the chorus uh she took us to sing for one of the Nuggets games last last year with all the kids as part of the chorus she does the cultural night um they sing in in um I think they sang in four languages last year um she she's she's just so supportive and
124engaging it's just wonderful to see that recognized and so and and she's a reflection of the teachers that we have in this District I think it's amazing and great so it's it's awesome to see so that that was a nice way to um end Friday um I got to participate in the DC meeting on Tuesday it was great to be a part of that just to see everybody so engaged it is a new membership it's a new it's a nice energy that's there people are eager to be to learn more about what we're doing and recognize that we have some tough decisions to make um they highlighted a number of issues that they want to be involved with involved with a couple of the things they talked about was um wanting to learn more about
125the Capital Construction bond process I know we're reporting that tonight but you know I think we forget that this was approved in 2022 a lot of the Outreach to communities was in 2021 and so a lot of parents now are like this Bond you speak of like you know like what I've seen the but so I think um there's a lot of interest in finding out what's kind of going on there and I know that the work is being done um by um um by The District in terms of that Outreach but I think there's an interest for more of that and and I know that um there's interest in learning more about this legislative process and how they can be involved and how to raise their voice I know we mentioned a survey that
126they can participate in at our last meeting here I believe um and so there's interest in that and I think the more we can kind of keep talking about that right that our legislator is is um they not give us any more money they're just chopping it up differently right and that goes against the recommendation so I think the more we can Empower our community kind of to raise their voice the the better for us so it's a a positive start to the uh semester than you um I too was really happy to participate and celebrating Wanda Pioneer it was really great to see her with her in her classroom uh and just a reflection of the type of Staff we have it's really impressive and good luck to her in that in that endeavor
127um since we last met board members I met had the opportunity to meet with um president of the bva and vice president of bva David Stewart and Katie David talked a little bit about board work for this year and some shared constraints I um in my parent perspective where my parent had was able to go to some back to school nights and attend actually fairview's first school accountability Committee of the year and it was the first time in both of those settings where I heard staff really speaking to the great work we're doing around Grad Plus whether it's um College and Career Readiness that different Pathways the you know uh concurrent enrollment at all of the Middle School level and high school level I think almost every classroom I was in folks were speaking to
128it they're talking about Ascent it was great to see as a parent because as a board remember we get all this information and I hadn't always heard it but it was really great to know that what we're doing is is impacting on the ground so that was I just wanted to share that and the great work our schools are really doing uh around thinking through culture and climate I know that's a priority of us student well-being so some of the work there I thought that was really great to see as in my role as a parent um and how that you know triangulates with my role as a board member so that was exciting um I also have had a couple Community meetings around shared facilities I know the member spoke about baseball I've heard
129from folks around pools recently those are another shared facilities different types of fields I know just want to let board members know that those shared facilities between particularly the city of Boulder and bbsd is a is a challenge baseball's not alone in that but it is something that I've been hearing coming up from the community so I just wanted to make you aware of some of those meetings as well and that is all I have for my public or Bard member comment G oh Alex sure um I just wanted to highlight part of um the great accomplishment that being accredited with distinction is for the district um I I think it's it's not something many districts can achieve when they're at our scale and I think if you dive into the data and how it
130works you realize you actually have to be at our scale with our diversity focusing on helping all your kids and all your schools be successful and one of the subp parts of that that accreditation rating comes from having almost all of our schools be rated at the performance level um and sometimes people think oh it's Boulder it's affluent uh it's like well actually it's diverse and we have lots of kids from different backgrounds and our schools by the way sometimes concentrate it's poverty and challenges in different places and sometime around seven six years ago maybe when Dr Anderson showed up the investment and the focus on on our scho schools that had historically not performed at high levels has made a has made a difference and it's showing up in the state's accreditation system and
131the state's accountability system and that's a testament to the previous board's prioritization investment it's wisdom in hiring Dr Anderson and his wisdom in and creating the team of people he has and the leaders in the schools that we have and it's making a a measurable empirical difference on things we value and that's kids learning um and I think uh we not only should we celebrate that but we should communicate that um and that means keeping our prioritization on our schools with higher concentrations of poverty and kids of color and language Learners it means focusing on our kids with disabilities that means including figuring out how we uh serve our kids with IEPs our neurod divergent kids are gifted and talented well if if you're letting down subpopulations and that state accountability system at CHS and
132you don't get that kind of rating so it's easy to kind of go oh well we're a great District well yes we are a great District but we're also prioritizing um student equity and student achievement in a way that is making a great difference um and in a world with a ton of public school choice it's good to let parents know that because we have some room in our schools for other people if they want to come um so uh anyway I just want to uh give the kudos to the full team and and I want to reiterate uh we had great dialogue with our Dak and our Sachs this is a district that has cared about performance data board members full of people with great sophistication and experience working on data and focusing on
133it and it's making a difference for kids and it can make a difference for the district so I just want to not let that go by without seeing the things that that went into that it wasn't random we didn't get lucky this year so congratulations and hats off to your new team board members the next item on our agenda this evening is uh information items we have three information items this evening the first of which is building for Student Success Bond program update Dr Anderson would you like to do the introduction board members as you know as as part of um our bond program we give uh regular updates to the public and to the board and here to do that today assistant superintendent of operations Rob Price to kick us off all right thank
134you Dr Anderson good evening president rospa members of the board Dr Anderson I don't want downplay some of the public comment we just heard but the tonight is really an opportunity for us to to show off what we did this summer in terms of the bond program and what I think you'll see is a tremendous amount of success uh this summer uh joining me tonight is Chris stenhagen our executive director of bond planning who will give an update uh typically we have our chair and co-chair from our community Bond oversight committee uh join us and since we haven't had our first meeting that meeting is actually next week they did not join us tonight so uh when we have our prioritization meeting we'll get that scheduled they'll join us for the next one and give
135you an update at that time so with that I will turn it over to Chris good evening everyone it's great to be here tonight and it's great to be on this side of Summer 2024 to report we had a very successful phase one in our construction projects I want to take just a quick moment to thank our bond project managers for their tieless efforts to get us to where we are our Communications team uh for helping keeping our communities informed on our progress and for our district leadership and Rob price for their continued guidance and support through all this but most importantly I want to thank our voters because without their support these numbers that you have in front of you on this slide uh wouldn't be possible we're at 19 sites between April and
136day that includes our tennis court projects and our play Universal playground projects um we had $42 million in construction $28 million in design uh invested in our uh facility improvements we achieved uh having staff back in the building on August 1st but most importantly we achieved having students welcome back on August 14th New Vista um oh excuse me um we also had accelerate program improvements implemented at five schools where middle and high school students can take a wide array of classes to provide relevant relevant academic and technical skills needed beyond their bbsd education New Vista achieved 77% completion and uh Universal playground projects uh we did it at six different schools that you'll see here later in the slide so quick status update on our phase one projects um Centaurus and Broomfield High School have
137their work ongoing as our high schools are designed as two-year projects the updated construction trades area and choir room will be completed at Broomfield later this month and then in October we'll start moving into the centarus engineering wing all of our one-year projects are developing our final task lists as part of our quality assurances our owner training is ongoing and over the next few months we'll continue our closeout packages for those one-year programs critical needs such as the items you see on this slide make up 54% of our master plan budget um they serve to update and help maintain our aging buildings building operational system updates are a large part of the budget as well and while you don't see that work it really serves to improve our building efficiencies and improve the uh student
138learning environments at our high schools Bond program um has a large budget for updating our athletic facilities inside and out and here you see some examples around the District of the great work completed this Summer that served to provide greater athlete experience expences our high school theater program programs received a lot of attentions through our design to update audiovisual systems that will eventually be standardized at each high school and intended to be used or friendly giving students the ability to be trained and operate these systems aligns with our Grad Plus program and prepares them to be ready to operate most any theater after graduation we have also focused on updated finishes and HVAC in these space as you see to the photo to the right at The Centaurus choir room which again improve our student
139uh community and Community environments and experiences the accelerate Renovations are some of the more exciting elements of the bond program this summer we converted two classrooms to expand opportunities for science technology engineering and math or stem at angevine and the culinary art center was updated as well at Broomfield Heights Middle School the tech lab and art rooms were significantly upgraded the excitement is palpable around the opening of the engineering week at Centaurus as well as the updated construction trades area at Broomfield high school and the Business Center for Bromfield high school that will be completed summer of 2025 our Universal playgrounds these have been some of our most rewarding work the design intent with these Renovations is not only to improve access to the playgrounds for students with Mobility differences and provide more accessible play
140options but to make it easier for all students to play together with their peers we're able to help this happen with features like large areas of solid surface materials wide ramps on play structures interactive play panels ground level Spinners and gliders that accommodate Walkers and wheelchairs seeing the design intent come to fruition has been incredible the finishes look remarkable but the atmosphere of Joy when you get to witness recess is almost t I wanted to quickly share this email I received shortly after the start of school which really confirms the value of this work so for my team receiving this after a summer construction is a big part of why we love our profession this was shared by Lisa Larsson who's our special education par par educator at Eisenhower n Vista finishes are becoming apparent
141you can see the start of the vision carried through our design really taking shape the architectural features here add depth and dimension to the building while blending into the surroundings with metal panels nearing completion on the exteror there's a lot of excitement building in this community with students and staff eagerly waiting to tour their new building I'm not going to take you all the way back to the beginning this time on the time lapse but I think it's really cool to see in January where uh steel erection had just begun and just how quickly the site has taken shape and the noticeable difference on the building as you drive down Broadway so as a reminder this is just a high level overview of the exciting milestones we have coming up leading out to uh moving
142students in here in December then January our final uh phases will be implemented with batement and Demolition and then we'll start the uh finishings in May that'll wrap up in September of 2025 with the site work here I just want to uh talk a little bit about the project uh cycle and where we are in the three phases that are overlapping currently um these are the schools again uh ongoing construction or finishing up we've got our phase two design that is ongoing on those uh campuses and then um we have initiated our phase three already for our request for proposals and that and that really is a design of uh upcoming Bond elections just the amount of potential bonds out there to make sure that we're ahead of the curve again so in phase two
143our design development documents were delivered and our price is reviewed in August our contract documents are scheduled to be completed here in the next two months and we're on track to bring those amendments to you here in November and December and we've already started the coordination of the 2025 school activities with clubs and events to make sure everybody has a place to be during our Construction so here's just a a quick view of the timeline um again as design uh wraps up on phase two uh all our rfps are out we'll make our selections for our teams for phase three and we'll start design for that phase here in January so as Rob mentioned our next cach meeting is next week on September 18th we'll meet at New Vista High School we'll tour that committee
144through the school for about a half an hour then we'll uh head to the uh current Media Center at New Vista where we're really uh dive into more detail of our current expenditures our incumbrances and our forecast to remaining expenditures we will be presenting a recommendation to them to move approximately $2.2 million to uh for use tax from city of Boulder um which I reviewed with you in May and if supported we'll bring that as a consent agenda item to a future meeting for you all to review those are all the uh Bond updates I have for you to see evening and I welcome any questions or comments you might have board members any questions for Chris Jorge uh thank thank you for your work on this I know um how hard that committee Works
145to make sure that all the money is accounted for that we're being really judicious about how it's being spent that everything's moving on timeline and you're ahead on some project it's amazing I for what I'm really excited about the meeting next week to be at at New Vista to get really that inside look of what's going on so I'm excited about that so so thank you um I mentioned in my in the uh open comment that I think there's a lot of interest and surprisingly not everybody watches these board meetings so they don't know what's going on necessarily in terms of our bond progress yep um and so I'm curious um what kind of communication is going on to the schools that are in phase two or phase three about what's coming down the pipeline
146in terms of what's going on because I know I think people are getting antiqu I just saw a sign at s Taurus what's happening at my school and if there's any plans for that sort of stuff moving forward yeah I think you mentioned Pioneer right specifically earlier and that is in phase two we are in design development we took another look back at that we have engaged uh with principal there Heather and we've had some Community feedback that they'd like to be involved so we we have had Communications with them and we do reach out at the beginning of each year to say hey this is where we're at we'd like to sit down and review what the improvements are are coming um so uh again Ryan and Pioneer are in a package together and
147uh our design team is is taking a look just to kind of make sure we're capturing everything and then expanding on some of the uh questions and asks that we've gotten there after that then um after our construction documents we'll engage that Community again to talk about next steps so we call that Bond 101 and then 102 basically so preparing for construction and then just what they should see um as we start out and when they come back for school is there anything more specific to that you'd like to hear or see oh no I think it's just to make sure that's trickling down to the families and parents I think you know I'm sure staff and everybody knows what's coming through but I think the parents sometimes miss that information absolutely so but I
148think it's exciting stuff so I think it's great and we have asked for any other uh Administration or staff members and parents that want to be involved in reviewing those designs and the budget that we have so we try to we do do that at each school that we do I was going to piggy back on to J's comment and then um Jason I'll hand it over to you similarly been hearing a lot of questions and excitement around when the next phase is coming to each individual schools and I noticed that um the district has embedded links on each individual School website that links them directly to their specific Bond project and gives a little high level update on what's going on in their schools so I wanted to thank the team The District staff
149for helping in that capacity and I was wondering in the last Bond there were specific design advisory teams I believe they were called that that each School site that engages some of the decision- making and the thinking through the work is that the same type of process you're referring to when you're talking about getting Community involved or is it slightly different with this Bond than the last Bond No that's exactly right so we have more robust design advisory teams like on our high school and middle school projects where we're doing a lot more scope right um on our elementary schools a lot of them have to do with uh playgrounds a lot of Building Systems um and E exterior interior improvements so a lot of times we engage principle that and we ask ask who
150who would we like to be involved and send Communications out to the community to make sure they they understand what the scope is so sometimes it's less exciting but nonetheless we do engage and ask for any kind of that input they just are kind of uh a smaller uh committee meeting at that level usually and then I know Terry Wilson used to be on the DAC and on seok I believe she's still on seok but it made me wonder with Jorge's comments if the current list of seox membership does include a district a member from the district accountability committee since Terry herself is no longer on the Dack so just a wondering to cross cross reference those two just to help a little bit in that communication Jason yeah I just want to comment on
151kind of piggy back on Jorge said about uh a different approach to it but with few of the projects I've noticed there's been signs you know thank you to the voters you know funded by you know this Bond and I think that's a really important we need to make sure I I noticed it a few things but I don't know that's everywhere and I know it's a minor point but kind of really reminding folks you know how these projects are funded that this is you know how it was done I think people have short memories um even in a community like this that follows you know elections and so you know it's a minor point but I think that kind of public relations aspect of this is really important absolutely and I think that specific
152question was brought up by Terry at our last cach meeting so as we get ready to start construction and people start to see more activity around it those sites are planned for each site as we go into uh that construction year and then we'll leave them up afterwards for a while as well so any other questions or comments board members it's exciting to see the progress on all of this so thanks again to the voters and thanks again to your team for making this happen thank you all the next information item we have this evening is an update on our state test results Cass PSAT sat and I believe Dr DEA Cruz and Jonathan dings will be providing that update to the board as as our team gets uh gets set up board members I
153will say that we included more data versus less data in this presentation and so to the extent that you know hopefully it's not too long um I think the data speaks for itself but uh I would imagine the team's going to go through this rather quickly if you want us to stop and talk um even though this is an information item I think it would be appropriate to raise your hand and and then engage otherwise I mean there's 30 some slides so good evening president Raj Paul members of the board Dr Anderson Dr Jonathan dings and I are glad to be able to share with you outcomes as uh Dr Anderson said we have many many outcomes to share lots of data of our cmass PSAT and sat results as the board knows our altogether
154for all student strategic plan really focuses our work and continues our intentional support of students and the fourth objectives of our strategic plan really interconnect to Ure that we are reaching our students so that they are achieving and growing across student groups and driving as an ultimate goal um we'll be sharing with you tonight outcomes as related to our district performance framework which a board member medler referred to earlier as well as achievement and growth across student groups um highlights of our data across the um the subjects and content areas that were assessed as well as next steps and with that I'm going to turn it over to John Jonathan and I'll leave that next question for you all right uh president Raj Raj Paul board members Dr Anderson so uh as you've as you've
155already heard this evening uh this is uh this is a a big push of the button to to note that uh bbsd was was accredited with distinction um it's a helpful way about thinking of our performance overall it's a a com it's a a metric that combines a number of measures um terms of looking at those uh one way to look at this is in terms of uh how with the with the darker green bar we we compare to the past year which is where we saw some substantial increase relative to our own performance but also something that put us uh outperforming uh on the neighboring in most large Front Range districts uh um in this this context right you can uh think of this too in terms of how did we do by level
156uh what we see is that um what you know the the high achievement and growth that high schools all already had uh can was was improved upon uh and that there were substantial improvements at the middle level also in terms of the metrics that we're uh looking at here uh with with Elementary Maybe be coming down a a little bit but maintaining really a very high level of performance overall uh and there was also an increase in the post secondary Workforce Readiness metric that isn't shown on this on this particular slide just because it's uh specific to High School uh grades and can't be compared at middle and elementary um so for the first of a number of these slides uh and we will of course appreciate board member feedback about whether this is too
157much data um or the right way of looking at it in board board meeting uh we've broken the results down by uh uh overall uh plus the the four the four groups that that are that are named here um and then and then we'll look at it by race ethnicity also uh having taken feedback previously from the board about which groups to make sure that we include um and uh we can add in a little reference line did it go away that right it's it's there um so you you can see some some some little picture there on the o overall line right of where where this performance is compared to actually Statewide I won't overemphasize that it's already been in part of these slides that we've seen in the accredited with distinction idea uh
158but as we look at this right we get we have some some way of thinking about progress over time and across most groups knowing that there are some cautions that we have I've put a little asterisk on fridu's lunch here um because the comparisons that we have in this case go back with the orange bar being the pre-pandemic line um that that line when you compare for introduced lunch from 202 to to to onward based on the Marshall fire there was a a change really very much in our in our free introduced lunch population based on the number of families who lost their their homes and that that catastropic event um so there are some cautions that we would apply uh but while in this case seeing results that went up overall and also for
159for for for uh for students served with an i IEP um in terms of the uh racial and ethnic breakdown here uh we can see some gains over time uh as board members noted in some of their comments about when we asked about what do you want want to want to want want to see uh some context we would have here is that our black student population is really quite small uh and that we would use great caution in interpreting any of the differences that we see there um uh uh and and that we are seeing uh some increases by group uh and and some declines overall uh mostly these are with within the sort of range of uh uh you know error is sort of the right word and also not but um if
160we drew confidence intervals on these uh we wouldn't necessarily point to very very very strong patterns overall from this year to the to the to the last all right I'll say Le less about the next slides after pointing out that um um this this this one is about growth uh the metric here on growth is the the the median growth percentile this says how well are middle gaining kid gained compared to all kids kids Statewide so if you're making a comparison with The O overall the middle gaining kid gains at about 50 uh and and and our middle gaining kit is uh is gaining fairly well above that and here you can see some pattern of that moving overtime uh overall you see some results by group here uh the pattern for for for for
161students on IEPs is is worth uh worth thinking about uh and the one for students on free introduced lunch too the the pattern for emerging by langles is one of our trickier patterns to interpret um and uh while I won't try to to delve into depth here right we would ask questions about um how in in one year does the group membership compared to past years as far as students who are comparatively new to English um so as as that will will have have have an impact on their ability to access test content uh so uh we note that um and then we note for we have the same data by ethnicity uh and that in some cases here we we can see that our black student group is not big enough to even meet
162a minimum n hence the the hence the the bar here is missing um so uh we have a bunch more slides like this uh I might sort of scroll through those or uh um not pause much uh but we we are seeing some uh improvements in Elementary uh math in terms of uh achievement um uh some of which you know uh uh maintains AC cross groups also uh growth on the other hand decreased a little um but has been at a pretty high level for the past uh couple years uh certainly as far as looking at that um and uh also with patterns by race ethnicity uh that that uh we we would look at with some caution um terms of the middle middle level we see achievement increasing overall uh uh not perhaps as
163much though by by group as shown here uh with uh some variation from from year to year by uh race ethnicity as well growth being similar to last year but moving up an important Point uh you know we we can while while in the earlier on we showed the middle of the level slide for terms of points on the the the performance framework like any kind of scoring system it matters a whole lot to be at 50 as opposed to under under it so even gains here that appear small uh actually have a substantial um impact um terms of uh achievement seeing some gain here too uh and again for uh students served on an IEP uh and in terms of uh uhas ethnicity perhaps not as much uh change as far as what we
164see so um by the by the time we're talking about high school we would we would have some added caveats this last year was the first year that uh testing for the PSAT and the SAT was all digital uh we think that our schools did a really good job of preparing and that um um there were really minimal uh issues compared to what one might have uh over time knowing that on the SAT in particular that that test has some Stakes for um College Bound students uh uh so uh you know we we we we we note that in reading and rewriting that that that that score looked fairly comparable uh over time so what appear to be be gains here where there are big enough we would uh think about those as credibly being
165gains with some caution offered uh that it is a newer test um and in terms of the growth data we think that works really well growth data uh um uh takes into account it in order to to measure growth in the way it's measured here you needn't have the exact same tool from one year to to the next minor variations are taken care of really very well and bigger variations are taken care of relatively well um we we did see uh some gains here we can uh think think about and ask about uh uh but in math we would offer some real cautions here uh that the cut score for uh math uh uh in terms of what a what college readiness looks like will uh is is is uh will be be will be
166adjusted downwards uh or has been I I need to remember which hearing the um where the the ru making is in the phase of that uh but uh there there there there was a change that way so we would urge caution in um not thinking that uh that we believe that all of the drop in high school math was uh um reflective of less uh mathematical achievement um by our our U students um and and and again growth though tends to work relatively well there was a gain here to to be thinking about not quite reaching the level of 2019 uh but as you saw in most of these uh there there there is a good good good indication of uh how performance has gone there and with that I turn it over to Dr
167De La Cruz we're really excited to note that while all of our schools except two are at a performance rating one of those being for lack of participation or not adequate participation um our three of our high support elementary schools continue to earn a performance rating and drum roll our three our three High support middle schools have also earned a performance rating and so Casey Broomfield Heights and angine have really been in an improvement cycle and that has shown up in their outcomes as well as in their in their rating we're really excited about that what we know for sure just going back to that for a moment is that the promising practices the evidence-based practices of Standards based instruction and data driven instruction are showing us uh year-over-year that when implemented with um Fidelity
168and consisten see outcomes are great for students and we're seeing those in in these six schools at elementary we uh we continue to see those promising practices and outcomes all but one of our elementary schools is at performance level we have increased achievement in math and Ela uh as well as uh growth increases in ela overall in math just a slight uh decrease I believe it was 2 percentage Point decrease in math and then importantly math growth in math growth increases for students with um IEPs and students who are eligible for free and reduced lunch last year when we came before the board um we had to note that our middle schools were not keeping Pace with our Elementary and high schools and this year that story is changing our middle schools who are um
169are all at performance ratings are showing growth and progress all of those schools as I said are at a performance level we have increased um achievement in math and Ela and as well as in growth in ela and math and notably in ela and math that growth is showing up um as increases in our Hispanic uh Latina students as well as students who are emerging bilinguals and students with IEPs so we're really proud of our middle schools for working hard rolling up their sleeves putting into place consistent practices and showing that growth and progress at high school the name of the game is continuity and engagement as I mentioned earlier all of our comprehensive high schools with sufficient participation so that's all but one have earned a performance rating or performance level we do see
170increased achievement in reading and writing with a decrease in math we on both ends those uh Ela and math or I'm sorry reading and writing and math may be due in part to test differences um some of that is unknown because of a new test in the first year of the new test while we do have high growth in both areas um with an increase in math there is a slight decrease in reading and writing at the district we're watching carefully the improvements at each school as well as the supports and strategies being implemented that can be connected to those um those those outcomes and the growth and achievement we continue to refine our strategies particularly around those evidence-based practices that I mentioned earlier um datadriven instruction standards based instruction creating more consistency in mtss
171across schools um additional new curricular materials across many grade levels as well as intervention materials and assessment resources greater consistency and expectations that have been defined and clarified and communicated for all schools in instruction instructional practices and assessments we continue differentiating resources through differentiative funding as well as supports that we deploy into schools in the form of personnel and we are strategically supporting the Endeavors and efforts that are aligned to our strategic plan altogether for all students and I've named what those are those evidence-based practices that were really continuing to elevate and the consistencies underneath that and we are feeling not only optimistic about many of the outcomes that we're sharing with you but also um about the continued growth and progress that we anticipate in our schools Jonathan and I are always um glad
172to be able to share data with the board and have conversation with you and we're we're here in available for questions that you have thank you for that presentation Jonathan and Laura hand up first we'll start there thank you so much and congratulations on your Middle School progress that's wonderful um I had a question on slide 26 uh it stood out to me on this slide let me get there um that are gifted and talented group here um in high school looks like we're we have a significant drop there and I'm wondering is it statistically significant um and if we have any idea of what could be happening there is that just perhaps from the testing difference um so I I haven't looked at the high end of the distribution hard enough to say that
173it's not at all related to any testing difference um one of the the U but that that magnitude of change does look to be worth asking about um in in terms of a a way we might think of this we look at the number of students uh that are taking a a a test here uh about one in uh six students are are uh gifted and talented identified so if we have something like uh 5,000 test takers showing up here uh right that's something like 800 students uh testing so differences that are of a not very great magnitude should show up as worth worth asking about Alex uh thank you this is was a lot of information and it's very well presented think um it's really helpful I guess uh one of the or I
174do have a question um what's the story with the high school that doesn't have um enough participation uh for the rating um so one of the challenges high schools face is uh making sure they keep good records of who's actually opted out uh and um and it uh so uh we we would need to look a little harder to determine if at the high school that didn't make performance and had its rate reduced to Improvement if that if that is something we could have genuinely with more effort have captured better um but it is a challenge in that if a student decides they're not taking the taking the test and the parent doesn't opt the child out uh then that counts against uh um this this this this this total so we we hope that
175with improvements there this next year in record keeping and and that uh we will see that uh uh we won't see a reduction um right well and if I may the so when when parents opt out that doesn't count against the participation rate it's only the students who haven't been opted out that don't test or don't have the paperwork for it that leads to the the ding that we got for that High School correct correct okay and to be clear we're talking about Boulder high school and um to the extent that there's things that we can do different around recordkeeping and then make up testing right those are the two pieces that um are within our control and so to the extent that as we move forward next year the school has well more well
176way more than enough points to be at performance um it is really focusing and honing in on those two efforts Alex um on a on a different uh question I find when I'm trying to understand the gaps and outcomes for different subgroups that the the state Department's um quad charts with both growth versus achievement and a scatter plot by subgroup are actually really effective to show the relative performance of student subgroups compared to the kids who aren't in that group and I would I would just suggest we consider incorporating that into our presentations to the public on this data because it it just makes it once once you can get to understanding what the what the scatter plot is showing it really does much more graphically represent the kind of gaps that we're trying to
177close so I would just recommend us maybe putting the time into bringing the public along on the utility of those visuals because I think they really tell a lot so lenia and then Beth I may have missed it but what were our participation rates here or how many people opted out I guess percentage wise uh so our our participation rate overall uh is around 85% uh it's higher at the Elementary than it is at the the the metal uh and uh uh yeah in in that in that ballpark and and we could have uh we could have probably uh passed out copies of the of the the the per performance framework also which features uh that and other information and computes the participation rates in multiple ways one of which takes takes opt outs out
178uh and one of which just talks about the raw participation rate the one I was talking about is the raw participation rate and are those partici participation rates similar to past years um maybe pre pandemic would be a better question but I'm curious are we um encourage I know we encourage people to take these tests to help us understand what's going on better are we having progress of getting more people to participate um if we chart that over time it's been a sort of w wave wavy line uh we had better participation prior to uh um optout movement that occurred nationally as well as in Boulder Valley uh um and we made some increases since since a time that was a low water water Mark um I would say that you know we can we
179can look at these and see uh so in the the past Year's figures would have been 87.0% in English language arts and this year it's 8 86 right so we have some tailing off um the other factor that we've had over this time has been uh the way in which colleges uh require or don't require or won't even take uh measures like the SAT uh we think that with the SAT and ACT that one of those being required now again at uh a number of schools more recently we'll be watching to see if that has has an impact on encouraging High School participation but um and Jonathan if we could get those posted that would be great or shared with the board members electronically Beth well thanks for this present there's a there's a lot
180to celebrate and um mostly what's coming up for me though in this is some questions around our emerging bilingual students particularly in elementary school kind of how lenia observed in on the high school level at GT students so would it be fair to say that the emerging bilingual students in our elementary schools are are not showing the same growth as are middle and high school students and just trying to wrap my head around if that's a correct conclusion to be drawing or what we might hypothesize is happening there um so I I I think you're asking what we think is happening with emerging bilingual data in particular for elementary school when compared to middle and high like it seems to me that the middle and high uh emerging Bing students are kind of trending upward
181and and doing doing great and then we're seeing a little bit of a downward Trend in elementary and I'm just wondering what we make of that um so so I so I I like to when I can compare data across this this is soures uh and this does in some regards regards match some of the data we saw on access gr growth uh right where where we saw better growth at the high school level uh and um and and we saw some better growth also um um so so in terms of what we think is is is happening I mean I I would like to unpack that data just a little bit more first uh um as I as I mentioned there's the the complexity of um uh in a given year is a is
182a is a group uh much more comprised of students who are just at the uh you know very beginning of taking tests for accountability and at the beginning of English relatively in their educational exper experience so I would say that in in analyzing this and Laura I didn't mean to beat you to the podium but um because as we think about the practices that we've adopted for our emerging bilinguals we've adopted better models right after doing a really a deep dive into into how do we serve our emerging bilinguals more kids being served in dual language programs more kids being served in co- teing I think we're at full implementation this year and our co- teing model and then one of the things that I'd have to look at but I wonder about is in
183programs like um for students with emerging bilinguals how many students are being exited out of the program how many of those students count because even if you're exited out of the program I think you count for a certain percentage of years it's confus it's no no no it's that's true I just I don't know how many years it is um and how many of the of those students are in some of our dual language models that are really designed to get kids fluent in both Languages by 8th grade right so if you're in a um the 9010 model which is I believe the model at Pioneer do I have that right uh your core instruction um starts at 90% in Spanish 10% in English and then over time it it gets to where it's 5050
184so and this is a point I made in the state accountability um task force and another a point that I've made there's not that many school districts in Colorado that offer bilingual education like we do I think Us Fort Morgan or Fort not Fort Morgan Fort yeah I think it's Fort Morgan Denver maybe a school here or there uh and the accountability system does nothing um to really recognize students who are learning multiple language there's no nowhere to capture that uh so there's a lot to think about there but the trend that you see on paper is is something that we definitely have to take a look at and then I would just add that our um culturally linguistically diverse education uh team and our English language development teachers have been engaged in data Dives
185and looking at root causes from um access scores to Cass outcomes and you know we now have curricular materials with a scope and sequence for newcomers that's brand new for us and we did have many newcomers join us last year and in addition to that we've shored up the professional learning across all of our um El providers and we're continuing to teach seven steps for language Rich classrooms to all of our leaders and we've invited leaders from across across the state to join us as well and so we really are looking at a multifaceted approach to Shoring up practices so that our students who are learning English have um have greater access to not only learning the language and whether they're in a dual language school or not but also to materials and quality instruction
186cor thank you for the thought consider the question and the thoughtful consideration it's it's a complex issue and I know part of the reason that the Latino par advisory Council pushed for greater access to a dual language program at the middle school is because you don't see the benefits till middle school it has to be through eth grade to really see score stabilizing for kids because they're they're going to be at a deficit early on in both English and Spanish but the payoff is really in the long term um one other you mentioned the recent arrivals and I think that's a critical issue since many of them are not were not coming to our district and going to a dual language school and I know for these exams unless you're dual language school you can't
187take the exams in your preferred language and I think that might be a factor to consider as well and I know that's not a requirement so but I don't know if that's an option for us to say hey even though you're not in dual language school if you prefer to do this in a different language is that an option for our students just something to think I don't know what flexibility we have on that sort of stuff but but in terms of making it accessible to our students um that might be more useful than having them to do something that they don't understand um and so I I think that's a all stuff to consider um so an an overarching answer uh would be that it would depend in part on when a student has
188been taught in their preferred language also right um we can't use preferred language for a student who's not been taught in it in the last year so and and there's some cases too in this particular year with very recent arrivals of um cases where they wouldn't have counted for accountability in the same way right I mean um so yeah as you as you point out it's it's complex yeah and that was my question I guess I wasn't sure if it was flexibility in that or if it's a state requirement you can't do it so which which is a shame but I do want to Echo um um Alex was pointed about the Scatter Plots right looking at achievement and growth together right because I there these disparities are are longstanding and if the growth is
189also lower for those groups then we're never going to catch up so trying to figure out how to move that bar so thank you but you know trending in the right directions it's great I know how hard everybody's working so thank you I want to Echo the scatter plot um as well as how much work has gone in to move the needle I think it really is impressive and and this is just year one I'm looking forward to see what happens in subsequent years another piece of data that I think would be really helpful for the board and for our public to understand and I know this data might have been embargoed longer is how we are comparing to the state and a like school districts in our um achievement and growth for our historically
190marginalized groups in different demographic slices to see like we while we do have disparities that we continue to work on how are we comparing relative to Littleton Public Schools and Jeff Co and Adams 12 and the state averages so we can put that in a little bit more context overall I know that one slide just showed our overall comparison to the state data but it would be nice to see some of that articulated a little bit more clearly the other thing you know it's promising to see some increases in math when for so long we weren't really seeing very many at all and I part of me wonders how much that is related to a really clear emphasis on EXT increasing access to advanced math coursework to doubling down on curriculum and really making that
191an emphasis in our uip from 2022 until present and so where we do for me it's another point that where we put our resources and we put our energy we see improv ments and so that was positive to see and positive to see some um Improvement on the middle schools as well and more work to do there for sure to your first point I just want to mention I believe we got the state uh comparisons today the comparisons to other districts today but we are planning to bring to the board at our next work session in October those slices of data that you're referring to looking at groups of students in comparison to uh districts across across the metro and across the state that'll be helpful for us and for our engagement and advisory committees
192that are really looking at this data pretty closely as well so thank you for that board members any other this was a lot of data and I kept finding myself flipping back and forth between the different sides for different groups and achievement and growth and it was a lot to take in um so thank you for providing it and giving it some time to digest any other questions for Dr de Cruz and Jonathan dings on this topic thank you both our last information item this evening is legislative update Dr Anderson I will let you take that one since we've last um had a chance to meet a special session has happened and uh 50 and 108 are officially pulled off the ballot so that is um kudos to this board for being the only board
193I know that was able to uh take action and direct staff to to um to push for the special session I think some folks were thinking about it we did it and so congratulations um so with that I believe uh the only other piece um uh the ballot initiative that that we might want to talk about moving on sooner rather than later is um is it 138 and I know that several board members have been actively kind of engaged in looking at this uh it's troubling and it's Sneaky and we need to expose what it actually does and so Nicole I don't know if you want to take that I know Alex has some thoughts on that as well um but I do think that that's something we should probably just have a little bit
194of conversation about tonight I'm happy to start then Alex if you want to chip in 138 is a initiative that would that is that talks L about increasing access to parent choice school choice parental choice for schools um and expanding board members as you know Colorado law already grants choice or establishes the access to Choice through Charter Schools through Public Schools we do have law that allows homeschooling to occur this new language would really expand the idea of choice to include private schools as well and while it's not explicitly stated and I think it's pretty deceitful in some ways is the the the thinking that maybe this opens the doorway to voucher programs and sharing public funds for um students that would go and attend a private school or follow them to their homeschooling program
195so it doesn't clearly talk about that in the language that I've seen But it that is the concern that is coming up that's coming to me from from folks in the community um that we do have a high degree of choice in our state already it does not and people can choose to pay for private schools but the dollars do not follow um tax dollars do not follow students currently to private schools and to religious type schools and so that's some of the the stuff I've been hearing um the language itself is pretty short there is a fiscal note what that some hypotheticals around the language being vague and um how that might open this col Department of Education and local school districts to lawsuits which could be costly because of the language um and
196some hypotheticals around what that potentially could cost if more folks are you are um have are that per pupil spending is divided amongst more students like ones that are currently participating in home schools and in private schools than there are presently Alex anything you want to add yeah two things um it's a short initiative I mean it's a single paragraph with three Clauses really the first one says uh people have a right to Quality education uh that would allow litigation and on the rest of this to argue that something we're not getting uh means we're not getting the quality that every family is entitled to the second part is about expanding choice to include the private schools the third part speaks to um the right of parents to direct their kids education so the first
197part by saying everyone has a right to Quality education means everybody has a right to sue uh in order to get everything else that's written there which includes the private school choice so we would clearly um people have pushed in other states to have constitutional language that talks about a right to Quality education people have anticipated that that would allow people to sue in their state courts in order to get like funding adequacy uh to move or quality improvements to happen so when you combine that with a clause about the private school choice then you have a right to sue in order to have your private school education so in a state that would be extremely unlikely to pass uh a voucher or an education sending spending account in the legislature or by the ballot
198measure this is a um sort of under underground way to do that the the part also that disturbs me is the language on the right of parents to direct their kids instruction whereas I'm absolutely sensitive to parents uh right to direct the development of their kids um uh the parental rights movement has been used as a stalking horse for um uh pushing back on all the things we do to protect um different student classes particular lgbtq students so I see it as clearly setting us up for a ton of litigation both about a right to private school education and a right to push back on protections of lgbtq students or other marginalized populations um I would push up I know we uh need to have a sophisticated per process by which to take positions but
199I would encourage us to maybe put this on the agenda um for a couple weeks from now potentially to to take a position officially in opposition to it people would have a couple weeks to research it some more um uh but I'm firmly opposed and believe that in the long term it's a significant threat to both public education and to our uh vulnerable kids that we need to protect Jason um yeah I just want to add to your to what Alex said um you know I follow School vouchers programs for my day job uh among other things I follow um and most of as you said Alex you know are done legislatively or done through Appropriations this is uh kind of an unprecedented thing where it creates a right to a private education and that's
200that's unprecedented and not unprecedent but it's it's rare and extreme and so just wanted to highlight that aspect of this as well um yeah I think that's an important point to make Dr Anderson one of the other concerns that I've heard and kind of engaging on just what was happening with 50 and 108 that some of the groups that um were going to put their energies towards passing 50 And1 108 will now shift their energies to passing this and uh and so if the board I think that that there's a few things that we can do uh we have our advocacy meeting happening on the 24th right so in two weeks from now uh we could have a resolution ready for the board to consider um in addition to other things that the board may
201want to act on this seems like the most timely and and with um with a with a small bit of direction um we can immediately engage our lobbyists and I can immediately begin to engage other superintendents to uh Ring the Alarm on some collective action against something that I don't want to assume that folks will see right through this and say no I don't think we can risk that um but I do also think that we should play a leading role in the state on making sure that folks know that uh what this really means and that it's not right Dr I like that plan I know the board in the past um sometimes deviating from process gets us into sticky situations with looking at past precedent and so I like the idea of sticking
202to our timeline in our process we've established for specific resolutions I feel like there's a probably a high degree of agreement that this is something we would like to oppose and so coming in with some ballot language prepared for that meeting feels like the right decision and I think much like the board um expressed a desire to accomplish with 108 and 50 and the special session using our channels of community and our advocacy through our lobbyists and through our delegation to really emphasize [Music] our um opposition to this in the interim feels like a great P remembers sounds good and Kathleen I think from this conversation have you gleaned enough to put together a resolution great thank you thanks board members that concludes our the information section of this evening we will be moving now
203on to action items consent grouping first item is 8.1 Personnel items 8.2 approval of minutes August 13th 2024 8.3 approval of minutes August 20th 2024 8.4 approval of minutes August 27th 2024 8.5 denim with ersan therapy for temporary staffing 8.6 change order with HHS Inc 8.7 Master Services agreement with green staff medical us board members are there any items you'd like to Pro remove from consent grouping hearing none we need a motion to approve this list Mo moved by lenia seconded by Alex board members is there any discussion on the items within this consent grouping seeing as are Laur will you please call Ro Chavez yes medler yes nnick yes Quin Lin waa yes Raj Paul yes uner yes motion passes we have one item remaining on our agenda this evening board members it is
204a study item on the district's unified Improvement plan believe Jonathan Bings and Dr de Cruz will be presenting this once again board president rajal members of the board we're glad to be in front of you again this time having an opportunity with you to walk through the draft of our 24 through 2 6 District unified Improvement plan or uip we came before the board um at our work session on August 20th and talked about the alignment that we were endeavoring to create between the Strategic plan evaluation recommendations the DAC recommendations and our uip and we discussed at that time this crosswalk of alignment between those three documents and um some of the details within at that time the board gave us robust and really informative feedback we also received feedback last week from District accountability
205committee and all of that feedback has informed the draft that we're going to be sharing with you tonight for your study and consideration and with that I'm going to turn it over to Jonathan who's going to start with the development timeline and then dive into the uip draft itself president rall members of the board Dr Anderson um so so the this this is a year that had a lot of useful things going on as far as lining up an improvement plan on a that goes on two years cycle with with the the beginning of a of a longer term strategic plan but the but the particularly helpful piece right we're getting getting ideas for and and and feedback about this as as far back as February uh H having having gotten a report uh on
206on what we should be thinking hard about doing doing next having having gotten feedback from from from from from the from the the district accountability committee first at a high level about whether the general direction we were uh uh understanding uh was one that made sense but then getting dax's feedback in detail 10 single spage single page single space Pages that's super helpful to have that in the early part of June and have that really inform our our thinking as this goes on uh inform work that gets done over this summer noting that we had input from principles also about whether these looked like the right kinds of strategies and the right kinds of root causes um right so so we we therefore are coming with you tonight with uh uh with with a plan
207that we that we believe you'll see a lot of alignment to uh past uh past work that's been done um I'll I'll attempt to boil this down to the the sort of the logic model of of each of four areas uh where we work from a pattern in the data to some statement of root cause which is really what adults in the building could be doing doing differently root cause is not about the resources we don't have uh or not about some other school or certainly not about families or kids it's about what could the adults in the building be be doing doing doing differently um major improvement improvement uh strategies should flow very much from that in terms of what we will will do differently and can be can laid out in terms of
208more specific actions uh as well as some implementation of Milestones right uh and uh you'll you'll notice some connection right between this and the metrics uh conversation that we had was it a couple weeks ago um uh uh right uh that that when we talk about trying to measure adult actions to give an idea of the implementation that we have that is really what we're talking about uh so under the the overarching idea of well-being and inclusive practices we continue to know that disproportionate out of school suspensions are a concern that this is even though Boulder Valley has made huge changes and uses this practice much less than a than a neighboring District um we would we would still point to the concern that we have and our our our belief that we can have
209an impact on implicit bias which we believe contributes to and indeed leads to inconsistent admin administration of disciplinary procedures across schools um we you know one one major focus in looking at this is to make improvements to the process to be really clear on how a particular set of circumstances should lead to only a limited range of actions uh and that over time we can be very very with folks about what what those are and and give them feedback on how well they are falling within no the first time of a a certain kind of comment is made in in a in a in a a classroom the the range of actions might be might be X and Y but not z uh and if you did z uh then that wasn't what we had
210had as the the protocol too but also in here is uh ideas about uh boosting engagement uh and um and some of the ways we think think about this involves a a pretty major turn with this idea about multi-tiered systems of support applied to Behavior Uh focusing over time on the on the on the on on the the goal that we need to support students who aren't behaving in ways that work really well for for for for being in class uh or being in the hallway or being in school um uh we need to support them and make sure that our our Collective tool kits have have the the the right uh the right right right right mix for meeting of a variety of uh complex behaviors by young people um this idea about uh
211uh uh having having so so yes so as we think of this right and this goes hand in hand I believe with a an and a focus on well well well well well well-being right part of uh being able to function well at school uh is being well one self uh and uh we can I'm I'm sure there uh a number of things we can talk about here when we think about Milestones though uh uh we we would expect we we we we'd expect all schools to have an equity goal reflected in their written plans uh and Implement that that that that plan we would uh have we were making a very particular statement of then the number of hours we will have of embedded professional learning uh that occurs during times where where it's
212mandatory to attend not 10 hours of optional things that people could come to if they uh if they they want want wanted to and this idea over time about uh if you if you say that a certain action can only lead to of of a particular set of resolutions measuring the accuracy with which that is uh implemented over time this would require Gathering a a baseline on it first um it wouldn't be fair to tell schools those things you did last year let's measure them against some new expectations that we have um so there would be a a baseline there um moving on to the second here of the four areas yes because I think I maybe we can stop at each section for questions because otherwise we're going to be bump jumping back and
213forth a lot I would be my prediction board members are there any questions on this portion of the uip that Jonathan is presenting Alex just a this is a question trying to understand the background of the things you're presenting to us tonight is this is one of the ones that's consistent from the previous uip and carrying forward right I I guess one of the questions I have is we've made significant progress on the disproportionate discipline is this the most high leverag thing in the field of well-being inclusive practices now to continue in the next one and I I know there's still progress to be done and we haven't solved the problem but if if we're thinking about well-being inclusive practices what's the reflection on keeping this still as the single metric um and have we
214made a bunch of impro progress on it and we might make more progress on an additional thing uh that similarly getting it well-being and inclusion I think it's a good question um I think for us uh the disproportionate discipline of all of the feedback we hear and all the data that we see it it is probably the most important piece that we need to work on now not that those other things aren't important um you know I think about when we think about well-being inclusive practices I think about um the work you'll be hearing from Renee Crown in a couple of weeks around some of the analysis that we do there it could be that we pick up something through that analysis that we then pick up as maybe not necessarily A 2-year uip goal
215but pick it up in a strategic plan metric goal we merge that together I would say that uh even though we're less disproportionate we're still too disproportionate in regards to our discipline and um because of the exclusionary nature of that um and because of its ties into Equity like when I think about what I heard at the Dak meeting right still tons of passion around this piece and so um you know based on my analysis could there be something different that that that we measure and respond to differently in regards to student well-being and inclusion inclusive practices I think yes I think the answer to that is yes um but I also do think that you can't take this out um just because of the work we've done if we took this out I you
216would I think that we would lose a lot of TR amongst a lot of folks who have put a lot of energy and effort into a 5-year process uh that is at the next level but I do think that it's a fair question and I would just add that the in the action steps and the implementation Milestones are some uh really potentially High leverage strategies such as having Equity goals at 100% of our schools that they're working on embeding implicit bias and cultural competency training into required professional learning for teachers and leaders leaders and we know that that has the uh potential to impact students across student groups from overall to um you know students who um are experiencing diversity in economics and identity and um race and ethnicity and and so I I I
217agree with you know your conversation um board member medler as well as Dr Anderson around you know contemplating the continuity of this and and the reason why it continues to be an important um challenge to address but I would like to just lift up that the action steps and Milestones have the potential to make a really positive impact across student groups and their well-being across our district okay uh thank you for presenting this and for the work on the uip I know it's a it's a long process and and I know how far we've come from where we started this you know six years ago on you know as far of that we saw the changes I think that's a a really important point to make right we've come a long way and we've reduced
218the discipline at across the district tremendously the disparities still remain though I think that's the issue right we're doing a lot less of it but the gaps are still there and they're very prominent and so I'm heartened by you know I think thinking back to the deck discussion earlier talking about accountability in terms of what that looks like and procedures and and and what process we have in place and you have that here and so I don't know if this is the place to have a discussion or if it's a part of the uip or somewhere else like what does that mean procedurally right um I know for this we want to have Milestones of what we're changing and how how we know we're making progress but I think for our public and families it
219would be helpful to know well what does the process looks like what processes have been changed what do these kind of new matrices look like and and how are they being implemented and kind of that Fidelity issue that we've talked about in the past um and how that aligns really with um overall climate in the CL in the schools right and how it aligns with wellbeing more more broadly in conjunction with our our bio and cultural competence um in our curriculum and I know that's not in the uip because that's a specific document but maybe part of strategic plan or maybe elsewhere that we kind of have that discussion and I want to piggy back on that the process and really creating a a higher degree of awareness and understanding about what that process looks
220like is also something that I'm hearing and it's not necessarily part of this plan but I think of like could it be a case study where you can show what the process should look like or something that's tangible so our parents understand um what the process looks like when it comes to student discipline and restorative practices and what they can expect for their student and what they how they can better clearly understand if the process went wrong or if it was just you know they maybe didn't like the outcome but that was the process was adequate so I think having greater insight into that for our community would be really beneficial they can't all attend Vortex meetings they don't really know they only see their side but I think that could be really a a
221helpful a helpful component there so I want to PEB back on that and I saw Alex Ra's hand I'll come back to my other and I just want to be totally clear that I'm not advocating against it I'm I'm looking at uh how we reflect that broader stuff that's going on because it seems like there's there's opportunities to reflect the additional values we're trying to do in this tricky way and getting at the restorative justices uh implementation and getting at the sense of well-being and inclusion I know is is a priority so I really I like the way not everything has to be in the uip that's in the Strategic plan that's in our assessment but I I I just want to note that there's a there's a broader constellation of outcomes that we're carrying
222about that this is like a this is the indicator of five or six other things we could also ask about that are similar in related this UI this um priority performance and root cause is very similar to one the ones we've seen in previous plans and it's something I've heard as a critique and I just want to highlight how the Improvement strategies and the action steps in the Milestones are different this time around and they are to me they feel much more specific and actionable in ways it was in the past it was more like understanding the data or inputting the data wasn't embedding 10 hours of professional learning around standards so there is are some really tangible changes that were that I can see the district attempting to make in this plan to the
223point around the data and how are we benchmarking this and um how are we setting standards for decreasing the disproportionality it's really hard for me to understand any of that without with that data being still embargoed and not being able to see what our dis our data discipline data looks like it's a little bit of a challenge for me I wonder if you could speak to you know how successful we were in the last plan and how you feel this plan can achieve the type of improvement you're hoping for because you did have some specific targets set as far as dis changing improving disproportional Dr Anderson the change management around this has been hard and when you see the discipline data from surrounding districts that look like us you're going to see significant differences and
224the change management has been hard because this is something that is inherently wrong right like this is wrong we should fix this now and it doesn't it it hasn't been able to work that way because the systems and structures have been um we had so far to come from where we started right to the fact that every school had their own codes and their own Matrix and their own way of interpreting it and no no appeals right judge and jury in the school like it was incredibly incredibly broken so we fixed the Matrix not perfect we create a standardized form implement it these are the you know this is an 8 to 10 year problem that we're putting in two-year chunks and it's hard to see like if you're looking at an improvement plan and
225you say well that's not how you fix it I mean but those were the the first and next back steps and the Jorge's point you know so we've we fixed this system we revamp the way we think about security and restorative practices and deescalation as a first best step to dealing with students who are experiencing whatever it is they're experienced in school that's making them act in the ways that they are [Music] um so you know we've come a far away we have a far way to go uh and I don't know how we can signal in the uip that this is a this this this is not a like we're not only putting things in here that will have completely wrapped up and fixed in two years like because that's what that's that's their
226critique right we already saw this you should already have this fixed right the idea that you can fix something this complicated in two years is just unrealistic and um but the way things are are wrong like I can't say they're wrong and we want to fix what's wrong so um you know I've had lots of conversations at Dak and and as former folks who've been on the Dak you know the passion there's no higher passion on any other topic than this and uh for those who who have been in my leadership meetings with principles I've been very direct around how wrong this is and the things that we need to do we have a lot to be proud of and we have a lot of work to still do so we're finally at a place
227like you can't train people if the whole system is broken and they still get to go back into their school and do whatever they want and you can't see it and there's no accountability and it's not transparent um so uh I would say that we I feel strongly that this needs to be here that I think that these are some of the right things to do not all of the things and I don't think it'll be fixed in two years I think that we'll continue to move towards being better and being more inclusive right but every time you get a new teacher in a new school or a new leader like there's a bit of re like like like has to get culturally embedded and I will tell you restorative practices are culturally embedded our
228discipline Matrix is culturally embedded using that form is culturally embedded and that's the term that I would use when I think things are happening when we're not looking like I'm not worried if people are using the forms anymore I'm not worried if folks are going off and doing their own thing like that's not happening how we use the discipline Matrix how that's happening between schools there's differences there's bias that's what we're saying right so now we have to provide training we're saying that folks aren't now you're using it good but you're not using it accurately all of the time um so all that to say um I think this stays I think that this is these are the next best steps but I think Nicole to your point and Alex to your point there's going
229to be opportunities for us to to measure all the things we care about maybe not in this document and there has to be a way for us to communicate to folks who care that that these things take time and and and we're just going to have to stay the course and the second you left you let your foot off the gas on something like this right you stop looking you stop making it a Focus fall apart go back to the way it was uh just Co just organizational Dynamics right like there there like we're Mak I just think that we need to save the course yeah and I like I totally agree with staying the course and I think this is the next these are the next logical steps I like the fact that there's
230auditing now of the data that is going to be happening I think that's really positive I think um having a measure around restorative practices not just suspensions in here um like in the plan is positive I am curious the 10 hours of professional learning is that just for teachers or is it all staff at our buildings and then um how much leeway do schools have in setting those Equity goals like are it could it be just in anything they want or is it based on some guidance from evidence or from what the district's work is to your first question the 10 hours that's being named here is being named because that is the amount of time that we have with our licensed Personnel over the course of a year but as I named um when
231we were discussing this at our work session August 20th we are also this is inclusive of our leaders as well who we have much more extensive time with training over the course of a year and and we haven't yet tackled um how we can embed this with our classified staff but that is Our intention the we have some contractual limitations that we will be um working with and we don't yet know exactly what that will look like so the 10 hours here is referring to licensed personnel and there was another part of your question the equity how much uh autonomy and independency schools have done setting these Equity goals and is there any guidance or support in crafting ones that we know will produce higher quality outcomes than others a great question so our executive
232directors of schools are working very closely with our principles and their leadership teams as they begin to craft those goals and those goals are linked to data and outcomes that there we're seeing in our schools whether that be disciplinary data you know or other and um we're also Consulting with floretta FL FLA our new uh director of equity and inclusive uh teaching and learning so it really is a team effort it's not a um choose your own goal or Adventure scenario and our expectation is to have alignment to District uip to the greatest extent possible but also linked very carefully to school data great thank you and and and and I I I would I I would add that one of the patterns that our Dak pointed out I to us also was that M
233much of the work on here around discipline is focused at the middle level right that's that's where from end end end we saw the least amount of change in some ways in terms of totals of number numbers of um students who who who received an out an out of school suspense so there had there was a huge amount of progress at high schools that I think showed up really very very very well so so I'm encouraged that more of the same will actually help and this isn't just more of the same there's more being built on here too you can go to the next one post secondary preparation um so we do have some disproportionate participation in work-related academic experiences um while some of this is about uh um limited kinds of work based learning
234that we've developed uh or The Limited am amounts part of it may be attributed to uh in inconsistent recruitment for advanced learning uh and work-based learning so the focus here is really to expand and enhance career Discovery uh part of that is by I identifying opportunities in in in in in in in grades pk8 and having a Target about 100% of non of non non Charter grades serving PKA that is non-charter school serving grades pk8 uh offering one or more career exploration OPP opportunities and naming a time frame uh but we would also um focus this in terms of uh how we tie to uh uh uh path of coursework based on Career interest right some some big work being done over time at high schools to develop opportunities there uh for uh with with
235work work-based learning uh and and then making sure we've publish the career path the course paths that lead to taking full advantage of of those kinds of opportunities and then we would promote and monitor those as as as well um so this point this one is probably more focused uh um and maybe easier to uh uh think about that way or we may need to put more more on the page because I could squeeze at least one more bullet on each of these boxes right Alex I have a similar question from the last one I mean I look at the Grad Plus program and uh with the four different things that we're dealing with the work-based learning experience and internships are the smallest of the of the four and all of them seem relevant to
236advancing the postsecondary options uh for the for the disproportionate populations that we're talking about so of like you know 2,000 students with the Grad Plus medals we've got 209 with the work-based learning experiences so we're focusing on the disproportionate element of on10th of the programming when we could just do all the programming and say disproportionate of Grad Plus and capture a lot more opportunities that also probably suffer from the disproportionate enrollment wh why would is is there a reason why the work-based learning experience one is the one chosen in this one and not Grad Plus as a whole or something because it's the furthest behind it's it it's the area that has it's the it's the last domino in the Grad Plus most of it is we we have we have changed the way kids
237are accessing college credit in all of our high schools and for all of our kids I I fundamentally believe that we've changed that our seal of biliteracy we've changed that with the building out of additional Pathways for um for seal of biliteracy and dual language at our middle schools and we have Pathways in in in in um at least K8 defined in all parts of the district the industry set certification piece we're building out with our bond work with our accelerate program and this I I mean and you tell me if I'm wrong Jonathan when I read this I say we're focusing solely on this because we're the furthest behind in this and right now the kids who are getting work-based experiences are the kids whose parents are helping them out with it I I
238I think it's incredibly inequitable and I don't think we have a system that is really lifting that up and taking that to scale in the ways where I think it would be incredibly powerful so I think that that's why that's in here like that and I want to piggy back on that the folk the kids that I know that have had those internship externship more of the work based experiences they have been found through their personal connections rather than through the system and I so I think that making this a priority will help even that playing field for all of our students in a really big way I know that's anecdotally but that's what I'm hearing too is that a lot of those are are found through their their individual Personnel networks unless so through
239the system but but that's like where discipline was like five years ago right like we're just getting started we just have the system we have the vision but you know the idea of getting our community engaged in how do you sign for the opportunities what do we consider a work-based learning experience how do we broaden that range um I think that we'll get the highest this is the highest leverage strategy to put or set of strategies and focus to put in here in this area with the idea that we're still going to be measuring monitoring and we still have resourced you know we still have all of those other areas resourced and moving and this is just the last one to come along one question I have on this one relates a little bit to
240the graduation requirements hearing from students how hard it is to meet like the very specific course requirements and do some of these other things that might require some background knowledge so if you have to take very a very specific course set currently in high school and then maybe you get into finally get into a business class or a a Med medical related class or whatnot um do we then those things have to happen before they have the opportunity to do some of these more work-based experiences do we anticipate that being part of the solution and thinking about how how those are structured and how we're coding classes to meet the graduation requirements to improve access for kids as well I think you have to lower the threshold to be able to get the experience and
241broaden the number of experiences that you have and uh and and and and get barriers out of the way right get barriers out of the way um and so as we build out the system I think that will be the Focus right but we've got to got to get a lot of business partners we got to get a lot of opportunities you know I mean if we want you know thousands of kids to be out in in our community doing this stuff we've got a lot of leg work to do Alex I guess um I'm totally sympathetic that that convinces me of of the centrality of what we're talking about I guess my concern is that we're dealing with the proportions of such a small number so with 209 kids that did it and having
242disproportionate we could get five more kids to do it and feel like we made a significant change um and so I guess I would push for not just dis proportionate but the raw number increasing significantly so that we don't end up congratulating ourselves when we get to 250 but it's proportionate and that means that 18 Latino kids got to have the cool experience so I would challenge us to add a raw number to this metric as well so that it's it's both it's pursuing Equity but also pursuing the scale part because that's where I'm I'm disappointed in the that you could have no scale but achieve an equity that's really not affecting many kids yeah that that that's a fair point um and and I think both have to be there right because if you're
243just talking about raw numbers right you can you can widen the disproportionality pretty quick right so I think it's both it's it's it's both um so I think that that's good feedback we can take back and think about how we'd work that in with the idea that that's what we're trying to do so that is helpful feedback and our Grad Plus team is already at work expanding work-based learning opportunities for for all students with a sharp focus on uh closing dis any disproportionality gaps that we have and so that feedback is noted and we'll we'll take that into the uip board members any other questions or comments on postsecondary Preparation Jonathan so our next area to talk about is tiered supports um and the the piece of data here that that uh we we're focused
244on is disproportionate identification for special ed education uh and we see as a root cause uh multi-tiered system of supports that's inconsistent across schools um and not surprisingly the approach is to try to implement mtss consistently um this this is the part of mtss we think about being applied to academic intervention wanting to highlight again that there's a partion that a portion of this provide to behavioral intervention also um but that uh We've you know we we would focus schools on on this task by by talking about the uh M mtss checklist uh which principal's got uh some exposure to this this this this morning uh here and and we would also talk about ways we use rubrics around uh what high quality datadriven instruction is um uh that coupled with some uh some support
245into in terms of the coaches um the categories here uh um one of the comments we gotten from from our our de was to please please please include include baselines where wherever they're available we we haven't got one yet I wouldn't say we aren't at the point of using the implementation checklist sufficiently well to to say oh yeah we have Baseline that it's X number of schools who use this very well and why who use it pretty well so um but we're we're on our way way way to that and have set an idea about improving that over time um and that part of uh part of doing this also is keeping good records about what interventions are in the progress monitoring that accompanies them uh that too requires some auditing uh and we've uh
246proposed as a Target increase over Baseline uh we did look at the ideas about DDI rubrics and how how schools are doing on those on those now uh and we put down a target of 85% of non Charter Schools we reach the the core level which is the doing it well not the exemplary level but doing it really quite well level at the end of next year uh Dak said okay 85 that's good about a 100 um okay we can we can make make that Target right and that means a little more effort focused on schools that might not have been doing it as well currently uh so those are that's an overview of the ideas behind tiered supports do we have a sense I'm thinking about when I was on the district accountability committee
247and for a long time the uips just had these blanket percentage improvements that never were that were never met um and so I'm always a little bit wey of really lofty percentage improvements do we have a sense of how many non-charter schools are currently achieving the core level to say that we can aim realistically for 100% And then also are they self-reflecting or is somebody else providing that feedback on how well they are what level they are achieving based on that rubric uh we have a team who is utilizing the rubric in conjunction and collaboration with the school leadership but it is not 100% self-reported And so there are other perspectives that are built into that and our mtss team consults on that as well so there's a lot of expertise being built into that
248and so um our executive directors and our school leadership team does have a strong sense of that Baseline information for their networks I don't have that at my fingertips but we can certainly provide that um and will provide it when it comes time to talk about Baseline information I think that would be helpful and I'm glad to see it's not just a self-reflection that there is some expert external input in that process particularly because MTS is something that we have talked about and we've tried to improve for so long that getting folks that are experts in that getting folks that understand data a little bit better to help really continue to help our schools improve in that area and do that self-reflection on where they really are is an important piece so thank you for
249members questions on this one Dr Anderson Just a comment I think that in the evolution of mtss multi-tiered system of support board members we've talked a little bit about this it's kind of what you do the process you put a kid through when they're not getting the when the teacher teaches it the first time that's the best way I can kind of simplify it uh we've gone from this being an optional idea like just thinking about the evolution Edition an optional idea uh where most folks thought oh I've got to do mtss to get kids in special ed because I know that's where they need to be right all those biases and all those things kind of play in place to a process a system a structure and now we're showing folks what success looks
250like and we're going to measure you against that criteria for success and so I think this is actually a big deal um and uh to the extent that uh you know 85 100% you know wherever we land we're going to be farther along than we are today um and we've defined what success looks like and this will be able to let us know who's succeeding and who isn't and um and that's really the the the piece we need to improve and again I I want to point out the auditing of the records again here I think that really is important that somebody's looking to see what is being done and really supporting uh our staff when they need to improve in certain areas it gets to the piece that we hear a lot about it
251about accountability to some degree in a way that isn't necessarily punitive but it really is supporting individual schools and staff to do better when we're looking at the record themselves we agree and our academics team team and directors within that team are going to be conducting that auditing thanks Alex um yeah I uh completely appreciate the the long-term progress that happens as a system that gets better at this and I and I think there's so many of the student outcomes that can be helped in addition to what this this um the performance priority is about and and for me it it really comes down to um how much we can differentiate instruction and and serve all the kids where they are just it's all about so it's it's a great thing and I lad this
252is another one as we continue to look at it over multiple years this isn't one where the trade-offs we make as a district also impacts what we can do on implementation because ultimately you need to be able to do something different with some of the students as a result of it and that's something where class size and the bandwidth of the teachers gets to like how hard it is to actually make the change between the the adult and the kid so I think this is a really powerful important one totally think it's a great one to make a big priority and it if you were to then say how's it going at doing this you'd raise some of the other obstacles that we have as a system and for our our our fourth uh area
253we look at grade level standards and instruction uh here the pattern we're concerned about is achievement in growth gaps uh which we see is to do to do in part to uh inconsistent instruction inconsistent differentiation and inconsistent use of culturally relevant pedagogy uh the major improvements uh the approach would be to focus on prioritized standards uh and of course on the way that they're taught um so the actions that we that we that we that we note here are uh way ways in which datadriven instruction is used for uh uh as a way of planning uh uh both Universal instruction and differentiation uh we see this in terms of increased professional learning around culturally relevant pedagogy uh and work work uh and work being done to make sure that in instruction is aligned to the
254depth and rigor of prioritized standards uh right and and this happens in some cases too with support from new new new materials being implemented and the training opportunities that that come along with uh uh with the uh new new newer pieces that we have uh uh focusing in math at the high school level currently at the elementary level next year uh in English language arts and Spanish language arts at the elementary this year for the schools that weren't doing it for the for other than for the eight eight eight who were doing it for the first time last year who are probably only focusing on it slightly less um given what new Ma's implementation is uh so as mil stones to be thinking about this um this is this is harder uh right because these
255are these are measures of uh and uh the way in which we've currently concept poiz this is to analyze tasks uh that are assigned to to students uh and to and to ask about the the depth of knowledge that is required to uh complete those those uh those tasks um uh this this approach we think is going to spawn a lot of interesting conversations and helpful data over time um it's qualitative it's complex um which are the kinds of things and its qualitative complex choices that teachers make also that we would hope to uh impact over time too uh and and again uh mentioning of the the professional learning uh here that that is embedded this is for and and this is for educators is that 10hour uh figure uh with good good note made
256of um uh work done with administ administrators also so they can lead this work at schools effectively board members questions on this one so in the actual UAP this was called out am I right two in two different ways one specific for ELA and one specific for math like separate goals and this is this slide just combines the two uh right and and it's actually uh that that we need to that in the U's new system right we were using a new a new new version of the U uip uh there's an attempt to make um one one data pattern per box um so even though I even though I called out the pattern in English language arts and math in in two separate boxes they actually point to the to the same basic strategy
257uh so it's a it's a piece of the way the new system works that I've I've encouraged people to be uh be be think thinking about but these are basically the same kinds of strategies well no these are the same strategies other than which area gets materials and which area it doesn't in a given year that makes a lot of sense and this and some of the other targets you specifically set a target for increasing growth and achievement for all students and then an even higher aspiration for um some of our student groups that are that we see greater disproportionality so I liked that I wonder I was looking at quickly before this meeting at school level Cass data and for our middle schools there was a wide range particularly in ela like some of
258our middle schools one of our middle schools outperformed Summit in ela the Cass and some are close and there's a big difference I was wondering if you're looking at what is happening and other it says Ela around Elementary School here but in our middle schools where we do see opportunities for improvement what are we thinking through for ELA at our Middle School levels whether or not that this is in that PL that is in this plan or if it's coming up elsewhere just to understand what's going on best practices how ask some of those questions around the data to really improve strategies and outcomes for students in Middle School Ela actually you bring up a great Point there's no reason why we wouldn't add middle level to ELA here because we have now required common
259lit 360 units and so that point is well taken and we want to incorporate that feedback we're closely monitoring the um adherence to Common lit 360 units at Middle School and remind me is no red ink who uses that one I feel like there's so many assessments is that a high school sure some middle schools and that's more around writing and it's not not not a required scope and sequence okay thanks but I but I will add that commet 360 has writing components in it as well great I'm glad to hear that Dr Anderson this is a little technical right so let me kind of break it down how this is going to help right when you when you go in classrooms and you ask teachers what they're asking kids to do what are they
260preparing kids to do um the more complex things they're prepared to do means the depth of the standard is being taught and in English language arts the standards are pretty much the same in like sixth seventh and eth grade they just get increasingly more comp at so if you just look at the standard it's not hard to look at an eighth grade standard and teach it like a sixth grade standard so when you look at student work and I've done this all of my instructional leadership experience I found this to be the most effective because what some folks will do is say I'm going to do 50 teacher observations right and I'm going to come in and I'm going to look at the questions and are asking hard questions or but if you look at
261what the work the students are producing then you can analyze it on either a Bloom's taxonomy or a web's depth of knowledge web's depth of knowledge is like Bloom's taxonomy 2.0 right and think about it this way and when I'm teaching something am I asking kids to remember something am I asking them to understand something am I asking them to apply something I'm going ask them to analyze something I'm going to ask them to evaluate something I'm going to ask them to create something right at the higher levels of the taxonomy you engage your kids deeper right and you get them thinking deeper within the context so by going through and doing it will shift the conversation from the teacher who's the old school Sage on the stage where I sit I lecture all day
262you take notes I give tests every once in a while right and that's still happening in classrooms Across America not just in Boulder Valley to okay so what did you ask the kids to do just write down what you said that they could have Googled like like what are you what are you asking them to do and how are they getting to those deeper levels of thinking in math it's it the com as you go through a math book or a scope and sequence the concepts get harder right so it goes from easier to harder and it's easier from grade it's easier to know what algebra is versus geometry versus Algebra 2 it's but in English language arts it's real fuzzy real fuzzy so I really feel like you know this idea of making teachers
263think about the depth of the standard and and and and making sure that all kids are getting access to grade level standards and instruction is a bit of a wonky statement that makes a big impact but when you talk about it like we're going to see what the kids are doing and are they doing things that are hard enough for what they should be learning like that I think is a is going to create amazing conversations in our schools I'm really excited about the ways that we're going to dig into this um around some of the implementation Milestones to see how those action steps will line that up yeah and I like the way you framed that because for me I was like why is there such great variability it is not it is different
264for math for that reason the depth of standard and and it's worth it's worse in classes where you have subgroups of kids that are that are at a lower level because the the the the the tendency is you teach to something that everybody can understand right so like think about like so you know so then to Alex point to others how do you challenge kids and then differentiate and accommodate so they can be thinking right and I could I could take you know you could take a a simple simple Conex con concept and have kids think very deeply about it so they build those skills and it's actually what engages a lot of those kids because they um you know they get they get unfortunately traditionally um kids who are behind get a lot of
265remedial stuff with the idea that once you you get the remedial stuff then we'll get you to the grade level stuff but if you're always caught in that Loop you never get to do the grade level stuff right because if you're two years behind you do the year before you maybe you do a year it's just it's perpetual Loop so in addition to all the incredible work our team has done I think this takes it to the next level thank you for that board members any other questions on the last of uh performance PRI standards or anything else in this presentation for Dr de Cruz and Jonathan dings thank you for this presentation I really look forward to checking in on how these are progressing and how we're meeting our benchmarks and looking forward to
266hearing from Dak as they're monitoring the progress courtly in accordance with their statutory obligations so thank you board members at this time uh we last item on our agenda is future agenda setting requests any items board members would like to bring up at for consideration in November I alluded a little bit earlier that I'm hearing a lot from the community particularly in the city of Boulder around joint use facilities comp plan housing transportation and I know the board had previously prioritized meeting with the Boulder City Council and I was wondering if there has been any update on that and having a conversation on all those things that impact Us and Them jointly Dr they want to meet we we can work to set that up uh we can wait till prioritization or we can work
267to setting it up toward second semester whatever the the the pleasure of the board is I feel like I recall it being prioritized last our last go round it just never got calendared am I remembering that correctly so I'd be fine if we can is that okay board members we CLE candle under that because I do think that came up in our last ization anything else thank you guys for a great conversation have a good evening e